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UNIVERSITY OF TULSA FOOTBALL MEDIA CONFERENCEAugust 28, 2018Philip MontgomeryTulsa, Oklahoma PHILIP MONTGOMERY: First of all, thank you all for being here. Appreciate it. We're very excited. Another football season is upon us. Put a lot of work in. A lot of guys have dedicated themselves, got ourselves to this point. We're excited about this upcoming season. We know we still have a lot to prove out there. I've been really pleased with the amount of work that our team has put in, really focusing on the detail things of what we've got to do to become a better football team. We get to write a new story starting right now. This is the week. It starts. Our guys are ready for that challenge and are excited about getting on the field with somebody different. We've got a bunch of guys back that got injured last year. They've had good fall camps. Had a great, competitive camp. It's been back and forth all the way through it. I've loved to see our team continue to grow each and every day in each and every week that we've been out. As those young guys that got a lot of experience last year, I think it's provided us a little bit more depth now than what we've had. We're still working up that hill to create more and more depth, just like every team is I think at this stage. Our depth is getting better. Our young guys are stepping up. We have our freshmen here and it's been good to have them around. They're a breath of new fresh air and excitement. Some of those guys may have opportunities to play, especially with the new rule changes that are going on with their four games allowed to play before they have to declare one way or another if we're going to redshirt them. Those guys are going to have opportunities if deserved. They're going to be competing for that throughout the year. Excited about what our defense is doing right now. Coach Young and his staff, I think we're going to be much more aggressive and versatile on defense, continuing to change some things up, making sure that we have our best 11 guys on the field no matter what the situation is as we approach the season. They've been really, really strong throughout fall camp. I'm excited to see what they're going to do as we get on the field come Saturday. Offensively we're continuing to grow. Obviously we're still very young at receiver, still young at quarterback, still young in the backfield. There are guys that have gotten some experience, I think have really trended upward as we've continued to grow throughout the winter and throughout this summer as we've gotten into fall camp. Up front, I still think we're going to be able to run the football. Obviously losing two of those guys from last year's team, vital parts of that. We've had some young guys really step up. I'm excited to see them go to work on Saturday. We have a great opponent coming in in UCA Saturday. Won 10 games last year. With Coach Brown as their new head coach, that is his place. He's a first-time ballot Hall of Famer there. He's done exceptional things there as the offensive coordinator. I think they're 20-5, something like that, with the last two years with him calling the plays, even more than that over the last four seasons. He's going to do a great job there. Has a new DC that knows this system, has been around it. They've been extremely good on defense throughout that time. They have a new offensive coordinator in Ken. Ken and I have been friends for a while now. I know he's got a good staff, guys that he can lean on. They're very talented, very aggressive. Defensively they got a lot of them cats back. We know we have our hands full on Saturday. Looking forward to a great crowd, looking forward to stepping on the field and starting our new story. Questions. Q. Quarterback questions out of the way. Are you planning to do the same thing as last year, before the game maybe tell those guys what the situation is, one of them trots out? PHILIP MONTGOMERY: Yeah, we've had a good camp. I think our quarterback and our quarterback room has really grown. The competition has been good for everybody involved. Our young guys really have grown up. Luke has had a good camp. Chad coming off his injury has recovered at an unbelievable rate. Seth has been really, really good. It's been good. Our room is good. I feel confident in all those guys. But Luke will be our starters come Saturday. Not saying that none of the rest of them will play. There may be situational things in there we might use a guy. Luke will be our starter come Saturday. Q. What have you seen in him that led to that decision? PHILIP MONTGOMERY: He's really matured. I think he's handling situations a lot better. He's been much more consistent throughout fall camp. He's done a good job. When you go back and look at the scrimmages, what he's done with his drives, the opportunities he's had, he's made the most of them. He's been really, really coachable. I think he understands what we're trying to do offensively more now than obviously he did a year ago. I think just his natural growth, physically and mentally, has really prepared him for this. He's been in the battles now. He's seen some of it. He knows what to expect. Again, I think his just growth throughout the process of this has been really good. He's been the most consistent. He's going to get