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TEXAS TECH UNIVERSITY FOOTBALL MEDIA CONFERENCEOctober 5, 2019Matt WellsLubbock, Texas Texas Tech - 45, Oklahoma State - 35 MATT WELLS: Before we get into the game, I just want to tell all the fans thanks for coming out, the students, the fans. I'm going to tell you what, they brought some juice, they brought some energy. We fed off of it. I think it goes back and forth. But 3rd down, the energy was really, really good in there today, and we're going to continue to do everything we can to make the Jones the hardest place to play in the Big 12, and I understand our team is a big part of that, but so is the fans, and I just appreciate all of them coming out and supporting our guys through the end. Really proud of our team. This was a tough week. It was an emotional week. Nobody was very happy about the way we played last week, embarrassed, and I thought they responded. Tremendous amount of guts, especially late in the game. You look out there, we lose Des Smith early in the game, he's scheduled to play half the game at one of the corners. He's a three-team special teams starter, and you look up and you've got a true freshman safety and a true freshman corner just battling their tail off, Broderick and Jordan. Tremendous performance by Jordan Brooks. Just individually, very, very heroic. I mean, all the TFLs and the sacks that he had, I thought he single-handedly just propelled our defense. Doug Coleman had a great game. And then offensively really good drive in the fourth quarter. I think that shows heart, it shows character, guts, especially by our O-line and our running backs and our tight ends. Jett played well. He was stingy with the football. Almost 600 yards total offense and no turnovers for the offense. Tremendous, great job, and just proud of our guys for the way they responded coming off last week. Q. Jett missed a couple throws early. Was it a case of just him getting into a rhythm the more -- the longer you went and the more confidence you gained and the more the offense kind of rolled? MATT WELLS: Probably, yeah. He was amped up. He was ready to roll. One of them should have been caught. Q. In any sort of way, is maybe the loss last week, seeing how your players responded, are you seeing more of that player program that you wanted to see from the beginning start to develop? MATT WELLS: Yeah, it's something that we talk about. Don't think we're there yet. But I think we had some guys step up during the week. Some of the captains, some of the leaders, I thought -- I'm not saying this post-game, but the Tuesday practice was the best we'd had. It was physical, it was emotional, it was good. I thought our practices were really good this week. But we did. We're not there yet in terms of all the player-led leadership. But I think we took a big, big step this week. Now the key moving forward is can we come back into the building on Monday morning at 6:30 and make corrections, see what we did good and see what we did right -- excuse me, wrong, and make those corrections and move on to another opponent, and it's going to be like this every single week in this league, I think. Proud of our guys. Big step today. Big win against a top-25 team. Q. I know you treat every game the same, but can you allow yourself to quantify how big a win this is for the program you're trying to build? MATT WELLS: I mean, it's our first Big 12 win this year. If this is -- I mean, yeah, it's the biggest win of the year so far because it's the best opponent we've played in terms of winning. But I'm not going to over-rationalize it in terms of where we need to go in this season. Q. Could you talk about your team's aggressiveness, its mentality in terms of like pass rush, slinging the ball down the field on offense? MATT WELLS: Yeah, you know, that was, I think, by design, and I thought Jett did a nice job. But you know, the ones that aren't going to get as much credit, and they need to, is our wideouts, and I thought Donta made a couple key, key catches early in the game. T.J. made some competitive catches. R.J., KeSean, the corner route for the touch. I thought they just made some -- and there's going to be some 50/50 balls every week, and they did a great job. The beginning of your question, you talk about the pass rush. I think that really set the tone for us early. I think we were able to get some push in the middle. I think we were able to get the quarterback off his launch point. I think there were a couple balls hurried early in the game, and I think our guys kind of fed off that energy, and we've got to get to the quarterback. Somebody -- what did you say, seven sacks? I mean, sometimes it's not just the sacks, it's the hits and the pressures really that start to mound up if you're a quarterback. It's not so much the sack. Q. What did you tell your team after what happened last Saturday to keep them on track? MATT WELLS: Well, that's kind of between me and the team. But there were some pointed conversations, emotional, and I mean, that's football. It's relationships. We learn to trust each other a little bit better, and it's got to go both ways. It's not just players. Coaches trusting players, players gotta trust coaches, and it goes both ways, and I think any time you have that kind of game and -- it was embarrassing. I know I keep saying it, but a lot of us took it personal. Q. What did you see from your secondary? I know Damarcus was a guy I saw a lot of on Tylan Wallace, but to hold a receiver like that really at bay for most of the game? MATT WELLS: