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SHAMROCK SERIES: ARMY vs NOTRE DAME

November 12, 2016

Jeff Monken

San Antonio, Texas

Notre Dame - 44, Army - 6

JEFF MONKEN: I really don't know what to say after a tail whipping like that. We hadn't had our fannies kicked like that in over a year, and it's tough. Tough to have to sit out there and watch it and tough on our kids. I think they probably at times felt helpless. Couldn't stop the run and couldn't run the ball effectively enough to keep drives going. I think that's what we've got to do if we're going to have a chance to win.

Played very poorly in the kicking game, and credit Notre Dame. They played like a championship football team today. They are extremely talented, as talented a football team as we've played since I've been at Army. Congratulations to them, and good luck to them the rest of the way.

Q. (No microphone.)
JEFF MONKEN: He was. He hurt his knee last week in our game and didn't practice all week. We had him ready to go as a just in case, and he wasn't quite ready, wasn't himself. We went with Chris, and we were going to use him only in an emergency situation.

Q. (No microphone.)
JEFF MONKEN: I don't know if I feel like any of us did really good today. I'm proud of him for going in there. That's his first start of the year, and he had a chance to run the ball some. Ran the ball hard. I guess in terms of his decision making on reads and those kinds of things, we'll be able to tell more precisely when we watch the film if he was handing off when he needed to and pulling it when he needed to. He's a good player, and he's still developing. He's just a sophomore. We've been playing him in spots throughout the year, just in anticipation that there may come a time like this where he had to play, so he's gotten a little bit of experience, and we'll see what happens for next week.

Q. (No microphone.)
JEFF MONKEN: Well, our plan was to kick off and try to go cover the kick. It was a poorly kicked ball. It kind of wobbled down there and hit the ground, and as it turns out, it should have been a lot better for us. Though it didn't hang any air very long, it took them a while to field the kick. I knew he was a dangerous returner. He returned a couple of kicks for touchdowns. Great player. We just didn't have ourselves in position. We got the guys assigned to leverage the ball and contain the ball, and we got ourselves out of position, I think. When the ball hit the ground, we probably had some guys just a little uncertain, and frankly one said, I thought it was going out of bounds and I backed off. You can't do that. That's our job as coaches, to get those guys to do what they're supposed to do all the time. Disappointing, and not a great way to start a game where you're going to have to play just about perfect to have a chance to win.

Q. (No microphone.)
JEFF MONKEN: Well, to go down 7-0 in the first play of the game, you come out charged up and you're excited. Our guys are excited to have a chance to play Notre Dame. I mean, all these guys grew up watching college football and dreaming of playing college football like every other kid that plays this sport, and we don't have a guy on our team got offered a scholarship by Notre Dame or any other big schools for that matter. You know, this is what they dreamed of since they've wanted to play college football is playing a great team like this on a big stage. To go down the first play of the game like that is tough, and I think it sets the tone. It doesn't mean you've got to lose the game because they returned the opening kick for a touchdown. We weren't going to win if we didn't score. We were going to have to score at some point, but obviously we didn't score enough.

Q. (No microphone.)
JEFF MONKEN: That's our plan every week, and it's their plan every week. You watch us play and watch them play, it's very similar. Notre Dame played five different fronts against Navy last week, and they were mixing up those fronts, and frankly I think Navy probably found some opportunities in that they were just changing things up from play to play.

It looked like -- they played one coverage, Notre Dame played one coverage against us all day today and really mixed up two different fronts, so that was a little different. We anticipated they were going to do that. We expected after last week that they were going to kind of get screwed into a couple things that they thought would be best for them and fit them and what they had the most success in last week, and that's kind of what we got. We just didn't do a very good job blocking them. They fought their way through some blocks, and they were running their safeties really hard and had some plays where the backside safety was running all the way across with a guy on the pitch path and tackling us for no gain or negative yardage. Tried to hit some play action passes, had some guys open a couple times and had a couple plays we didn't make, and they did a great job. Credit them.

Q. (No microphone.)
JEFF MONKEN: Did you happen to look at those guys in the green jerseys as compared to the guys in the white jerseys? I mean, holy mackerel. That's a great-looking football team. I mean, there's just no comparison physically between the two football teams. Holy mackerel. They're good. They just lined up and blocked us, and they're hard to tackle. Very talented. The quarterback got flushed out of the pocket a couple of times and was on the run, and he runs really good. He's hard to tackle. He's a big guy. That's no excuse; we've got to tackle him. We play other good players. We've played some good teams and some good players all year long, but they've got some pretty special guys.

Q. (No microphone.)
JEFF MONKEN: Hey, I coach my team. Coach Kelly is a great football coach, and all you've got to do is look at his record and what he's done since he's been there, and look at his record over his career and the success that they've had. He does a great job. If you look at all their losses, all of them are pretty close, too. They had chances to win just about every one of them. You know, they played some good teams, too. Stanford has got good players. Duke has got good players.

I don't know, like I said, I coach my team.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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