BAD BOY MOWERS PINSTRIPE BOWL: MINNESOTA VS. SYRACUSE

December 22, 2022

Nick Monroe

Yankee Stadium

Syracuse Orange

Press Conference

THE MODERATOR: We're joined by Nick Monroe and we'll take questions.

Q. What is it like stepping into this DC role now where it's kind of on your shoulders?

NICK MONROE: I'll say this: it's all about the guys. It really is. It's all about the dudes out there on the grass.

It's not like it's a brand-new thing for me at this point in time because there's been many, many practices many times throughout our time together that Coach White said, Hey, you got this period or this period, helping groom me and getting me ready for this position to be in.

It's really not as crazy as it might sound, but it's all about the guys on the grass. Those are the guys making plays, flying around. Kids are resilient, man. I mean, when they're young, they're able to overcome a lot of different obstacles to help get them ready for life. They've been ridiculously awesome. It's been a lot of fun.

Q. How difficult has it been dealing with injuries, opt-outs, transfers?

NICK MONROE: I'd be lying if I said it wasn't a bit more of a challenge than it has been in the past.

There is a lot of variables that go into today's game right now that didn't exist even last year. Let's be honest. It is what it is.

It's just like anything, right, there's no such thing as a normal life, no such thing as a normal game plan, a normal week. It just is what's and you roll with it.

Yeah, we've had a couple guys opt out. We've had a couple guys hit the portal. You keep recruiting and you keep developing the guys that you have right here, the nucleus that's still here.

They'll hold it together and we'll get ready to go and line up and play in Yankee Stadium.

Q. You've been one of the coaches that has stayed with Dino from the beginning. Why have you stayed with Dino at Syracuse? Secondly, your thoughts about working under Rocky Long?

NICK MONROE: Those are some good questions right there (smiling).

First of all, I'll say this, this is my ninth season with Coach Babers. I've been with him for two years at Bowling Green, seven here.

At the end of the day, the man is a good man. He's got a heart and a soul. That's real. The guy actually has his priorities right in life: faith, family, football. He allows me to be a father and a husband. That's important to me. The grass ain't always greener on the other side.

To summarize that, I believe in the man, I respect the man and I love the man because, again, he allows me to be a father and a husband. That's very, very important to me.

He does things the right way. Listen, the guy is a phenomenal personality, contagious, his energy is contagious. I would challenge a lot of other staffs across the country, I think our players have fun playing the game still that they love to play. It's not always like that everywhere you go. Sometimes it becomes too much of a business, and therefore now it's become a job, and now what are you playing for anymore.

I respect the heck out of the man with that.

Obviously, the second part to your question, Coach Long, he's the architect of this defense, right? Obviously I got to learn it through Coach White, which was awesome. Coach White and I have become very close friends over the last couple years.

I don't want to steal Coach Babers' like movie line, thunder deals or anything, but I know he said something the other day about how Coach Long would be like Obi-Wan. He's almost Yoda, if you will, in that regard.

It is very humbling and almost like this: the way I approach it now is I'm like a player again and I'm going to relearn it as a player with zero thoughts pre-snap, zero ego, zero mindset as far as this is how we did it or why.

I'm just going to erase everything in that regard and relearn it as a player. That way there's a lot of different nuances and options to it.

Honestly, it is very exciting to get a chance to be around somebody with that kind of knowledge. He's been the innovator of this defense.

Q. You've been in the coaching game for a while, specifically with Babers. Do you ever see yourself being a permanent defensive coordinator somewhere, or if you're satisfied in the position you're doing now with recruiting and defensive pass game coordinator?

NICK MONROE: That's a good question, too.

No, I think at the end of the day, yes, I definitely would like to be a defensive coordinator full-time at that position. It's always got to be about the right time. It's got to be about the right fit. It's got to be about what league are you in, what is your schedule like, what system do you want to be married to.

What an opportunity for me to get to obviously, like I said, learn from Coach White, now to get a chance to be around Coach Long and really, really get this thing fine-tuned so that now if that's something that presents itself here in the near future, great. I'm even more ready and capable to handle that in a full-time capacity.

Q. What jumps out to you about this Minnesota team, about the Gophers, your preparation for them?

NICK MONROE: Well, number one, they're absolutely enormous across the board up front. They're in a league where that is a traditional ground-and-pound, run your tails over rushing attack. They do it really, really well.

Their offensive line is ridiculously large and move very well. The thing that I don't know if I've ever seen is all five of 'em in this season have All Big Ten accolades in some capacity. That's pretty impressive for all five offensive linemen, especially in a league with the caliber of the Big Ten.

Their running back's an anomaly. He is really, really good. He may be, with no disrespect to anybody we played this year, the best one we've seen. They have two quarterbacks. They got the veteran, the younger kid, who is playing good football, too.

At the end of the day, I mean, Coach Fleck is a guy who has implemented his system. They want to go old school and pound you and take your will from you, keep their defense off the field, let the clock tick, really beat you up across the board, like I said, try to take your will. They're a throwback team, and they're good. They're very, very good.

