UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT SAN ANTONIO FOOTBALL MEDIA CONFERENCE

September 21, 2024

Jeff Traylor

Press Conference

UTSA 45, HCU 7

Q. Jeff, best performance of the year for the Roadrunners?

JEFF TRAYLOR: We were just cleaner. Defense, to only allowed fifty yards rushing. First half they did some good things, some things we hadn't really seen them do and they had us mixed up on some things. The receivers made a couple of great plays. Our corners had great coverage. Just better plays by them.

Penalties, we got face mask disease right now. The face mask keeps getting in the way of our hand. So that hurt the first half.

Offensively we were really good. Special teams, you know, we were really good except for the one kickoff. Very disappointing. We had three guys at the point of attack and don't get a tackle.

Ran the ball very well. 35 first downs I believe is a school record. Had to be over 250 rushing. Just the mindset of our team, we were just cleaner pre-snap. I was happy for the kids.

They've had three weeks of rough, negative stuff which we all deserved, but our kids handled it correctly. It's hard. Football is a tough game. You don't get to play -- I've said it a millions times like basketball and baseball, that's what I love about coaching those sports, you get to go back out there again quickly.

Football you got one week of listening to all the experts tell you how terrible you are. It's hard enough on a 56 year old man. You can imagine being 18, 23 year old man, or 25 year olds nowadays. They handled it well. They know we deserve it and it's fair and we responded, so I'm proud of them.

Q. What would you say were the biggest signs of progress in particular from last week to this week or even from the first few weeks to today?

JEFF TRAYLOR: Oh, things ya'll might notice it. I don't know just our communication. Our MAs were down, I can just tell. Offensively just pre-snap we were clean.

We were just cleaner. We're a cleaner operation. We're kind of figuring ourselves out a bit. We know who we are. We're getting some guys in some right spots.

Still the injury bug is always going to be part of it. Still got some of that going on which messed up some of our stuff tonight, but we were better.

Q. Coach, you had a kind of good bounceback game for McCown. What were your thoughts on his performance tonight?

JEFF TRAYLOR: I haven't got to watch the details of it yet, but it appeared he was pretty accurate and on time. There were a couple decisions, you know, when we became a PRO team again instead of an RPO team.

But it's nothing spiteful. It's just miss IDing someone. John and them did a good job mixing up their stuff. When you're IDing the Mike and they move their Mike spot all the time, that messes up some run fits, some pass pro, and some RPO game.

I thought he was pretty accurate. He's a better athlete than you think he is. He runs a lot better. Showed that again. He's going to be good. We got to protect him. He's young. He's going to be a good football player.

Q. Jeff, what was your assessment of how the offensive line play? Looked like they opened up some big rushing lanes tonight.

JEFF TRAYLOR: We did. It was our best effort. We looked like we did against Kennesaw the whole game. So interesting, though. We have been cleaner at home twice and haven't been so good on the road. We've got an extremely tough opponent that we have a ton of respect for, and it'll be an absolute slobberknocker up there.

Q. I think this is your fourth different starting line combination in four games. What does it say about that unit to be able to battle through all that?

JEFF TRAYLOR: You know, I've looked at it. It's five straight years of that, so I don't know, somebody is probably out there thinking, what are ya'll doing? I don't know.

I was proud of the lineup that played today. They did a great job. Obviously Venley was not out there but Meech and Walker played really well.

I was proud of them. They are tough kids. We been going at it hard and I was happy they got to be rewarded for once. When you go as hard as those guys been going, they're the ones -- I don't care if you go full pads, shell, you go tag, thud, live, guess what? For an O-linemen and a D-line, it's live every fricking play. There is just no way around it.

Those guys are the ones that labored the most on the team. You like for those guys to be rewarded. I'm in there a while ago and Kamar's head is down. I'm like, what's wrong with you? I gave up one sack. I said Kamar, we broke the school record for first downs and you're in here with a long face.

That's how linemen are. If I was a lady that's who I would be trying to marry, an offensive lineman, man, they're servants. They are selfess, don't ever want to let anybody down.

Any former linemen out there, I hope you're representing that group well. (Smiling.)

Q. Coach, circling back to the penalties, can you speak to any trends you're seeing? I know with penalties can be effort penalties and the mental mistakes. What are you seeing in regards to...

JEFF TRAYLOR: Face mask, you know, it's pretty random. Where you're disappointed, like for example, one of them I don't want to call the kid's name out, but the stunt we called, he didn't run the stunt properly. So you'll go back and watch the video you'll see him have to step one step so he's off balance.

When you're off balance, you're just reaching and grab something, that thing grabs. Try to grab the side of the helmet, doesn't grab. Some of that is that. One of them was really confusing. It was on Elijah, No. 22. Looked like he was just getting destroyed on a block. Somehow they got a face mask out of that, so I got to go back and look at that.