Yeah, Damarcus showed up. He ended up drawing him most of the game just because they're going to play him out at the right side the whole time. I thought our guys, we challenged them this week, it was a big week, and not just him but I thought Zach showed up a few times. I saw 27, a true freshman corner's first college football game, and he's on that stage. I thought Alex Hogan made a couple key plays. Yeah, I'm just proud of them. They hung on. It was getting thin back there a little bit. Q. You mentioned pass rush, but how important was that rush defense, as well? MATT WELLS: Yeah, you know, Broderick and Jordan Brooks, Riko inside, huge. The ones that aren't going to get any credit is Jay Boogie and Nick McCann right there at the nose. Those guys -- Tony Bradford, another true freshman playing. Proud of those guys. That's kind of the big uglies in there. They're in there battling, and Jordan is making all the tackles, which he's an elite player. He's an elite linebacker in this league. He made them. Q. What about SaRodorick Thompson today, especially that run where it looked like he was down and kept his balance -- MATT WELLS: Ta'Zhawn? Q. SaRodorick Thompson. MATT WELLS: Yeah, well, Coach Tommerdahl says S. Thompson because he can't say his name, either, so don't worry about it. Yeah, I thought SaRodorick had some runs. Ta'Zhawn had one there late. You chalk that up to heart. Those two young puppies I think grew up a little bit today. Q. Jett had a great game today. What's your perspective on his performance? MATT WELLS: I thought it was a good step, a solid step. Completing that many balls, no picks. He missed some early. You know, he didn't let it get him down. He had a good look in his eye. He was communicating well on the sidelines. I put a lot of stock in that, hey, what did you see, and when he spits back exactly how Coach Yost and I saw it, I was confident in him, and I thought he had some nice scrambles. He had one early going north, big, didn't turn the ball over. It's always key. I think our O-line really had a lot of confidence in him. Q. That play on that two-point conversion, does that just sum up Jordan Brooks as a player? MATT WELLS: Yeah, that was huge. I mean, maybe check mate. Maybe the play of the game. Q. What is it that allowed you guys to throw the ball down the field today so much more than you had been? Is it coverage differences -- MATT WELLS: I think we protected him a little bit better. I think just for Jett, when you compare it to last week, I think maybe he saw it a little bit better, but we also protected him a little bit better. Q. How about your screen game on offense? It looked like it was pretty effective today. MATT WELLS: Yeah, and late in the game, they did some stuff to take that away, and so, you know, we run two similar offenses. They do some similar stuff. They threw some of those now screens out there, and we didn't fit them up right. We did fit them up, we got them out of it, they got us out of it. It's kind of a cat-and-mouse game. But it's a big part of our run game. I know some of you guys give me some hard times, but it's double option and triple option sometimes. It just looks a little 2019-ish. But there's a lot of teams in this league doing that. Q. Talk about T.J. Vasher's game. MATT WELLS: Yeah, big competitive catches. Showed up big. Showed up big. Thought he was physical at the line of scrimmage, and really proud of T.J. Ran down on the vast majority of kickoffs. He's bought into special teams. He's had a good last couple of weeks. Needs to keep taking the next step, which to me is just consistency. But he showed up big today. And the stage was his today. Q. What's the ceiling for Dadrion Taylor? MATT WELLS: Well, let's talk about Rabbit. I mean, first of all, what a special deal for him being from Oklahoma, from a really good high school program, Carl Albert. That kid is -- he just oozes football junkie. I mean, he's a winner. He's always been a winner, starter on the basketball team for three years. We go watch him play in January, and he's guarding the 5. Are you kidding me? I mean, the guy is 5'1" -- I mean, 5'10", but he's guarding the 5, he's jumping. He's an eye tailback at one of the top 5A schools in Oklahoma, three-year starter, track. I mean, the guy does everything right, and he's playing DB for the first time. I mean, that's his fifth game out there playing DB. He's got a big ceiling. I mean, he's not where he needs to be yet, but he cares. He's always studying. He's in the building forever. I've got a lot of respect. I'll go to battle with guys like that, I don't care how young they are. Q. How much what you're going through, how much is staying focused on long-term and how much of it is what can we do better right now? MATT WELLS: That's the best question I've been asked in a while because that's the essence of coaching, especially first year in a program. I think the key is that we're not going to deviate from the culture that we're trying to build and the foundation in terms of accountability and discipline. You're playing for the now, you're playing for the long-term. That's a tough mix. It's an interesting mix. We're playing for right now. I mean, you just keep going back and forth. But what we're doing is we're building a foundation of accountability and discipline and toughness the way we practice, the way we go to class, the way we lift weights. All those kind of things. And we're not going to deviate from it no matter if we're coming off last week's game or we're coming off this game. We're going to act just the same this