UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT SAN ANTONIO FOOTBALL MEDIA CONFERENCE

October 8, 2022

Jeff Traylor

Press Conference

UTSA 31

Western Kentucky 28

JEFF TRAYLOR: I thought the game was a great example of the triangle. I mean, it couldn't have been a more perfect example.

Start with our defense. I mean, the effort they put out there tonight, only giving up 28 points, made so many critical plays to get them off the field. Really proud of those guys.

Go to the offense, their defensive coordinator did a really good job of just trying to take our receivers away from us. Played a lot of coverage, made us run the football. Rushed for 213 yards tonight.

Again, we finished the game with the ball in our hands when everybody in the building knows we're going to run the football. That's impressive, especially with the injuries we had up front. We lost Makai Hart again. We lost Venly. We lost K.D. for a moment, T. Haynes for a moment.

Frankie just keeps getting moved around everywhere. Walker Baty is out there. It is just unbelievable what those guys have gone through up front.

We still finished the game with the ball in our hand. That's hard to do. I don't care if you're in JV football, NFL, college, that's just hard to do.

Then let's go to special teams. The field goal that Sackett hit right before halftime was such a huge play. In our special teams meeting, I told them Ty is a really good coach. Those guys did a great job at Western Kentucky.

I knew they were going to block kick. I had it in my soul. I knew it. I had the right guy there, Kyle Wakefield. He did like he did all week in practice. That was a huge play.

Then the play Cephus made on fourth and two to stretch out. A champion has the ability to play one play longer than his opponent. That's how you win championships.

Everybody wants to talk about the receivers and the quarterbacks. I love 'em, too. I hope we keep them for another year. You win championships by being great on defense and running the football. We did that tonight.

Questions.

Q. You hold Western Kentucky to 28 points. That's well below their season average. How did the defense do that tonight?

JEFF TRAYLOR: You got to start with Coach Loepp. I mean, he's been hearing all those questions about PFF and tackling, how we're not any good on defense. We're competitors, right? We don't want any of you guys to think we don't do a good job.

Our defense had a strong task. Again, they played another great offense. I would challenge anybody that does all those stats who played the offenses we played. I don't know if there's a school in the country that's played the quality of offense that our defense had to go against.

Let me play six guys that aren't very good and we'll pass some stats up on defense. But it's hard to do it when you're playing people that are that good.

In saying that, we had some things we had to clean up, right? We did. We didn't turn anybody loose in the back. We matched up every time. We fell down one time.

They made some unbelievable plays, too. They were physical. Got after 'em. It was a really well-played game. It reminded of an NFL football game, how clean it was, how the possessions were back and forth. I mean, I just thought it was a really good football game.

Q. Given the battles that you had with this team last year, how important was it to get this one in terms of the scope of trying to win the conference championship?

JEFF TRAYLOR: Obviously, they're all important. But at home. I think that Houston loss, if you think about it, the exact thing happened again. We had a chance to knock 'em out right before the last play of the third quarter and we didn't do it. We did not execute fourth down and one.

I literally got my team on the headsets, said, Man, here we go. It's Houston all over again. We're going to see how much we've improved.

Our defense has really improved since that Houston game. Unfortunate the fumble there. Had a great call. First down. They did a great job of stripping it out.

Really happy for my kids. It's just been a struggle all year. We just can't get healthy. We just keep finding a way to stay in this thing. I keep thinking we're going to get them all back at some point.

I get it, it's football. But our O-line has just been a mess, and it just continues to be that way.

Q. Obviously having faced this offense before last year, what are the things you did differently on defense?

JEFF TRAYLOR: The very first time we played them, we went a lot of zone, just three safeties. They just ran the ball right up us.

This year I could tell they were committed to the run to begin with. They were committed to run the football. I know it's all about everybody talks about, their passing game. They've gotten way better at running GT, which is one of our plays, GY, inside zone, power, quarterback power. They really are committed.

I'm very impressed with Coach Helton and his offensive coordinator Ben. I know Kittley went to Texas Tech, Ben was on that staff, got moved up. He's a good human being. Does a good job of coaching those kids.

Coach Loepp and our defense had their work cut out for them. They're very clean. They know what they're doing. The quarterback gets them in every play correctly. I thought two defensive coordinators did fantastic jobs on both sides of the ball tonight, changed things up that nobody had seen before.