Pee Wee's, if you touch that quarterback anywhere up there, you know, they're going to call it. At first I thought it was really ticky-tack. I looked at the replay and I see what he saw. Owen's left hand just kind of grazed it.

You got to be really careful. You start over-coaching that stuff you'll you have a defense that won't be aggressive and physical.

Now, jumping offsides, we can't line up offsides. Those are things we have to address.

You know I was watching the Nebraska game last night. Everybody was making a big deal out of that guy. Looks like he's punching that guy over and over and over.

I got a feeling -- and I don't even know -- but I got a feeling the guy was probably trying to knock the ball out. When you're punching like that, it's those things, you got to be careful until you watch the video before you make too strong of a statement about why that's happening.

I know this, but they got Coach Loepp, so paranoid. I told him he's got posttraumatic face mask syndrome. Every third down he's like, are you sure we're off? There are no flags? We're good, Jess. We're off the field.

Q. We talked about looking for explosive plays on offense and you hit a big one to Willie McCoy in this game. How important was that to get that part of the offense going as well?

JEFF TRAYLOR: Yeah, just felt good to have a quick drive instead of our -- Loepp loves it when we take all day getting down there and score and run it in. It's nice sometimes to breathe and get one. That was a big one. That was a big one. Willie ran a great route. It was a very well-executed play.

They didn't hadn't been giving us a lot of cover one. They had been going so much zone, but we were running the ball so well they'd to make some adjustments. That's what the game is about. You got to be able to run the stinkin' ball. When you run the ball well, everything else flows off it. We just got to be able to hand the ball off the tailback.

Q. I think we saw a really high level of physicality from your group too. Was that a message coming in?

JEFF TRAYLOR: I didn't think we were as physical this week as we were last week, personally, Greg, but I appreciate you being so kind. I never want to push back on a compliment from you.

You know, I didn't think our effort was at another level. I thought it was good. Our athletes were bigger and stronger and faster that's those guys. I'm not trying to put down John's kids in any way. I'm just being honest with ya'll.

We had better players. But I still think we have another level we can get to. I didn't think we had the edge we did versus Kennesaw. There was some shots and physicality out there to your point, but we're going to need a lot more of that if we're going to survive next week.

They bring it on their defense, and our defense has always wanted one to be the No. 1 defense in the league and never have gotten there. It's always UAB and then we go to this league and now it's East Carolina and the Roadrunners still hadn't been the No. 1 defense. We want our guys to think like that.

East Carolina has been that.

Q. Jeff, these three games leading up to this one may have been the toughest in your tenure here. How much did that weigh on you leading up to this one?

JEFF TRAYLOR: It's been heavy. You know, yeah, it's been heavy. It has been. I wish I didn't care so much honestly. You know, I've been here five years now, and there is a lot of really great people here that have invested a lot into me, invested a lot into our program from the administration down, to boosters, up.

You have a lot of families that pick you to come to school for you. You know, when you don't please people, that's heavy. We want to do right. We're not going to win every game. There is a certain was it's supposed to look. I just didn't it's looked correctly. That's what's been the heaviest part of it.

Q. How does it feel now trying to get back, you take a step today?

JEFF TRAYLOR: I'm not even going to allow myself to be happy. I know I should, but this East Carolina game has got me really in a certain way, because I don't know that we're quite ready to go up there and do that yet. But we've got to find a way to go up there and do that.

I want to give my kids every opportunity they can, so there is some big time decisions that got to be made here in the next 24 hours to get these guys a really good plan to go up there and get back on that plane and snatch one on the road.

A conference win on the road to start conference play is really huge. If you can pull that off.

Q. Were mentioning you might not allow yourself to be happy. Can you have a little bit of breathe of fresh air after back-to-back losses maybe?

JEFF TRAYLOR: Yeah, I'm going to try. It's Care Bear's birthday. It was yesterday. She deserves the best version of me, too, right? So I'm going to try to come home with a smile on my face. Izzy will make me smile, so I need to smile back.

Yeah, I'm going to try to be okay. Truthfully, I'm going to make Care Bear happy for a couple hours and sneak my iPad over there and get rolling probably.

Q. You just said you don't know if you're quite ready for East Carolina. What do you have to do this week?

JEFF TRAYLOR: Well, you just got to look at them. You got to figure them out. Then you got to get your kids in the best position possible.

You got to look at injury reports and know who is going to be out there for you and get a good plan. Whatever we decide to do, I want to see it.

If we see it, it's not good enough, we'll come home. But I want to see a plan executed and I want my kids to feel some success. There are big decisions to be made for a huge game coming up.

Thank you, God bless. Bird's up.