	products recent interviews FastScripts archive about ASAP Sports

Our Clients:

Browse by Sport

Find us on

Subscribe to RSS

Click to go to
Asaptext.com

View our
e-Brochure

SAN DIEGO STATE UNIVERSITY FOOTBALL MEDIA CONFERENCE

August 31, 2019

Rocky Long

San Diego, California

San Diego State - 6, Weber State - 0

ROCKY LONG: It was kind of humid out there, wasn't it? Were you were ya'll sweating? I was. I'm sure the players were too. What can I answer for you?

Q. First game, first game back, how does it feel?
ROCKY LONG: It feels good to win. Obviously it was a poor performance on offense, I mean, so much so, I called it ugly in our locker room. That was about as ugly an offensive performance as I've been around for a long time. But the objective is to win the game and we found a way to win the game and hopefully because it was our first live action against somebody else, our offense will improve dramatically this week so we'll play much better next week. Because we're obviously playing a much more talented team next week.

Q. I know there were some growing pains with the offense formations and things, but what were your thoughts on that?
ROCKY LONG: No. What I thought was, what you saw in the first half. I thought we would struggle in the first quarter and then somewhere in the second quarter we would start getting a little rhythm and start making some plays, which we did in the second quarter. But I actually thought that would carry over to the second half, which it really didn't. So that was disappointing that it didn't carry over to the second half.

Q. What did you think of the miscues, the muffed snap on the field goal attempt, and the ball exchange as well?
ROCKY LONG: Well, the one that the snap that went over the quarterback's head early on, they were calling out our snap count. And they actually called our snap count on the field goal, where the ball was snapped and nobody was ready for the snap. Now that's coming from our players. I didn't hear it and I talked to the officials. I mean, I'm too far away to hear it but I talked to the officials about it after halftime, after our players said that they were using our snap count. When they would move the defensive line, they were using our snap count. Which is illegal. But if the officials can't here it they can't call it and the officials said they couldn't hear it. So obviously we have to be much more disciplined on offense than we were and on our kicking team. I mean that might have been the difference in the game. Late in the game I would have much rather been 9-0 instead of 6-0.

Q. Anything in particular you think the offense wasn't able to get in any kind of rhythm?
ROCKY LONG: I don't think we blocked very well up front. I don't think the offensive line played very well. And then Juwan hurt his ankle a little bit so he wasn't a hundred percent. But I didn't see -- except for a little spurt in the second quarter where we actually ran the ball pretty well, we didn't block very well for the run. And our receivers didn't seem to get open or at least Ryan couldn't find them.

Q. Do you have an update on the secondary, what it was like? Because I saw Kyree was starting at corner, Darren Hall, he wasn't there. So what was it like shuffling Kyree back to corner and I think I saw hawk inches at the other corner position.
ROCKY LONG: Well, we think we actually have. Let me count them for you, one, two, three, four, we think we have four -- I got to get them right -- four quality safeties. Okay? If Kyree has to play corner, if Kyree is able to play inside, we have five quality safeties. So in order to make sure we're two deep at every spot they play all three spots. They take turns playing all three spots, of the three safeties in the middle. Darren Hall came up with a hip flexor, hurt his self in practice on Tuesday. And the most experienced corner we have in our program is Kyree Woods because that's where he played the whole time. So we moved him back out to corner and then we alternated the other four at the three safety spots.

Q. That's kind of the time moving forward that you do have that I guess surplus of safeties. Is that something that --
ROCKY LONG: No. We would rather Darren be healthy and be out there. Well, no, it would be nice if all five of them were at safety because we could keep them fresh and they can play all three spots. Yeah.

