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UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS MEDIA CONFERENCESeptember 5, 2011Mack BrownCOACH BROWN: I thought Saturday night was fun. Having a packed house for the Rice game, a lot of energy in the crowd, crowd came earlier than usual for us. They were all in their seats and cheered the guys in pregame, and I thought the players had fun, and they played with a tremendous amount of energy, as well. Offensively on the good side, we played a great second half. We rushed the ball 20 times in the fourth quarter for 123 yards. That's been a goal of ours for a long time is finish a game with physical toughness like we used to. We did not have a turnover with the No. 1 offense. They had three great drives in the second half. I think one was 75 yards, but one was 99 and a half yards and another 94 yards, and those are so much better than the first half and shows consistency in what you're doing and should give them tremendous confidence going into this week. We were good on 3rd and 4th down, and I think a lot of that was because of Cody Johnson. He was hitting the backfield on one 4th down play for sure and ran over some people and ran really hard at that time and made some great plays. So we're really excited about Cody in short yardage and goal line, and he'll continue in that area. We did have one fumble, when you talk about concerns with our second team. It was a fumbled exchange, which we can't have, and we felt like offensively in talking to the offensive players yesterday, we had too many critical errors, and we weren't as consistent as we needed to be with detail. We had three alignment penalties, and we are all over the place. There's a lot of motion, there's a lot of shifting things that we're not used to. But we really felt like that we've got to do a better job with our alignment and not have a big play called back. We also felt like we were average on 3rd and medium and 3rd and long. We did a better job on 3rd and short. Most valuable player on offense was Jaxon Shipley, and that's voted on by the offensive staff, and they had a Boss Hogg Award last year, it's changed now to the Bevo Beast Award for the outstanding offensive lineman, and Dom Espinosa was the outstanding lineman, so two freshmen get the player of the week awards on offense. On defense we were pleased with holding Rice to three field goals and no touchdowns. Felt like we did a great job on possession downs and in the red zone. The concerns on defense were we did only force one turnover for the game, and that turnover was by the second team late in the game. We felt like we were average against the runs and didn't do a great job with our run fits up inside, and that's why there were some creases more than we would have liked. We had three 15-yard penalties that extended drives. All three of those drives led to field goals, so we'd have had a chance if we could have gotten off the field to keep them in getting field goal range, and that was a concern last year with our defense and it's something we've got to fix before Saturday. The defense also didn't create short fields for the offense, and that's why you have a 99-yard drive and a 94-yard drive and a 75-yard drive. The awards on defense, most valuable player on defense was a sophomore Carrington Byndom, and he played very well. We're proud of him. They have a Hardhat, which is the biggest hit award on defense, and the defensive staff did not feel like there was a hit that earned the right to be called a Hardhat Award, so nobody will get that award this week. And there was a forced fumble by Reggie Wilson hitting the quarterback. The ball was on the ground and Cody Ramirez picked it up, so they both get Ball Hawk Awards for the week. You talk about our special teams, our special forces. Number one, Rice has a great kicker and punter. Those two guys are two of the best in the country, and they did a tremendous job Saturday night. They did everything right for them to have the great kicking game. We'll start with our kickoff coverage that we call our wild bunch. These names will be obvious to you, the reasons. This has to be a crazy bunch covering kickoffs. We did have two touchbacks by Justin Tucker, so it's great that he kicked two out for no returns. Then we had two tackles inside the 20 yard line, and we had a lot of freshmen covering him, so those guys did a good job. The one time they had some poor gap control coming down was a 43-yard return which again hurts field position, and you have to gain field position with your special teams. The kickoff return team, the house party, was really close to breaking one, and that's the good news. The bad news is when you're really close to breaking one, it means you didn't. So the concerns for that group is they started at the 22 yard line, again, poor field position, and we averaged only 16.5 per return. Now, two of those were kicked out because the guy did a great job of line-driving the ball into the corner. We adjusted to that, they started kicking it to us, but we did not return them very well. The Texas Rangers are our punt team. House party is our kickoff return because we want to get in the end zone and have a party. The punt team is the Texas Rangers because they have to be secure with the ball and take care of the ball. We thought it was good for the first time in the new system. There was a forced fumble, and that fumble was forced by Kenny Vaccaro, and then Adrian Phillips got on it. And there were only three returns for an average of four yards. So all of that was good. We do feel like on the other side of that that we can cover better, and the -- when the game was out of reach, we tried the left-footed rugby punt, and the two left-footed punts that Justin has had so far with the rugby punt are six and five yards. He had a five-yarder against Colorado two years ago. So before you ask me were we thinking that, he does it really well in practice. We think it's there. It gives us a new