to start. He's earned it. Q. You mentioned the competition, everything that has gone on the last few weeks. Do you feel comfortable with the other guys, the position group as a whole? PHILIP MONTGOMERY: Yeah, yeah, I mean, they know. We've talked it all through. Those guys, they're excited for the upcoming season just like everybody else. It's going to be one of those deals where they're going to still continue to help each other, continue to grow themselves. Everybody has to prepare themselves to start. Obviously the job is Luke's right now. I have a lot of confidence in him, what he's going to do. Now he's going to go out, relax, execute and make it happen. Q. Is Chad a guy, if he's in a backup role, you look to get on the field in some other shape or form? PHILIP MONTGOMERY: Yeah, we'll just see. Chad is versatile. Chad can do a lot of different things. Chad wants to do what's best for our football team. Probably one of the best leaders we've got on this team, a guy that is very unselfish, a guy that all he wants to do is win. He's very competitive. Whatever we ask Chad to do, I promise you he's going to do that to his best abilities and try to help our football team win because that's the number one goal at the end of the day. Like I said, he's leading the torch with that. Q. Compared to last year, do you think it helps whoever was going to be that starting quarterback to have a decision earlier in the week? PHILIP MONTGOMERY: I don't know. I don't know if that helps or hurts. You could probably fill it in the last couple of days just the way the reps have gone. That being said, guys have got to prepare themselves no matter what their position is, where they're at. You never know when you're time is going to be called, you got to step in and be ready. We'll put this one to bed and let it work the way it does. We'll go from there. Q. Talking to the guys a couple weeks ago, Luke and Chad and Seth, they all said that room is one of the more positive atmospheres they've ever been in. How has that competition made each one of them better? How have they worked together to make that room a better place? PHILIP MONTGOMERY: Yeah, I think a lot of that is maturity. I think those guys, they understand -- they all want the starting job. They're busting their tails to make that happen. That being said, they were real encouraging of one another. Somebody made a good throw, a great read, they're right there high-fiving them, cheering them on. When they made a mistake, they're all sitting back there talking about it. Coach is talking with them, I'm talking with them, bouncing ideas off of each other. If he does this, this is what's happening, this is what we can do. From that part, it's been one of the best quarterback rooms I've been in. It's hard to be selfish and unselfish all at the same time. They're all very competitive or they wouldn't be in that room. Obviously they want what's best for our football team. At the end of the day that's what matters. Q. Can you describe when you made your decision, maybe whether it was one thing in practice, a compilation of the whole pre-season, when you made your decision, can you describe the look on the players' faces, whether it was Luke excited or the other guys disappointed or angry? PHILIP MONTGOMERY: No, the decision was kind of a combination of things. Like I said, the competition was extremely tight. It was a tough decision. I think ultimately it came down to production. What I mean by 'production', when we had different scenarios, whether in scrimmage or practice, the ones are going against each other, live type deal, how they handled those situations, who was the most productive during those situations. That's what it came down. As a quarterback, my job is to get the ball out of my hands into somebody else's hands, whether I'm handing it off or throwing it. Those guys being productive, making the right reads and decisions, seeing how we execute moving down the field, involving tempo and everything else. At that stage, the last, I don't know, three or four days here, it's felt like that decision was forthcoming, felt pretty good about what we were going to do. I just wanted to kind of sleep on it a little bit, get a little sleep that you get at this time of year, make sure we're making the right decision, not having a knee-jerk reaction type of deal. As far as the way it went, we called those guys in and talked to all of them. They all handled it well. We moved forward. Q. Is it a relief for you as the coach to have this done, it's not going all the way till Saturday? PHILIP MONTGOMERY: It doesn't really bother me. I've answered the question enough. My response was the same every time. From that standpoint, that doesn't really change. I think we decided to make the decision now just so that we can push that to the back burner. We can really focus on what we've got to do, which is a very tough UCA team that's coming to town. Q. Did you call them in individually or was it a group thing? PHILIP MONTGOMERY: Individually. Q. When you talked to them... PHILIP MONTGOMERY: It's taken a turn (smiling). Go ahead. Q. When you're talking to those three guys, how do you tell guys who aren't going to be your one? PHILIP MONTGOMERY: I'm probably not really going to get into that. We had the conversation. Obviously nobody's going to be -- you're