Q. You talked about how well Weber State's offense looked like it could do against you guys. What did your defense do to enable you to dominate them tonight?
ROCKY LONG: Well, I thought that they're a great big offensive line and they don't seem to handle movement real well. And we're a little tiny defensive line, so we move them every time. And I think our movement really hurt their running game. When you see a defensive end hitting a guy in the back field at three-yard step that means somebody missed him. When he stunted, somebody missed him. I thought they had a great plan coming in, if you notice we didn't blitz very much because they were going to be -- as long as our offense wasn't scoring, they were going to be very satisfied seeing the blitz coming and just throw it out there for a five and six yard gain. So you never get them off the field, because their quarterback's pretty good. And if he gets it off on time you can blitz and not hit him either. So they forced us into playing zone the whole time, which means it's a four-man rush and I didn't think our four-man rush got enough heat on the quarterback. Now there was some big-time plays made, we knocked the ball down, we sacked him once, we made enough plays on defense to win the game. Tariq Thompson made two big-time plays towards the end of the game to save the victory.

Q. What was your thoughts on the third and eight where that led to the second field goal, where Ryan Agnew, seemed like he was running around and kind of just threw the ball up across the field. What did you think of that play? Bellinger ended up catching it for a first down, but was that something --
ROCKY LONG: You've watched Ryan play. Ryan's a scrambler. You can tell him not to scramble and then you take half his game away. So a scrambler, sometimes you wonder what the heck he's doing. Now he didn't get a sack, he threw it out of bounds, so he didn't get sacked. And I think, if I'm right, maybe someone here watches it closer, he got us a couple critical first downs by scrambling too. So every time he scrambles I don't know what he's doing, because I can't see it from the sidelines. If you're up in the press box you can probably see it a whole lot better than I can. I just see him running around out there looking for someone to throw it to.

Q. I think he had one ball over the middle late to Bellinger that might have been ill-advised.
ROCKY LONG: Did we drop it or he threw it over --

Q. No, he caught it.
ROCKY LONG: He caught it?

Q. That is the one where he caught it and then --
ROCKY LONG: Well any time it's a successful play, you know, it's one of those deals. No, no, no. Oh, great job. One of those deals.

Q. Were you kind of nervous if he's like running -- I mean he's going for the first down and that's what you want, but at the same time is there a part of you like where you would rather him have him slide or protection himself and not potentially get hurt?
ROCKY LONG: Well here I'm going to be old school on you. A player is a player. If that's the way he plays, let him play that way. You don't start trying to change their personality and their character. He's a good player. That's the way he plays. I mean I was asked why we let our kicker tackle a guy on a kickoff return. He's a football player, he's out there, if he's in a position to make a tackle he's supposed to make a tackle, okay. Now some people think that, some younger coaches think that's dumb, you're supposed to protect them all the time. You don't play this game to be protected.

Q. Did the defensive line take a step forward tonight? I know you voiced your concerns about them before.
ROCKY LONG: Well they played pretty well tonight. We'll see how they do next week when there's better players blocking them.

Q. There were some good runs tonight. Did either stick up for the primary back up for Juwan?
ROCKY LONG: I don't know about primary, I thought Jordan Byrd played pretty well the whole night. He had a couple pretty nice punt returns too. And when he got a little seam in there he seemed to be the only one that accelerated through the seam and got into the secondary. Where the other -- Juwan was limping around and no one else seemed to get into the secondary. Now I wish he could make them miss a little bit better because he's fast. If he can make one guy miss, they're not catching him. But he was the one I thought hit the hole the best out of all of them, just watching from the sideline.

Q. What did you think of Araiza's debut and also the effort that Heicklen had.
ROCKY LONG: I thought that Heicklen had a great night. Araiza had an okay night. I mean we got really lucky on the kickoff return for a touchdown. He was not supposed to kick it like that. You kick it like that the return man gets the ball way before the coverage is down there. And if you have a good kickoff return man, you see what happens. So that's on him, that's not on the coverage team, that's on him.

Q. What makes him do that on that particular instance?
ROCKY LONG: I don't know. I've never been a kicker. He miss-kicked it. He missed it a little bit. Yeah, he wasn't doing that -- I promise you he wasn't doing that on purpose.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

ASAP Sports, Inc. | T: 1.212 385 0297