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RUTGERS UNIVERSITY FOOTBALL MEDIA CONFERENCESeptember 24, 2018Chris AshPiscataway, New Jersey HEAD COACH CHRIS ASH: Just like the way we did when we started, but we do value our fans support as we do continue to improve and build our program. We are where we are right now today, but it's not where we will be as we continue to go and develop a lot of the players that we have in our program. We are a young team. We have very few seniors; one of the smallest senior classes probably in the country, and a lot of these young players are continuing to improve as we go, and they will continue to improve as we continue to go. When I look at Saturday's game, really, the last two weeks, for us to improve and change the results on Saturday, we have to stop beating ourselves. We've had too many mental errors. We've had too many penalties. We've been careless with the football. As it was the case in the Kansas game, you can't do those things and win games and we have to clean those things up. I, as the head coach, have to get that stuff fixed. We have to get more mental toughness out of our players in this program. Mental toughness, to do our job consistently in A game, regardless of the opponent, the location, the score, and Saturday we had some uncharacteristic mistakes for some players that have played really good football around here in the past. My opinion, you know, us as coaches, we need to coach things better and us as players, we need to play things better on Saturday. One of the things with we discussed as a team, I really want a big, strong, physical football team at the line of scrimmage. One that can run the ball; one that can stop the run and we have not been able to do that the last couple weeks. We need to get that done and we need to play better at the line of scrimmage on both sides of the ball. Offensively, our pass game needs to improve. We have not had much success on third down here in the last couple weeks and we need to get that better and there's a lot of things that go into it. We've talked about things like that in the past. Sometimes the protection is good and the route's not right. Sometimes the route's right and the protection is not good. Sometimes the protection is where it needs to be, the routes are good, and the quarterback holds on to the ball too long. All of those things have to work together for us to improve our passing game, for us to get some explosive plays down the field, and for us to be able to convert on third down better as we move forward. Defensively, I truly believe games are won up front and games are lost in the secondary. Right now we are not playing up the way we need to up front on the defensive line, and in the secondary last Saturday, we made too many mistakes that cost us explosive plays that hurt us in that football game. We are going to look at what we're doing, how much we're doing and what we're asking players to do to make sure that we can execute the calls that are made. In my opinion, we don't have too many calls but for whatever reason, there's been some issues that we can't have and will not have and we'll continue to work hard to get those things cleaned up. Special teams, I think we have improved. Saturday we gave up a long punt return that obviously we weren't happy with. It hurt us in a critical situation. We have young players all over our special teams units. I looked Sunday, looking at our punt return team, I think the 11 starters out there, I think ten of them were first- or second-year players. So we've got a lot of young players. They are getting better; their technique, their fundamentals, understanding what have we are asking them to do is getting better. Zihir Lacewell was a new addition to our kickoff coverage team, finally ran down there and covered a kick the other day. He did an outstanding job. It's going to increase his opportunities. Really pleased with how that kid has developed and where he's at right now and hoping to find some other ways that maybe he can factor in to help our football team, but that's just one example. We talked to our team about this, too: Winning will never happen if losing doesn't hurt. And right now we do have a hurt football team and it's not necessarily a good or bad thing because you haven't committed the way you need to to make it happen. Just quickly about Indiana. They are off to good start. Good football team, and we are going to have to play a lot better when they come into our stadium here on Saturday. There have been some really competitive games between Indiana and Rutgers; last year obviously was not one of them. But we have to play better, and again do some of the things I'm talking about, not beat ourselves, mental toughness, execution, to be able to have a chance to win that game. So with that, I'll go ahead and open up for questions. Q. Where you at with quarterback? Who is your starter? HEAD COACH CHRIS ASH: There's no starter going to be discussed today. Q. Why not give Art a vote of confidence and two -- HEAD COACH CHRIS ASH: I'm not going to discuss the quarterback today. We're evaluating what's best for our team. Q. If you do go with Gio, what makes you think the offense will be better when you were ranked 125th last season? HEAD COACH CHRIS ASH: That's a valid point. Exactly spot on. We've had those discussions. So we are looking at all of that. What does one quarterback over another do for our offense, for not only the short term but the long term, also. So we're looking at all of that. I don't mean to be disrespect -- when I say we're not going to discuss the starter. We haven't decided yet. That's still being discussed. But you do bring up a valid point, and that's something that we're discussing as we try to figure it out. Q. You mentioned commitment. You mentioned mental toughness, three straight. I think it's a fair question, a lot of outside noise. Has this team given up on the staff? HEAD COACH CHRIS ASH: Absolutely not. No. If we would have quit, we wouldn't have went from giving up 376 yards, I think it was in the first half defensively to 69 in the second half. I watched the tape, the effort is there. We're making too many mistakes. There's not an effort issue. We're making too many mistakes. We had some very uncharacteristic mistakes made by some older players on Saturday on defense that led to some explosive plays. It had nothing to do with an effort problem. It had nothing to do with a preparation problem. Q. You mentioned the second half. Do you feel that Buffalo running the same offense, attacking you the same way they were in the first half? HEAD COACH CHRIS ASH: Absolutely. Especially when we scored a touchdown and we got the interception and had a chance to potentially make it a 15-point game. Our players came out and they fought in that second half and they played -- we didn't make the mistakes that we made in the first half. When I'm talking mistakes, I'm talking defensively. We played cleaner. The calls were executed. We had better fundamentals. We tackled better. We ran to the football better. You know, the things that you need to do to have success. I watched the football game. I've got really no issues with most of the effort that we put forth out there on Saturday and the players know that. We discussed that. But we had, again, some mental errors on some particular calls in certain situations that killed us Third down in the first half killed