It all starts with their offensive line, then it goes off to their wonderful tailback there.

Q. Since you're from Minnesota, did you grow up watching the Gophers?

NICK MONROE: That's a great question. This is a really cool deal, believe it or not. My dad actually coached for Minnesota under Jim Wack. I come from a lineage of coaches. My dad was under Coach Jim Wacker for four years. When I was in junior high getting into high school, I used to hang out around the Gibson-Nagurski Complex and whatnot, watch spring practices. It was a cool deal for me as a young kid.

Obviously this is a very cool deal. I still got a ton of family and friends back there. In fact, all my people back in the Twin Cities are rocking Syracuse gear this week. They've already been taking a lot of heat for it, which is kind of cool.

We're on group chats and whatnot, talk to them every day. Where are we going for the game? We have to go in there rocking orange and blue, stir the pot.

It's a very surreal feeling. Oh, wow, get to play against your home state in the magnitude of Yankee Stadium in the Pinstripe Bowl. It's a big deal.

Q. What are you hearing on the recruiting front, how things are changing in terms of questions you're getting, NIL, the portal, how different the world is today?

NICK MONROE: Oh, man, that's a loaded question right there, bro, that is. You're going to put me on the spot, and I have to be careful how I say this.

A lot of times at the end of the year you go back and look at how you recruited, how you put all the pieces together, right? You look at it from a business perspective. No different than a business at the end of the fiscal year, what they did good, what they did bad.

It always used to be, Five years ago we did this, three years ago we did this. You can't even say a year ago we did this because, again, the variables that have gone within this thing have changed dramatically even in a six-month span.

I don't know what the future holds in the landscape of college football here. Right now, I would go ahead and say this: really the biggest difference between college football and pro football has become what? The fact that in college football you're supposed to go to class, right? That's really kind of becoming the main steadfast difference right now.

Where it's headed? I don't know. I don't know. I don't know if at some point they're going to put a cap on things as far as NIL goes. I don't know if they're going to say each team has this allotment. I really don't know. Those are questions that are above my pay grade.

I'll say this: you better have your head on straight, you better have a plan for the future, and you better be able to multi-task. You have to; otherwise, you got no chance to stay up in this thing. It's moving at all different angles, at a rapid speed that I don't think anybody can predict.

Like I said, I think you got to be able to multi-task, have a plan, have some foresight, see in the future, say the way this is headed, this is probably what's going to happen next. You got to be able to have a plan for that; otherwise, you're going to get passed right by. That could affect your future, your team. Nowadays, too, you got to be able to manage a roster.

That might be the most important factor right now, being able to manage your roster. When the portal opens, all of a sudden you might lose three or four guys at one position. Now what?

I think that's also going into -- I don't know if I want to give this one away. I'll say this: being able to recruit multi-positional players might be something, too, in the future. We had a ton of receivers. Well, guess what, we got a couple DBs that can flip over. We had a number of DBs leave, we have a couple of tailbacks that play both ways.

You can have some flexibility, be able to shake a little bit within your own roster.

Q. We see so many of the recruits that commit to Syracuse tag you on Twitter. What is it like to get these recruits, find some of those guys?

NICK MONROE: Yeah, I mean, this thing in this profession is like this, you got your seasons of life. You got summer, fall, winter, spring. It's similar to that in the college football game. You got your season. Really recruiting is spliced in the whole year. You go on the road, you have your winter season of recruiting, spring recruiting, summertime for camps, obviously official visits now and getting your team ready for fall camp.

I absolutely love being able to go out and meet new people, watch young men with these dreams, right? I mean, these are young men. They're 16, 17, 18 years old. You see that glimmer in their eye. You know what, I can't wait to play college football. There's still that passion there, still that spark there.

The ability to go out and actually witness that, see that firsthand. Listen, I'm dating myself. This is my 21st year of doing this. But being able to go out and recruit, I think that's one of the -- it's a blast. The amount of people you get to meet and see the different walks of life, see different upbringings and backgrounds. Then getting them here to Syracuse and watch them develop.

Listen, we've been fortunate. Hopefully after this season, the draft, we'll have our fourth DB go in the National Football League in the last couple years. That's a really cool thing to see happen. We're obviously going to see some other positions get drafted this year and go to the NFL. It's obviously not for everybody.

At the end of the day, when you actually go through the whole culmination, you see those families you develop relationships with, they have other opportunities as well. Can you get them here to Syracuse when they come here?

Somebody asked me earlier about Coach Babers, watching that whole thing come to a head, it's a really cool deal. Coach Babers is phenomenal when he gets to visit with the families and kids here on campus.

Quite honestly, our players sell this place better than everybody. We have a great locker room, it's phenomenal. The culture is good. When you bring these recruits in here to this culture, this locker room, it kind of sells itself. The hard work is over at that point. I just got to get them up here.

Sometimes, as we all know, these winter months things happen, right? Flights get canceled, whatnot. I absolutely love that aspect of this. I think it's a hands-on and really personable business where you get to go out and do those kinds of things.