dimension for a defense that's trying to figure out where to block because they don't know if we're going right, kicking normal or going left, so it's a heck of a thought, we just need to get it a little further down there. He had a good average going into that kick. It ended up being 34.8 yards per punt because of that one. The punt return, the best thing we did after last year is we secured the ball. We caught the ball every time. On the negative side of that we did not create field position. Part of that is there were three safe punt situations where we didn't try to return and we didn't try to block because we felt like Rice was at midfield or closer and they might try to fake, and we did catch one ball inside the 10 yard line, which we can't do, but we feel like that the first one was set up perfectly. And one young guy didn't block his man, everybody else had their man, so it could have been a tremendous way to start the first series after a three-and-out. Extra point field goal team, team automatic, did a great job. They scored 10 points. There were four of four on extra points and two of two on field goals with a 23-yarder and a 29-yarder. We don't have a special teams player of the week because we wait and count their points at the end of the year, but these guys got special recognition. Their special forces elite group for their play on special teams. Justin Tucker, Adrian Phillips, Kenny Vaccaro Leroy Scott, Jamison Berryhill, and Ryan Roberson. Ball Hawk Awards for the special forces, Kenny Vaccaro forced the fumble on the punt, and Adrian Phillips picked it up, so both of them did a tremendous job there. Injury update: We came out of the game pretty well. There's obviously some bumps and bruises. It was a physical game, and in your first game because the guys aren't used to that intensity and they're not used to that type contact because they haven't had a game yet. But we felt like overall we did well. We did play a lot of different guys. Seven different guys ran the ball, four guys threw the ball, eight different guys caught the ball, so that was some of the stuff that Bryan Harsin brought us offensively with the wild horn and different looks that came up across the board on Saturday night. There were 18 true freshmen that played. Auburn is the only other team that had near that many, and they had 13, and they were second. So we feel like it's a great recruiting class. They're going to have to grow up fast and have to play very fast. There were also seven red-shirted freshmen that played in their first ballgame, so that meant there were 25 freshmen and red-shirted freshmen that played in their first ballgame. Jaxon Shipley is the first true freshman to catch a TD pass in the season opener at Texas which is unique, and Malcolm Brown's 86 yards was the fourth most gained by a freshman in the season opener at Texas, as well. We've played Brigham Young twice, they've beaten us both times. They're a great program. They've had ten wins in four of the last five years. They've been to 29 Bowl games, they won a National Championship in 1984. They were 7 and 6 last year. They won five out of their last six ballgames, and the one loss in that run was to Utah by one point. So we feel like that they've got a great team coming in. They went on the road in the heat, in the south, and beat Southeastern Conference Ole Miss 14-13 and they were down 13-0 going into the fourth quarter. Bronco Mendenhall is one of the great true young coaches that's out there. He's a young man that I like. He's a tough, defensive football coach and they have a tough team. You talk about their offense, it's very physical. You look at their offensive line, there's two juniors and two seniors on it that are 6'6", 300, 310, 322 and 330, and they are very, very physical. They will come after you and most of those are up for national awards. Jake Heaps is the quarterback, and he was No. 1 quarterback in the country a couple years ago and very accurate, and they've always done a great job with their passing game. JJ Di Luigi is an outstanding tailback, and like our offense, they move him all over the place. He'll be split, he'll be flexed, he'll be tight, and he's a very physical runner. They have a great scheme, and they're very balanced. Defensively they're really well coached. They run to the ball. They will hit you. I think they knocked three Ole Miss tailbacks out of the game Saturday afternoon. They held Ole Miss to only 57 plays on offense and 208 yards. So it's a real challenge for our offense. They run a multiple look on defense like we do, 4-3, 3-4, they did score a defensive touchdown, and they held the ball for 34 minutes and 37 seconds against Ole Miss. So this will be like an old-fashioned street fight. It'll be very physical. We've been concerned about how tough we were in both lines of scrimmage the last couple years. This game will be about the lines of scrimmage, it's going to be about who's the toughest. It's a great test for us before we get ready to go to UCLA for a very similar game and then get ready for conference play. Monday is a fun day but a busy day for coaches. Other than coming over here to talk to you, they're figuring out how to make a 1st down and how to stop the big and strong powerful Brigham Young. Coaches are all over the place on Sunday night and Monday trying to put everything together, and it's an exciting time and a challenging time. Saturday will be the 10th anniversary of 9/11. The game flags will be at half staff around the stadium. There will be a moment of silence, and from midnight until daylight, the tower will be darkened in honor of that tragedy and the folks that we lost. We also know that there's some people that have had to evacuate their homes and lost their homes, and we want them to know we understand. We're playing a game, and that's real life and tough stuff, and we definitely have them in our thoughts and prayers and want everybody to escape, number one, healthy, and also hope they can save