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SAN DIEGO STATE UNIVERSITY MEDIA CONFERENCENovember 2, 2013Rocky LongNEW MEXICO – 30 COACH LONG: I'm ready if you are. Q. How do you think they did, talked last week about how you weren't sure how they were going to come out after that last game. What did you think? COACH LONG: I thought both offenses, their offense and our offense, played really well and I thought both defenses really struggled. Q. What specifically, was it just the option not just staying back or sometimes overcommitting? COACH LONG: Well, I told you at the beginning of the week, it's very, very difficult to get ready for the triple option. They put a new play in. To counter triple option we hadn't seen until today. And we never even slowed that down. But you can't get ready for a triple option offense in three days especially when you spend two weeks getting ready for a team that throws it about 60 or 70 times, then get ready for a triple option team and obviously you see the results. I did think going into the game we would play a little bit better than we did. But we didn't. And thank goodness the offense was good enough to win the game for us. Q. Can you talk a little bit about the rapport Kaehler and Ruffin had the last few weeks? COACH LONG: I think that Ezell Ruffin's coming into his own. I think he's getting better and better each week. Going into the season we were hoping he'd develop into that kind of receiver. And I think Quinn does a nice job going through his reads. I don't think he has a favorite receiver. There are quarterbacks that favor receivers so much they throw it to them when they shouldn't. I think Quinn actually goes through his reads and some of his first reads are Ezell. Just like the first play of the game, that was totally let's take the run and throw it up to Ezell and see if he can catch it. I think they have a rapport, but I don't think it's the kind of thing that people start talking about where a quarterback starts looking just for that receiver. Q. Talk about (indiscernible). When do you feel he really started to show (indiscernible)? COACH LONG: I don't know. You know better than I do. About four games ago, maybe five. I don't know when both him and D.J. Pumphrey had good days on the same day. I think our running game has improved dramatically, partly because of them. Adam being healthy and D.J. being able to change the mood, so to speak, because they're different kind of running backs. And then I think the offensive line has started to block better for the run, too. All that goes together. Q. What do you think about the switch with Dillon? (Indiscernible)? COACH LONG: I have no idea. I'm going to have to watch the tape to find out. I know Dilly jumped off sides once, or something, twice. That's not good. That part's not good. I have no idea. I would bet that the offensive linemen played well. For Adam to have that many yards, I would bet that the offensive line played well. Q. (Indiscernible)? COACH LONG: Last week in practice he came up with concussion symptoms so they held him out of the game. Q. Does (indiscernible) the first play of the game? COACH LONG: I always know what the first play of the game is. After that I don't and I don't ask. He doesn't ask what defense we're calling. (Laughter). Q.  I asked Ezell what was going through his head. What was going through your head when you saw him break wide open? COACH LONG: Since I always know what the first play is, at first I thought he was going to be covered. Then he made an outside jab and the DB went back and he took off through the middle. I saw him come open. There wasn't anybody close. And that was whether the ball was on target or not. Ezell improved dramatically from the first game to now catching the ball. Last year you remember he was opened a lot of times where he dropped them. So he's obviously improved his fundamentals at catching the ball, but he's also gained a lot more confidence. You can just tell by the way he's playing that he's a lot more confident. Q. (Indiscernible)? COACH LONG: What? Q. (Indiscernible) COACH LONG: Seamus would be the one kicking. Most of those field goals were long field goals. They would have been 50‑yarders, 49 to 53‑yarders. And our punter wasn't punting exceptionally well. So if you can't get it inside the 10 and you punt it into the end zone, you only gain 10 or 15 yards anyway so you might as well go for it. Q. At this point what would you say you're comfortable with your kicker's range? COACH LONG: Inside of 40. Now, late in the game it was important to score touchdowns, because we weren't, they weren't slowing us down and we weren't slowing them down. So you can't settle for field goals then. You gotta score touchdowns when neither defense is slowing the other team down. Q. What about the final touchdown, the defense gave that one up? COACH LONG: The wide receiver outrun J.J. Whittaker for the ball. Q. Were you surprised at how much they ended up throwing the ball this game? COACH LONG: No, because I thought we had a good plan for their inside running game. Now, we didn't play the option very well. The scheme that we ran should have played the option much better than it did. But we set ourselves up for play action pass, and the long ones that they threw except for the last one were play action pass. The last one we were playing normal defense we played all last week. Of course we played a lot better last week than we did the end of the game this week. Q. (Indiscernible)? COACH LONG: I haven't heard yet. I haven't heard. Q. Quinn's bounceback after last week. You gotta feel good about that. COACH LONG: I feel good we won. I was concerned about the intensity and energy of our team. It wasn't there. It wasn't there as it should have been. I thought the offense played extremely well so they must have had it, but the defense didn't have the intensity level it had the week before. It didn't have the energy it had the week before. Now, you can make all kinds of excuses because we lost last week and they put in such a good effort and everybody's telling them how they put in such a good effort and all that, but that's baloney. Good football teams get their butts ready to play every single week. Sometimes they don't play real well, but they at least play with energy and enthusiasm and intensity. And our defense did not. Q. Was this sort of a must‑win game for you in terms of getting over the loss last week and Bowl eligibility? COACH LONG: You and I have been around each other for almost two years now. There's no such thing as a must‑win football game. It's football. In the reality of the world football is not important, it's not as important as that, where it's must win or you die. Q. In terms of this one you kind of have to‑‑ COACH LONG: No, I told the team that to make sure we were in a Bowl game we had to win four out of the last five. We would be eligible if we won three out of the last five. So that meant every one of those games was important. Not just one, not one game was more important than any other game. We had to win three out of the five to make sure we were Bowl eligible and we had to win four out of the five to make sure we got into a Bowl game. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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