us defensively. We had a mental error on the third down that allowed them to get a first down and next thing, you know it's a touchdown because of a missed tackle. So there's some things that we have to do better not only on the calls that ended up being explosive plays, but on the third down before it to get off the field, not even let them continue the drive. Q. Just talking about the quarterbacks. I know you haven't made a decision and won't talk about who that might be now, but how does the week go in terms of that? Do you go along as you have been? Does anything change in terms of game preparation? Does the fact that both quarterbacks have played a half in the last couple of games also mean maybe you can wait a little longer to make that decision? HEAD COACH CHRIS ASH: Yeah, I think so. We do have to do a great job of making sure that both quarterbacks are prepared in getting their reps during the week of practice. That's always a challenge because the starter typically gets the majority of the reps. But we have to make sure that both are prepared and there's a lot of things, whether we go with Art, Gio, both of them get some opportunities to play in games. Those are all on the table and being discussed as we move forward. As Keith mentioned, we go back to the body of work in the past and look at, again what is best for our football team right now and as we move forward. Q. How did Bless come out of surgery and now that he's past surgery, can you confirm he is out for the season? HEAD COACH CHRIS ASH: Yeah, Bless came out of surgery just fine. Thankfully he got a lot of opinions from several different doctors. He did have to have his ACL reconstructed. When he twisted it up, it strained the ACL graft that he had from last year pretty good, and I guess the phrase -- to phrase the doctors, it was hanging on by a shoestring so they had to repair it. But he's doing great. He's handling it great and he'll work his tail off to try to get back. Q. (Off-mic.) HEAD COACH CHRIS ASH: No, no shift in coaching responsibilities. Guys have got to be more detailed in their preparation and making sure that they are holding players accountable to do the job that they need to do. When I say we've got to coach better, that's really the biggest thing is being clear, clean and concise in and direct with our coaching and our teaching holding players accountable to get it done. Because if it doesn't happen on Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday, it's not going to happen on Saturday. Q. Are you going through each position -- HEAD COACH CHRIS ASH: As we do after every Saturday, we go through and look. Sometimes injuries play a factor into different things, but as of right now, no. The quarterback is still something that we're discussing. But no, I don't anticipate any major lineup changes with different starters. Q. Is it troubling that you haven't been more competitive in these games? The blowout losses; you see Army and Old Dominion and App State and these other teams are pushing these top-rated teams. It's not like Kansas and Buffalo are perceived top-rated teams. Is it troubling that you haven't been more competitive? HEAD COACH CHRIS ASH: To be honest with you, it is, but I don't compare ourselves to anybody else. I know where we're at. You know, we do not have many older players. I don't know what some of those other programs have but when they play with a lot of fourth- and fifth-year seniors, it's a different team. It's a different feel. The potential to do some of those things and be more competitive is there. We are not in that situation. We are dominated with first and second-year players. If this continues, guess what it will look like here in another year or two. We'll have a lot of three-, four-, fifth-year players in our program here soon. That's how you start to win games and that's how you build a program and turn it around. So I'm not concerned about what some other program is doing. Every situation is differently. Do I want us to be more competitive? Absolutely. Am I concerned about that? Absolutely. But I also know where our roster is at, how the players are improving, and I get it. It looks like we're far away. We're not. We're not near as far away as people think. There may be one play here, or one player here or there on a particular play that stops a drive or doesn't allow a play to be successful. There may be on defense, ten of the 11 guys doing things right, and it's one guy that makes a mistake and it gives up an explosive player or a touchdown. Our job is to get all 11 on both sides of the ball doing their job as consistently as we can, as much as we can; so we do make more plays and so we do get more stops on defense. We are not as far away as the scores end in the last two weeks. I do strongly believe that. But we are not making the plays that we need to to make these games competitive and have an opportunity to win. Q. I know you say you're not going to talk about the starting quarterback. You mentioned Gio and Art. Is Johnathan Lewis a consideration in any way? HEAD COACH CHRIS ASH: You know, I'm not going to make a lot of comments about our players other than the fact that Johnathan lures has really been improving and continues to work really hard. Absolutely love the young man and that's where I'll leave it. He has worked really hard. Yesterday we went out in practice and he had a great practice. The kid has just done an unbelievable job in this program. He's selfless and wants to do anything he can to help our football team and he's willing to do anything. Q. Started off the press conference talking about the fans. We get it more than anyone, there's a large percentage of the fan base that clearly looks like they have given up hope. Attendance is an issue. How big of an issue -- I know you're not selling tickets but how big of an issue in your mind is fan apathy? HEAD COACH CHRIS ASH: Yeah, it's always a concern. When you're going through a tough situation, trying to build a program and turn things around, that is part of it because the perception for recruiting is important. You know, I think we do a great job of communicating our vision, our plan, and what the program -- what we want the program to look like in the future to recruits. That's why I think in the last couple years, we've signed some really outstanding players and I think that's why we will in the future. We do want fan support and we do need fan support. They want to see us win. We will get there, I promise you. Again, I've been through this before. Our roster is really young. If you look at 2014 and 2015 recruiting classes, I think there were 46 players that were signed. Those guys would be your juniors and seniors, most probably in their fourth or fifth year. Of those 46, I think we have 16 players that are still on the roster that we are depleted from an experienced standpoint, and that's not an excuse. I'm not going to make any excuses for the mistakes that we have made on Saturday in the last two weeks. We have to coach that better. We've got to execute better. But that's where we're at today. That's not where we will be at in the future. Like I mentioned, we do value our fan support, but we need our fan support to help us get through a tough stretch here in this program for not only the current players but for future recruits, also. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
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