not going to make everybody happy as a coach. You can go up in the stands after game one, you'll find half the crowd that likes me and the other half probably doesn't. It is what it is. Our guys handled it well. They want what's best for our football team. They're preparing themselves always to be ready to play. Maybe I'm shooting high on that part of it (smiling). Q. Talking big picture about your program, obviously the disappointment last year, being able to write a new story now, what are you looking forward to about getting off to a good start and truly moving past last year? PHILIP MONTGOMERY: That's the biggest thing. We got a new fresh start. That's one of the great things about college athletics or athletics in general. Every year it's a new year, it's a new start, it's a new beginning. Whether you had a great season or you had the season that you weren't real proud of, right? I was proud of our guys, but obviously the outcomes weren't what we wanted them to be or what we were expecting them to be. Every year you got to line up and do it again one way or another. We have a chance every year to write a new story. This is going to be chapter one right here come Saturday. Again, I think our guys are excited to get back on the field, get back to what we love doing, which is playing ball. Q. This doesn't apply only to quarterbacks, but when I think of the quarterbacks a year ago asking you these same questions, you know so much more about what Luke can do when the lights are on, the same with Chad, Boomer as well. How much better are you set up for success team-wide, you know guys' strengths and weaknesses, what they struggle to do and what they can do? PHILIP MONTGOMERY: More importantly, every year you have a new team, a new identity of who you are. You don't know what that identity really is going to be until you get a couple of games into it. That's the craziest thing about college football. I think we're the only sport in America, you don't have pre-season, scrimmages, you tee it up for the first time, it's for real. Everything that could possibly go wrong could happen. You're working all those scenarios in practice. Until you get under the lights, bullets are flying, you don't know how guys are going to react. We have a better feel now for what our guys can do. They have a year of growth underneath them. Whether you had a good year or bad year, you're looking at it from the standpoint of what do we have to do to get better. I think we've tried to address those things, put emphasis on those things. I think our guys have accepted those things. We've worked extremely hard to get better at our deficiencies of a year ago. Now we got to go on the field and put them to use. Q. With that redshirt rule being changed, how do you approach it from a planning standpoint? Are there a group of guys slotted to maybe play before every game? Is that something that develops throughout the year? PHILIP MONTGOMERY: I think it's going to be something that develops throughout the year. A lot of things can happen throughout the year. Obviously last year with what we went through from an injury standpoint, all of a sudden that rule completely changes how you kind of look at your freshmen, especially those things that kind of happen late in the year. You're going to take opportunities to get those guys on the field, give them opportunities to play, give them opportunities to get experience. Again, I think this rule is beneficial. I think it's beneficial for everybody across the board. As a student-athlete, when I'm redshirting, there's a pretty kind of downside to that, too. Those guys, they've all been the studs on their teams, playing all the time. Now all of a sudden they're lifting, running, practicing, they're not getting to experiencing the game part of it. To have those four games in there, I think it's going to help them academically as well as athletically on the field. Just your mindset as I go to class, I'm not in that kind of depressed-type state I have to go through as I know I'm redshirts happens. I think they're going to be much more encouraged. I think you're going to get a whole lot more out of them. Q. This isn't a road game, but how are you going to deal with that for your travel squad? Assume you have to have it down to however many guys. PHILIP MONTGOMERY: Yeah, I think mostly you're going to kind of go into the game knowing, at least from the standpoint of saying, Hey, this guy is going to be an option, this guy is not going to be an option. If the game turns out he's not going to get in for whatever reason, that's fine. You put it on the shelf for one more. There's probably a couple freshmen that I won't get into but may have the opportunity to play on Saturday. We'll see how the game flows and does that. Some of those guys I think are ready to do it. Now, you put them underneath the lights, all of a sudden they don't react well, maybe they need three, four, five weeks more, whatever that's going to be, before they go back in a game, get them some more experience in practice and see how they handle the situation. A good example would have been like Keenen, our first year we didn't start him till the Houston game which is game four, five, six, somewhere in there. We felt like he was ready. You had to be really sure. Once you put him in a game, it's over. Now