ARMY BLACK KNIGHTS FOOTBALL

October 14, 2023

Jeff Monken

Press Conference

Troy 19, Army 0

JEFF MONKEN: Well, I don't know what to say after you just get your butt completely kicked, which we did. Credit to Troy. They've got a really good football team. I think I said earlier in the week that this was the best team that we were going to face this year, and I certainly feel like they are.

The way they run the football, that running back is really good. They did a great job blocking us up front.

They hit some big plays. What our defense did well was hold them to three points on a bunch of drives, which was positive, but the big plays got them in those scoring positions.

Then we just couldn't do anything with it on offense. We had one drive and we got in the red zone, fumbled the ball, one of five times we fumbled the ball. Just poor ball security, poor fundamentals.

But that goes back to what I say just about every week when I'm sitting up here. We've got to block and sustain blocks with good fundamentals, we've got to get off blocks with good fundamentals, we've got to tackle better with good fundamentals, we've got to take care of the ball with good fundamentals, and we didn't do that.

It's frustrating, and it's disappointing, but we've got to try to regroup and get the guys coached up to do better next week.

Certainly the team we're facing next week I'd argue that they're probably the best team we've faced so far this year. Super talented and really athletic. They can play with anybody in the country. We're going to do our best to get regrouped.

Q. Maybe it started with the decision when Bryson Daily got hurt -- is he okay? And two, the decision to put Champ Harris in --

JEFF MONKEN: So we kind of talked about that and prepared for a time when Bryson may go down and we have to play somebody else, and Champ has earned the second-team spot. Just his ability, certainly he's young -- he was playing in high school this time a year ago, so he's young, but he's very talented, and we just feel like he would give us the best chance if Bryson wasn't in there.

Bryson went down, obviously. Don't know the status yet of how serious the injury is. We're going to get him checked out, and our medical team will be able to do all the things that they do to evaluate that, and hopefully he'll be able to come back and play next week.

The basic evaluation on the sideline and in the training room today was there's just not enough information there for them to say that anything really serious is wrong. They've got to get it looked at. Once we do that, we'll have a better idea.

Q. You had another freshman take on a big role, Udoh had 124 yards rushing. How did you feel about his performance?

JEFF MONKEN: I was really happy with Kanye. He's a guy that we've recognized from the very first day in practice that he was going to have a chance to be a good back. We've played him the last couple of weeks. We've played him more and more, and certainly today as he started to really run the ball and carry the pile, he had some impressive runs. We kept giving it to him, and excited about his future with us. He's a good player.

Spent the year in prep school last year, so not entirely a rookie. But obviously we were running a different system last year. He's really coming on. That was one big positive in the game.

Q. Defense, 10 of 21 holding Troy on pass plays and then 4 of 13 on 3rd down conversions. They were making plays, but the one setback was at the end of the second quarter, the 52-yard touchdown. How did you feel the defense did?

JEFF MONKEN: That was a busted coverage on that one before halftime. At halftime, they had run 29 plays and had 300 yards. I'm a PE major, not real good at math all the time, but I think that's over 10 yards a play. That's not very good.

There were a lot of big plays we gave up. Like I said, we gave up some big plays and then got them on the ground and were able to hold them to a field goal several times.

But we've got to do a better job of getting off of blocks and not allowing the running back to pop out of there. I mean, it was eight, nine yards sometimes on 1st down. That back is really talented, but he's getting some help. He had some guys up front that did a good job of blocking us up.

I mean, they completed 10 passes for 227 yards, so let's do the math on that. That's over 20 yards a play. They'd probably be leading the nation in yards per completion if this was the only game they had played so far.

I think our guys played hard, and they tried. But I don't think we played particularly well.

Q. In the third quarter there was a 4th and 1 where you gave the ball to Kanye Udoh. Was Jakobi Buchanan available?

JEFF MONKEN: He was available, but the way Kanye was running the ball, I don't know how you could argue with not handing it off to him. He had run it and moved the pile, and so that's why we handed it off to Kanye.

Q. Kanye said to us that he didn't know whether he was going to start or not. What was your reason to give him so much activity today?

JEFF MONKEN: Well, you watched him run today. He's pretty good at running the football. When you put the ball in his hands, he does a pretty good job running it. He'll improve the more he plays. His vision will improve, and I think there's things that he'll continue to get better at and hopefully be even more productive.

But that guy was running his butt off and just a great determination to not go down, not get tackled. That one run that was over 20 yards -- I think they had him wrapped up at about four or five yards, but credit the rest of the team, too. They kept pushing, and none of our guys quit playing.

I think that's something that we really try to stress with our team, that you've got to continue to play hard every play. You never know what'll happen and you can make good things happen if you play hard. They were certainly doing that on that play.