their houses. I know for us, Coach Rucker evacuated his house last night and stayed at the Marriott, so it's touched us within our football family, and we know how much that scares you about losing all your possessions and your house because we've talked to him about it, so good luck, and you'll be in our thoughts and prayers. Questions? Q. Can you talk about the challenge against this defense and how much you think your guys need to improve after the performance they put on at Old Miss? COACH BROWN: Yes, it'll be a great challenge for us because you want to win your Conference Championship and here you are with a pretty tough out-of-conference schedule. We'll know more about who we are with all these young players. I thought our crowd was a factor Saturday night, so I think it will be again. We got the slow start on offense, and that's probably pretty normal with as much new that was on the field. But you're not going to get any easy yards against these guys. They will hit you. The strength of both offense and defense is their fronts, and Ole Miss just could not block their defensive fronts. It'll be a huge challenge for our offensive line. Q. This was a game that you scheduled a while back and you said, the conferences are going to need to start paying attention (indiscernible). It looks like a pretty good idea now. COACH BROWN: Well, you just never know about out-of-conference games. You need to win games to get to the BCS, and I've always felt like the BCS does not pay enough attention to strength of schedule. I've always felt like that. I think they pay attention to wins. People like a team that's winning, and they don't remember if you've won the first game 20-19. If you win, you move up in the polls because it's tough out there right now and people are going to lose, so we'll probably move up some this week just because we won, and there will be some others that didn't. But I think scheduling right now is crazy with all the conference realignment. Talk is it's very, very difficult for everybody, and hopefully over the next year or so this will all get settled so we'll know where we're traveling or what we're doing. When I've been asked about it, and this is very truthful, I've probably had one two-minute conversation with DeLoss about it a week ago, and basically I trust him and Bill Powers. That's their job to figure out if the Big 12 is going to make it. If not, Texas will be okay because we had an opportunity to go anywhere we wanted to last year or be independent. I know we're very fortunate to work at Texas. We're very fortunate to be at a place that people will want us in their conference if this one changes. All of us would like to see it stay. That's better for us. That's the decision we made a year ago. But at the same time, if not, I feel sorry for the schools that won't have the same opportunities. Those are the ones that really have to concern themselves with the future of this thing. I think we're going to be fine, and I know I've got more -- I can control more things -- very few, but I can control more things in regards to the Brigham Young game than I can conference realignment, so I've got my focus where it needs to be. Q. It is something that affects your school and how do you keep your mind on the game? COACH BROWN: Coaches focus on their job, and that's the game and what you can control. Really and truly it does not make any difference to us day-to-day because we're not involved in that process at all. You know, it's so crazy right now, if you concern yourself so much about that, you'd better concern yourself about winning and something you can control. So that's what we're doing. Like I said, Texas will be fine. I was told last year we were going to the Pac-10 at one point, not by our administration but by everybody -- I looked on TV, it's on ESPN, Texas has gone to the Pac-10. And I said, really? The guy that was waiting on me at the restaurant said, you have to look at ESPN to get your news? I said, well, I have not been told we're going to the Pac-10, so if we are, that's news to me. And then about two hours later I got a call that said, we're staying in the Big 12. So I figure it's crazy out there and I don't get my head out of that office very often this time of the year. Like I said, it'll work out for Texas wherever, so it works out good for me. Q. (Indiscernible.) COACH BROWN: Yes, Ashton had a one-game suspension for breaking a team rule, and he will be back. Q. All the players that took snaps on Saturday (indiscernible)? COACH BROWN: No, I didn't. The offensive staff does a great job of packaging those plays, and it gives everybody an opportunity to play. We thought the snaps were spread out pretty well. Someone asked yesterday about the fans being disturbed when Malcolm Brown came out. You've got to understand it's the first game. He doesn't even know some of those packages. He's not involved with them at all. But I thought he and Joe did a good job. But I thought by and large the team handled it well. We can't have the inconsistency in our alignments. If you're using all those for an advantage, you can't be at a disadvantage by costing yourself five yards. Q. Can you talk a little bit about his receiving targets, as well? COACH BROWN: Yes, Brigham Young for years, with Norm Chow and that offense way back, they won the National Championship in '84, you start looking at those things, LaVell Edwards was the head of the passing game many, many years ago, and they're still doing the same concepts. Bronco is a guy who loves Brigham Young. He looks at it, his dad was a coach, so they're back to the old Brigham Young stuff, except I think they're running the ball better, and they only had 116 yards rushing on Saturday, but they can get open and their concepts are tremendous. Q. (Indiscernible.) COACH BROWN: I thought Garrett did well. The number one thing we wanted for him is not to turn the ball over, and he came out of the game without a turnover. Number two, we wanted him to make plays