	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

October 10, 2011

Keenan Robinson

Q. What's the most important thing this week to try to move past OU?
KEENAN ROBINSON: I think the important thing is get back to doing what we're been doing the first four games. It worked, it's going to work. We want to make sure as a defense we want some turnovers to come. They came the last two games, this game they couldn't. We got one. Executing on 3rd down is something we need to do better. That game we didn't execute. All the other games we have. And we pretty much handled the run except for that long run. We really tried to do everything we wanted to do to win the game on defense to help our offense, but there's a few plays here and there that we gave up that kind of stopped us from doing that, prevented us from doing that.
We need to play better as a team, execute the plays better, and I think if we do that, we can get back to playing defense like we have been.

Q. You play another one of the top teams in the country. What will you do differently?
KEENAN ROBINSON: I think we need to -- we're really worried about stopping the run, and I think as we watch film, and especially last year, we've seen that we weren't getting lined up, so they ran the ball. That's what they do. When you're not lined up they're going to run the ball, stretch the boundary and get ten yards here or there. This game we were lined up; we were waiting for them for every play, so the tempo didn't hurt us at all because we practiced it and we were ready for it. They didn't run the ball and couldn't run the ball until that one play.
Passing wise we weren't as effective as we could have been. Our pass rush wasn't able to get there because we were in the softer coverage at times and vice versa. So we've really got to make sure that we take away the high read, take away the slant, take away the hitches from the quarterback, make him hold the ball and let our blitzes and our D-line get at the quarterback. That's how we force turnovers because we can get at the quarterback, make him throw the ball where he doesn't want to throw it or make him hold onto it, make him run, force a sack, force a fumble.
That's something that we're really going to have to work on this week is just playing better team defense because we've got to complement each other and help each other out, and if we do that, we have a great chance of winning than we did this past week.

Q. Is it frustrating facing an offense like this where they're hitting so many plays so quickly and two turns into eight and things like that? Do you have to fight that, as well?
KEENAN ROBINSON: It's not too frustrating because at times we're always -- like we said, we really practiced it so we were ready for the tempo. We were looking at them waiting for them to call the play and they were waiting for us to show coverage or show something that they can get a read on what we were going to do.
And so when we want to play, we've got to kind of do better at making them do something they don't want to do, show something, and then trick them when the play starts, roll into something else so that the quarterback is not sure of his reads.
As far as the amount of plays that we run, that doesn't really bother me no more because it's kind of the culture today in college football, so you've got to be used to it. You've got to get used to it and be able to adapt to it in order to play well and win games. That aspect doesn't really affect me that much because from here on out, A & M is going to run tempo plays, Oklahoma State is going to run tempo plays. Other teams in the league, Texas Tech is going to run tempo plays, so we've got to get used to it and make sure that we're ready for it any time.

Q. As good as their receivers are, do you still have to respect Randle and what he can do as a running back?
KEENAN ROBINSON: Yeah, you always have to. That's what I told the linebackers yesterday in practice. They're a team that will pass about 60 times a game, but they're going to pass as well as run, and if you let them run the ball, then you just have two things they can do to you. If you make them pass it and you stop the run, then you know that they're probably going to pass the ball, and you're going to take away some of their options.
So what we did this past weekend, we stopped the run until that last play, and we made OU one-dimensional. And once you make them one-dimensional, we've got to make them pay. We've got to make sure that we stop their one-dimensional passing game. We've got to make sure that we do everything we can to take away the high reads, take away the quick slant, take away things that they want to do and the pass they want to get so they can get quick yards on us.
Once we take those away, then they'll be back to the drawing board saying what can we do against the defense, we can't run, we can't pass, what do we do next, and that's what we've got to do this coming up weekend.

Q. Kendall Hunter, is Randle of the same mold?
KEENAN ROBINSON: I think he's not the same because he's a different player. He's a little bit bigger than Kendall was. He's a guy that was multiple against us last year. He's a good athlete, though. I watched film on him, and he's close to having 100 yards a game, so he's a guy that can hurt us if we let him.

Q. Talk about what Weeden and Blackmon are able to do.
KEENAN ROBINSON: They're a great combination. You know, they're kind of like Harrow and Crabtree, Broyles and OU quarterbacks, both of them. They're a guy, both of them together, can really hurt you, and the thing is on the goal line it's kind of funny, most teams like to run the ball because it's a high percentage play. Instead of running that they'll throw a fade because it's a higher percentage for them, so they're a type of combination that can -- they're a great one-two duo. They'll both be guys that will go probably first round.
In order to win a game we're going to stop their playmakers and them, too, and then stop the running game.

Q. Mack said on Saturday you don't have time to sit around and feel sorry for yourselves because of the two tough opponents back to back. What are your thoughts on that?
KEENAN ROBINSON: It's very true because of the fact that we can sit here and get down on ourselves about this past loss, then you're going to let us beat us this coming up weekend, and we can't do that because every game is important. The loss we had on Saturday only counts for one loss, not five, not four. We're still 4 and 1, still have everything that we want to achieve still attainable. We've just got to make sure we do what we do best, keep playing football, play the Texas way and just have a great team win on Saturday. We need offense, defense, special teams all to play great in order to get this victory.

Q. What's your mentality? Do you say to yourselves, good, now we get to try it again?
KEENAN ROBINSON: I'm like, good, because I want to show everybody that it was a fluke last week. Obviously on offense we gave up three touchdowns to their defense, so you can't win when you have that happen, and I think that was a fluke because everything just happened and snowballed real quick. I think that if we come out Saturday and we can stop their offense, play well and play a better team game, then we can prove to people that we were rightfully ranked No. 11, we just had a fluke game.

Q. What makes you confident that this year's team will respond differently than the team did a year ago when you faced adversity?
KEENAN ROBINSON: The things that we did in third and fourth quarter. When things were spinning out of control and out of whack and not going the way we wanted to in games, we still played hard on defense, still played fast and physical, still forced some turnovers late in the fourth quarter, so we were still flying around even though the games went out of hand.
We didn't let the little things that we couldn't control affect us, and we just kept on playing every play, every snap, and that's something that the coaches look to and they see that, and there's optimism in that because they can see that when this team has got its back against the ropes and nothing is going right, we're still going to fight until the very end game and that's what we did. That gives us a chance in closer games coming down to fourth such as games that we might be down by three points and might have a minute left to win. We're a team that's going to pick it up and try to do everything we can to get that victory whether we're up three or down three, so we're going to do everything we can no matter what the score is and just continue to fight and play tough and play ball the Texas way.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

ASAP Sports, Inc. | T: 1.212 385 0297