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RUTGERS UNIVERSITY FOOTBALL MEDIA CONFERENCESeptember 22, 2018Chris AshPiscataway, New Jersey Buffalo - 42, Rutgers - 13 HEAD COACH CHRIS ASH: Just want to give all the credit to Buffalo. They did a great job. Had their team prepared and made plays when they needed to make plays, and my hat's off to Lance and his staff and their football team, and they are off to a good start. He's done a good job. You know, we've got to stop making mistakes and beat ourselves. Every time we're close to getting something going, there's something that stops us, whether it's a mental error, it's a penalty, something foolish stops our football team and we've got to get that fixed, somehow, some way. Love our guys, really, really appreciate how they came out in the second half after a poor first half. They came out, played hard, fought, felt likes we had opportunities when we were down 35-13, got down in the red zone and if we score there, you never know what happens, there's still plenty of time to go in the game and didn't work out. Didn't make the plays that we needed to and you know, the rest is, what it is the rest of the game. With that, I'll just go ahead and open it up to questions. Q. Where do you go as a program? HEAD COACH CHRIS ASH: Just keep working. I mean, that's it. The process can be a painful one. It can be one that's not a lot of fun. It's not where any of us wanted to be at this moment. It is where we're at and we've just got to keep going back to work. We've got a lot of young players that have been playing out there. We've got to get them better. Been saying that every week but that's what we've got to do. Starts, again, with myself. I've got to find a better way to coach. Got to find a better way to lead the team and lead the staff and get our preparation on game day because when you have the penalties we had, the mental errors we had, you can't do it on games. Q. What's the decision to change quarterbacks? HEAD COACH CHRIS ASH: Just needed something different. Art didn't necessarily do anything wrong in the game. There wasn't much happening on offense and felt like we needed something different and gave a senior captain an opportunity to see if he could go spark the offense. Q. You had some success in the second half; will you stick with him next week? HEAD COACH CHRIS ASH: That's to be determined. We have to go back and watch the tape and look at what we can do. Art's done a lot of really good things. But the people around him also have to do really good things, and we'll evaluate that position and what we're doing around him again and make the decision on what we think is the best interests of the football team. Again, Art did some good things, made some mistakes, but everybody else did, too. Q. What do you say to the fans -- HEAD COACH CHRIS ASH: I understand the frustration. I've been in this long enough to understand the frustration. Again, I feel really good about our future with our team. We've got a lot of young players, and by no means is that a disrespect to our older players. We've got a bunch of really good older players, too, senior captains that absolutely love and have fought their tails off for this program, this university. We'll keep working and do everything we can to keep getting better. Q. What's your message to the team? HEAD COACH CHRIS ASH: You know, same thing. It's not where we wanted to be. It's where we're at. We've just got to keep working. Again, there's no magic formula guys, you've just got to keep working, got to keep practicing and somehow do it better and again, it's a process and it's a painful one right now. Nobody wanted to be here at this spot, and we are, so we've got to deal with it. Q. Your team is very good defensively last year. Are you disappointed in the number of big plays you're giving up? HEAD COACH CHRIS ASH: Absolutely. We can't give up the big explosive plays that we have, especially in the last couple weeks. You know, we've got good players. I think we've got a good plan, good system. Again, just like I talk about on offense, mental errors and mistakes, penalties kill you, and that's what's happened on defense at times and we've got to find a way to coach it better and we've got to kind a way to get our preparation carried over to game day and you can't give up explosive plays on defense and expect to win football games. Q. You said you liked the preparation going into these games the next couple weeks. Are there things that you need to do differently on game day, maybe take more ownership of the offense? What can you do differently on a game day? HEAD COACH CHRIS ASH: I can tell you I'm not going to start calling plays. That's not my strength. That's not what I've ever done in my career. And that would be a mistake. I've got nothing but 100 percent trust and faith in John. John is a coach that's coached a lot of football at the highest level, knows how to structure an offense and develop players and you will can a plays and there's steer oh good that would come out of me trying to call offensive plays or get involved in that. Q. What about defensive plays? HEAD COACH CHRIS ASH: I'll evaluate where we're at defensively. That's my background. I'll evaluate what we need to do to try to get better. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
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