with his feet. He made a great play with his feet on a bootleg, and then he had a couple of plays where he stepped up in the pocket or he scrambled out to his left and threw across his body and made great plays to a tight end and a receiver coming to our boundary, and I thought obviously with the three long drives in the second half, he led the team well. All those things are things we wanted to see him do. And hopefully since we had such a tough year last year, our team will be better this week, and he'll feel more comfortable. Q. Were you concerned for him having to fight the last nine months that maybe his confidence would get down? COACH BROWN: No, we all thought, and we've talked to Garrett and the other quarterbacks about this, we all thought that starting over and having to earn the right in front of your teammates to be the quarterback would give the person that won that job more confidence like it did at every other position instead of lack of confidence. If you just throw it out there and give it to him and everybody says, well, that's unfair, then it might have been that way. But he's had to work hard, and Bryan has been really hard on those quarterbacks. We always felt like you're harder on guys in practice, and then the game should be a reward for the hard work. So we did not feel like he would feel that pressure coming into the game. Q. There's a sports cliché about a team's biggest improvement comes from their first game to their second game. In your experience have you found that to be true? COACH BROWN: I've found it's more true because we don't have preseason games like the NFL, and we're in a position where offensive linemen didn't cut at all until Saturday night. Wide receivers didn't cut at all until Saturday night. So there's some defensive -- the defensive players tackle in two scrimmages. So we're always in an opener where you saw all those scores and upsets on Saturday. That scares you to death, and you never know. The kicking game we did live this year. We've done it live for the last two or three years. It's still not the same. You're playing against better players than your scout teams when you do your kicking game live. So I do feel like that's one of the reasons that you improve so much more before the second game. Hopefully that's the case. It needs to be. Q. Can you talk about when four guys touch the ball after the center snaps it and the precision that needs to happen for these plays? Trick play is probably not the right word because it seems like that's part of your offense. COACH BROWN: It is. I like the fact that within our offense now, we run the two trick plays that we use during the game. We run every day. They are basic plays. They're fundamental plays in the offense, and I think you saw that even the reverse pass didn't work perfectly because John Harris got hit as he was throwing the ball and Jackson had to make the hit. But the double reverse to DJ Monroe, I thought the coaches did a good job of getting the ball in DJ's hands in space. Those are things that are basic fundamental plays now, so you'll see that each week. And then what Bryan also does that I like so much is he will take plays off of those plays, and then he will have something else, another wrinkle, that he builds the package for each play. And that's why we were pretty fundamental and pretty simple on Saturday night offensively, and I think he also wanted to send a message we wanted to be able to run downhill power football, and we did that, as well. Q. Is it just a matter of the offense kind of settling in and relaxing or what do you think made the difference? COACH BROWN: I thought so. I did look up at the first of the game and see that they had six minutes and 23 seconds and we had the ball one minute and ten seconds. The offense had the three-and-out early and didn't stay on the field. Rice did a great job of trying to pick us apart with little things, the little tricks, the little screens, the little trap plays, the option play, things that were very sound and very simple for them, and they slowed the game down. If you noticed, they would get at the line of scrimmage, then they would always look to the boundary, and they were snapping the ball with three to five seconds on the clock, and that'll be an issue this weekend because Brigham Young did the same thing to Ole Miss. They kept the ball 34 minutes and limited Ole Miss to 57 plays. It's hard to move the ball if you only have 57 plays, and with that 40-second clock, the clock is moving more rapidly. So I felt like part of it was that they didn't get in sync with all the new on offense. There's more new on offense than there is defense. Our defense is more similar to what it was last year, and our offense was totally different and new. So I did think it took them longer. But I thought the second half after the first drive, they were on fire and played really well. Q. Happy to see Carrington get a defensive award. Do you think he'll be tested a little bit more on the outside this week? COACH BROWN: Yes, they will. Brigham Young will throw the ball deep, and we felt like our secondary played well. That was one thing as we go back and look at it. We only had two three-and-outs, the first one and then one with a second team defense at the end of the game. Rice moved the ball better than we would have liked, and that's something we've got to do is have more three-and-outs or force some more turnovers on Saturday or Brigham Young will keep the ball. Q. Back in your days as offensive coordinator did you have very many trick plays in your game plan? COACH BROWN: I really didn't. We usually carried one, and it was one that we worked on all week and we'd had it for the year, and we'd plan on that one for that game, and we worked on them all but we didn't take four into the game, and Bryan always has four in his pocket. Like I said, they're more fun when they work. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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