Q. On your offense you had several offensive linemen go down throughout the course of game, but still had your best rushing performance. What led to that production?

JEFF TRAYLOR: A lot of that was just Frank reading it out and being patient. All those RPOs. They were dropping. If you were watching the game, they were rushing three, dropping eight way more than they ever have before.

I think they wanted to see if we could stay patient, could we drive the ball down the field. We did. Finally after the on-side kick, they got a little greedy. Frank did a great job throwing that glance route, then we got the fade route to J.T. which was a big play in the game, as well.

Q. You were very enthusiastic about the run game at Middle Tennessee. Went up another notch today. What was the difference?

JEFF TRAYLOR: We were committed to doing it. It's easy for a coach to keep saying that. If it never shows up, that's hypocrisy, right? We're committed to doing it. We know to win a championship we got to do it.

Nobody loves to throw it more than I do. I mean, trust me, I love to sling it around. You got to play big-boy ball to win championships. That's what we want to do. We want to win it all, right? We want to win the thing.

When I was younger, had hair, we'd throw it 60 times a game. Couldn't stop people. We'd outscore people and not win many championships.

I finally lost my hair, got a lot of wrinkles, just decided the way to win is you got to be great on defense first, you got to be committed to running it.

Even like the pass we threw to complete for the win, that's basically a run. I mean, dang, when I saw Cephus fall down, we ran in there and faked like we were going across, then I saw him fall.

Boy, J.J. and Greg are fixing to wearing me out for giving these guys the ball back at midfield when we had a three-point lead.

When I saw we had it, I was like, Man, J.J. and Greg are going to be nice to me tonight.

When Dr. Campos hired me, I remember telling her, I'm going to make this very simple: when it works, it's going to be good, when it doesn't work, it's going to be bad. No other way around it, right?

That was a great call tonight. If we don't execute it, it's still a great call. Sometimes you don't get treated that way when it doesn't work.

Q. We'd all go for it on fourth down.

JEFF TRAYLOR: Thank you. I'm glad to hear that (laughter).

I was really mad at myself on the fourth and one call. I should have called timeout and got a better call. I'm disappointed in myself. I thought the game was going to come down to the very end. I was trying to pad my timeouts. I did call timeout on the next one to make sure we got our thoughts good.

It's a game. You got to make decisions really quick. When you let kids down as an adult, you feel terrible, right? I'm really glad my kids got a win.

Q. That play is a good example, it seemed like a few chances in the fourth quarter to stretch it out, put them away. They kept hanging around. What was the vibe on the sideline?

JEFF TRAYLOR: This defensive coordinator they hired over there has done a really good job. We had charted him all the way back before he came here. He's true to who he is. His kids do what they do. That's why they play good on defense. They're very improved on defense.

Think about last year, we were really good on defense last year, but we never thought anybody was going to get stopped. Tonight you were like halfway going, Dang, it's like NFL football out here. They actually stop each other occasionally and score some, too. It just seemed like an NFL game.

I try to watch most of the NFL ball. My boy gets paid to do it, I'm a big 'Who Dat?' fan, so I watch a lot of Saints games, sadly lately.

Q. You are 4-2 at the midway point of the regular season. How would you assess where your team is at?

JEFF TRAYLOR: We're 2-0. We're 2-0. Them first four are just preparing us. We learned a lot about ourselves. It forced us to clean some things up.

The great thing about playing a good opponent again, we're going to get better from this video. They still exploited us on a couple things, right? Our kickoff, what a great job by Sackett getting it in the end zone for us. We covered one great quick kick, then we didn't, right?

Then we ran a freaking field return, it is going to be a toss-down I think. My boy Chris Carpenter, I'm going to talk to him. I think if he keeps pressing it out there, he might have house called them. These Texas kids, we're knuckleheads. Pretty stubborn people. He probably right. We'll see.

Q. You were down two guys on the defensive line coming into the game, then lost another one. How are you feeling about that unit?

JEFF TRAYLOR: We're down to six right now. Started the year with 11, so...

We might have to move Walker back. I don't know. Out of O-linemen, too. Depends when Ernesto is back. Zach is hurt pretty severely. That's probably going to be a while. Brandon Matterson is hurt severely. That's going to be a while. Joe Evans should be back pretty quick. I imagine Joe will be day to day. Probably Causey and Matterson might be done for the year.

Thank y'all very much. God bless. Birds up, 2-0, baby.