	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

UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS MEDIA CONFERENCE

September 5, 2011

Manny Diaz

Q. No sacks, no interceptions by your defense, but yet you didn't score a touchdown. Was that acceptable to continue to play this way or would you like to see some sacks and interceptions?
COACH DIAZ: If a genie game out of a bottle and said we won't get a touchdown all year but have no sacks and receptions, I'd have to just make do with that. No, we have to look at it, and it's always hard defensively. Sometimes the stats are misleading. We didn't sack the quarterback, but they were not going to let us sack him. The ball was out off three-step timing for most of the game. I think they threw the ball over 70 yards against our -- in the first three and a half quarters when the game was still our starting defense. I think they threw the ball for seven yards I think three times and two of them were out of bounds on fades.
So they weren't going to test us down the field, which was smart. They were keeping the ball out of harm's way. But I think they averaged 2.4 yards per pass attempt, which is pretty unbelievable.
Now, we have to go in and make sure our kids aren't freaked out because they put pressure on themselves. They want to make plays. They have to understand they are making plays because if our presence makes them throw the ball fast and allows them to throw for 70 yards, we are winning, even though personally I'm not getting numbers that maybe people were expecting of me or I was expecting of me, so we felt good about our pass defense.

Q. Does BYU need to start swinging for the chin more?
COACH DIAZ: No, this is going to be an absolute brawl. BYU everyone talks about Heaps, and historically BYU has been known for their passing game, but this version right here is coming down the hill. It is a buckle up your chin strap and tell the equipment guy to have extra shoulder pads on the sidelines because there may be shoulder pads getting busted up. They represent their head coach, I think his mentality, they're a physical football team and they're going to come here to get after us.

Q. What were your thoughts on the offensive front, how they played?
COACH DIAZ: I think when I look at the front, to me as a -- I look at more how we played versus the pass, how we played versus the run, because a lot of times if there's something we're doing, the blitzing we're doing, we sort of tie into one another. I thought versus the pass game I was excited about the way we played. Versus the run game I felt like we were a little tentative, and that's kind of like what I said here last week. We had to go get the game mistakes.
With a lot of movement and as multiple as we are up front, when we got here in the spring, we sort of -- you're a little tentative at first as you're learning and as you're thinking, but then they got the hang of it in practice and now we're getting going and going fast. The same thing happened on Saturday. I felt like up front we were counting our advance steps a little bit instead of just letting it go, and that affects our run fits, because every play versus the run is building a wall, and it's hard to build a wall when you're tentative. Everybody is a brick in the wall.
So I think the players saw that on film. I think that's not a surprise to me, as annoying as it is, for game 1. Happy we got through it, but that'll be a big point of emphasis in terms of improving that this week.

Q. Coach Harsin mentioned getting to know the guys.
COACH DIAZ: What I really liked on Saturday was that nobody on our sideline flinched and nobody blinked, and it was like what we talked about. We did not go into that game with a mindset of trying to win, again, using the analysis about first-round knockout. That's what I liked. That's what the team is going to have to beat. We're going to battle, we're going to have to grind with people and make the play to win the game at the end. And that's what we did.
I thought it was OD kicking, I thought it was a great team effort, and I think everybody understands the method that right now that it's going to take for us to win football games. Our attitude was very good.

Q. How about the corners, got a lot of experience there, and obviously played pretty well.
COACH DIAZ: They did. Not a surprise to us. We anticipated that from what we had seen in practice. But all three of those guys, Diggs, Byndom and Phillips, they were really good against the pass, but with what Rice was doing with the bubble screens and things like that, they were solid at the point of attack. They were aggressive, and that's just the type of people they are. It was nice to see them carry what they had done in practice out on the field.
I thought our secondary as a whole played very well. Even when we made mistakes in the front seven, they erased our mistakes. The first thing they have to do, they got the giant eraser. If we make mistakes, they come in and erase it, and we go live to play another down. And if we do that, then the worst thing that ever happens is we get in the red zone, and if we can fight in the red zone we can win.

Q. What do you want to see out of your team against BYU?
COACH DIAZ: Well, it's going to challenge our manhood for sure. They'll do that probably the first play of the game. We're going to have to improve our run fits to be sure, and I think that'll happen as we get more comfortable in the scheme. But I think the team is going to understand our formula for winning, which is if we can get after the run, we can make the turtle come out of its shell. That's a little bit why we had a hard time pressuring Rice. They never really had to expose their quarterback, and they chose not to expose their quarterback to our rush.
If we can sort of hang in there with BYU and put them in some long down and distance situations, then we have a chance to be aggressive and get after them a little bit.

Q. Do you feel like this is a team that's a little bit more like what you're practicing against?
COACH DIAZ: There's no doubt, yeah. There's no doubt they're multiple formation wise, they have great variety in their run game, they fool people, they'll attack you inside, they'll attack you outside. So it's -- we do have the benefit of practicing against a similar attack like that every day. But at the same time they do some things that are unique to them, and then it ultimately comes down to it's a players' game, and they've got good backs that run hard, they've got fullbacks that want to block your soul. They are mean, aggressive type people, and it'll be quite a challenge.

Q. How often have you had the opportunity to play ten freshmen on defense? What was that like?
COACH DIAZ: Yeah, ten freshmen. Usually as a coach you're supposed to ask questions because we can tell you what's going to happen. When the ten freshmen rolled out there we had no idea. We were watching that together.
But you know what was really neat, they went out there after our own turnover, and that's a situation we really strive -- we take a lot of pride in, sudden change, go put the fire out if something like that happens. They went out there, and Rice called a play that's designed to score a touchdown. They ran the tailback on the wheel and they wanted to score a touchdown on that play, and I think we had an entire freshmen secondary in the game and freshman at linebacker and they covered everybody up and made him go to his third option which the guy ended up dropping.
When you see guys do that type of thing, the freshmen got a three-and-out on one of the drives they were in, it's encouraging, but again, you never know what to expect when they go in there. And then they got the turnover, which was a really neat moment and a great moment for Cody Ramirez who's a really hard-working guy on our football team, and that's the type of thing he'll never forget.

Q. Chet is back at linebacker?
COACH DIAZ: Yeah, Chet is with Demarco Cobbs going out. We just felt like we needed more numbers at that spot, so we're giving him some run at linebacker, and I think he'll be able to help us here down the road.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

ASAP Sports, Inc. | T: 1.212 385 0297