week. I think that will in turn build confidence in our players when they understand that the process works. And we as humans are very results-driven all the time. Coaches are impatient by nature. But it's a -- I keep -- it's not a delicate mix. We're going to be who we are, but we're going to do everything we can to win right now, but we're not going to sacrifice the future for it because we're building this thing to be a consistent winner. Q. It looked like Jett took a big step today and he was just setting his feet in the pocket and it looked like their spy wasn't giving him anything, and then the one time he jukes that guy and -- MATT WELLS: Yeah, I saw that one, yeah. He got into a rhythm early with the short passes, was just off on a few of those deep ones that you kind of mentioned in the first question. But the thing that I think we all saw with Jett is he didn't give up. He didn't let that get him down. Just kind of kept battling. Man, it was a really good win, but we played well around him. You know, and I've said that. We said it in here on Monday at the press conference, the 10 guys around him have to play well. We have to run the ball. We did a decent job of that. But we protected him, and those wideouts made competitive catches. That gives confidence to quarterbacks. And I think that's what you saw out there. Q. You get the heads-up play in the game, the interception from the same play, Riko gets ejected, he's going to miss the first half of next week. Is there a message there to the team, keeping your focus on the game and not making plays that hurt you in the long run? MATT WELLS: Well, I don't think he did that on purpose, yeah. He sure didn't want to do that, and it'll be interesting to see it on replay and all that. I didn't see it live. Yeah, he didn't do that on purpose. He didn't want to do that. Nobody wants to get kicked out with two minutes left because you're going to miss all the first half of the next game. Q. Following up on that, you finished the game today without Adrian Frye dismissed, Tommy Leggett, Riko. What do you expect your defense to look like next week, and how much -- MATT WELLS: Play with a tremendous amount of pride, effort and passion. I don't care who lines up. That's what you're going to get. It's football. Guys are going to get dinged up. Those that suit up and get on the bus and the plane with us to Waco will play their ever-living butt off. That's what I'll tell you. Q. Any of those guys or Jack Anderson, any of those guys out long-term? MATT WELLS: I don't know. I don't know on those guys. Jack Anderson will be out for the year. He's going to have surgery. Q. On his -- MATT WELLS: Upper body injury. Q. When did that happen? MATT WELLS: Last week in the game, but I don't know about those other guys. I haven't talked to Doc. Q. How much does this look like kind of what you want the program to eventually look like? MATT WELLS: Today? Q. Yeah. MATT WELLS: I think it's a pretty good snapshot. I mean, I like the way we played aggressive defense. I wish we could have finished -- I mean, I think the first three turnovers maybe we had 10 points, I think we got stopped once. We had a touchdown, a field goal. We could have distanced ourselves from them a lot earlier, but we were aggressive. We threw the ball down the field. We didn't turn the ball over. I think we were plus -- are we plus 5 in the turnover -- we're going to preach that. That's the number three thing on the plan to win. We scored in the red zone. We played -- I don't know if we played great special teams yet, but we played good in the fourth quarter. Yeah, that's a decent -- that's the best it's looked so far this year against a tremendous opponent, and you know, a coach and a staff that I've got a tremendous amount of respect for. I've known a lot of those guys for a long time. It's a really good, really good football team. They beat a top-25 team last week at home. They got -- I mean, they've got a legit QB tailback and a Z-receiver, and they're going to win a lot of games. So I'm proud of our players. Q. Following up on that a little bit, for guys like yourself and Luke and Coach Farmer and Coach Patterson who are from Oklahoma, does playing those guys get you a little more amped up? MATT WELLS: Yes, sir. (Smiling.) They're all the same. Yes, sir. (Laughter.) I mean, we're all human, right? Yeah. I mean, that's special for us. Q. The way you played to the right side of your offensive line today, starting Terence at right guard and then you put Weston back in, I think third series, was that pre-designed? MATT WELLS: No, it was predetermined. Q. So you planned to play Terence at right tackle most of the way? MATT WELLS: What? Q. So you planned to play Terence at right tackle most of the game? MATT WELLS: Did we plan to play him at right tackle most of the game? Q. Yeah, after he started at right guard and played the first two series there. MATT WELLS: Yeah, it has to do with Casey, Weston right, the combination of those two guys, also playing Casey at right tackle got the start, Weston playing right guard, a little bit of both. Terence can play either side -- excuse me, either spot, so it'll be -- Coach Farmer -- there was a couple situations we talked about in staff meeting he was going to keep Terence at tackle, a couple situations we were going to move him back into guard and then see how those other two guys played. Madison and Bruffy I think went the whole way, and obviously Dawson. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
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