you put him in a game, maybe he didn't react well, give him a little bit more time to kind of mature, understand what's going on. Now you try him again and see how he plays in the next one. Q. The importance of writing a new chapter narrative, getting you in a different place compared to last year. Is there still something in your mind along the lines of last year is not who we are as a program, who I am as a coach? Does that serve as any kind of a motivational tool? PHILIP MONTGOMERY: Any time, whatever you're doing in life, if you hit a bump in the road, it's going to be who you are. You're going to stand up, pull yourself up, go back to work, or sit there in grovel in it. Last year is over. We're not thinking about it. We're only thinking about this year, going out and proving who we are, who we can be. I think that the team has that chip on their shoulder this year that I thought we were missing at the first of last season. I'm excited to see what they do when we get on the field. Q. The importance of a program to the campus at-large, university, your experiences at Baylor and Houston, I think it's fair to say that things changed campus wide when the programs really took off there? The importance of you guys having a better season just for the university, given the challenges you are facing right now, is there something to that? PHILIP MONTGOMERY: I think obviously we want to do our part. I can go back to my high school days, and I think you can say this anywhere. If your athletic programs are doing well, there's less problems with class, there's less problems at school. The excitement level about school is always good. I mean, obviously the people around your program and your university, they're happy. When they're happy, they're always helping. I think that could be anywhere in the country. Obviously here is no exception to that. Q. What is the expectation, to use the cliché, for Shamari? What do you want to see from him with a year under his belt? PHILIP MONTGOMERY: We're expecting big things out of him. Everybody in the room is. That being said, I don't think there's a ceiling to what he can do. He's a guy that plays with everything he has. He's going to give you everything he has. He understands what we're doing offensively a whole lot more than he did early in the season last year. He's a much more mature runner. That being said, we're always going to be run by committee. Shamari is our starter, but Corey is going to get plenty of reps, so is Javon. Any time you're dealing with runningbacks in this game, I think you have to have a couple of them. We haven't had a season yet where a guy didn't go through unscathed. With we were still using it by committee. Guys have to be ready to step up and play. We have a good combination of runningbacks. Shamari brings something, Corey something else, Javon something else. I think for me, that combination looks more like what it did when we have James Flanders and D'Angelo. Corey is a dense, strong runner, north and south guy, good speed. Shamari, he can do just about any of those things. He may try to juke you, run over you, depends on what's going on. I think we've got a good combination back there that we have to take advantage of what we have opportunities to do that. Q. In general, what's the biggest thing you hope to learn Saturday from your guys? PHILIP MONTGOMERY: Yeah, I want to see the personality of our team. I want to see how we react to certain situations. I want to see our maturity take hold. I mean, obviously when you get more specific with it, we've emphasized a lot of different things throughout fall camp. I want to see those things come to the surface as we get to it. Defensively we've got goals. We've got to get off the field on third down, be disciplined on defense, can't give up big plays and create turnovers. We have to execute at a higher rate, be explosive in the passing game, but we have to be able to run the football and be balanced. That's who we are. We'll see what we're going to be and who we are as we kind of get into game one, then obviously that's not going to be the end of the story, but it will be the first chapter of it. Q. The hometown heroes game. Talk about the importance of that. PHILIP MONTGOMERY: It's going to be a great day. Obviously these women and men have sacrificed and given up so much for our community. They're out there every day protecting us and serving us. For us to have the opportunity to just show our gratitude towards them, give them a day that we can honor them and be a part of it, we want to be in that fabric of this community. We feel like we are part of that fabric of this community. So are they. To bring the two together and have a day where they can just relax, have fun, bring their families out, enjoy the tailgating, enjoy the kids zone, being at the game and have a good time, take their minds off of what they do at work every day, just enjoy a Saturday afternoon or evening where they can just be a dad or a mom. I think that's a big part of what we are and what we want to be. Obviously we've got several former players that are either in the fire department or police department or part of the EMS. It will be great having those people back around. Thank y'all. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
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