Q. We're halfway through the season now, 2 and 4. What's your analysis at this point with the second half coming up with LSU starting it off?

JEFF MONKEN: Well, I mean, got to play better. We're 2 and 4. We are who we are. We're a 2-and-4 football team. We've had some chances in some other games to maybe have a different result, but didn't make the plays. Didn't play good enough. Got to make the plays.

That's that. We've got a great opponent we're playing this week. It's a great opportunity for our players to be able to square off against some of the best football players in America and one of the -- I think if you think about who are the true blue blood football teams in college football, they're one of them.

People do the research and all that stuff all the time, and they say, who are the teams that really have a chance to win a National Championship, there's about 10 of them out of 133 schools. LSU is one of them. It'll be a great challenge for us, a great opportunity.

I'm excited for our players to have this opportunity. But it's going to take a monumental effort for us to even have a chance to be in the game. Hopefully we'll make some improvements, make the improvements we need to this week to give ourselves a chance.

Q. In the first half, Troy had an average starting field position of just beyond its own 45-yard line today. How much did the field position battle in this game affect the final result?

JEFF MONKEN: It is a field position game. I know that's a cliche, but it certainly is. It's a lot easier -- there are percentages starting at the 1-yard line all the way down to the other 1-yard line, what's your chances of scoring a touchdown and what's your chances of getting any points, period, based on where the ball starts, and every yard you move closer to the other goal line, you've got a much better chance to score.

To be set up with really good field position, I wish we had that field position all day. I wish we could get that field position every game. Would be a lot easier to play the game.

But they created that. They were responsible for making the plays to set that up. We had to punt, and they returned and did a really good job with that. We didn't do a very good job covering it, keeping leverage like we should. That's coaching and that's fundamentals. We had a couple punts go off the side of our foot, weren't very good punts. That helped them with some field position. But we were also backed up. If we had moved that ball out where we had it on our own 45, then you punt it down there and they don't have such good field position. It's a field position game. They had much better field position than we did, but like I said, they were responsible for it. It's because they were playing good.

Q. What's your message to the backfield battery of Champ and Kanye who had their moments today and unexpected opportunities but then again, you want to see some more from them? What's your message to them after they got some unexpected opportunities today?

JEFF MONKEN: Kanye, we had intended to play Kanye, and he knew he was going to get some opportunities to play today and carry the football. He's just steadily improved as the season has gone along, and I'm really excited about him. We've got three more years with him, and hopefully he'll stay healthy and we'll get three years out of him, and Champ, as well, super talented, got a lot to learn, but just his ability, his physical ability gives us some opportunities.

You'd like for everybody on the team to be ready to go if their number is called. I think if you're the backup quarterback, as Champ was today, you kind of -- you go into the game just thinking, you know what, I'm one play away from going into the game. Not everybody on the sideline is in that same situation.

Hopefully Bryson will be healthy. If he's not, then it's Champ or it's one of those other guys, and right now Champ is the No. 2 going into the game today, so if it is, then it's his game, and he's got to step up and be professional about it and maybe play above what a freshman would be typically expected to do.

You've got freshmen on your team, there's some of the guys that are really, really talented and you can't help but play them. I see that in college football. I watch a lot of college football whenever I can, whenever I can get the remote. And you see some freshmen playing. They're typically physically very talented and match up with the other guys on the field. Not every freshman is going to be like that.

Then there's some freshmen that just by default have to be in the football game. That doesn't mean we don't want Champ in the game. I'd love for him to get some experience and play, but he was playing at St. Thomas Aquinas high school down in Florida a year ago. Is he ready? We've got to get him ready. But ability-wise, he gives us the best chance.

But Dewayne is a good talented player, Dewayne Coleman. Larry Robinson who's in our program is a talented player. Cale Hellums. We've got some guys that are coming up that are young guys in the program that I think are going to give us a chance, but they're young.

Q. What's the biggest silver lining you can take away from a game like this, if any?

JEFF MONKEN: Hmm. You know, that's a good question. Our guys never quit. I've not seen our guys quit. I didn't see a look of despair in their eyes. I didn't see guys that had cashed it in. They kept fighting.

They got that 4th down stop at the end of the game, and our offense went out there, and they tried to make some plays. Our guys kept playing.

I don't know if that's a silver lining. That's just an expectation. Hopefully part of our culture and who we are as a football program that we're going to keep fighting.

But from a performance standpoint, obviously there were some individual efforts, Kanye Udoh, the way he ran the football. I thought that was really positive.

I'll have to watch the film and kind of see what we think of everything else, but beyond that, the statistics are -- they're very, very telling. They rushed for 220 yards, 5.69 average, and their total offense, 449 yards, 7.48 average. Hard to win a football game when they're gaining yards consistently like that. Ours are gravely different.

There will be some good things, there will be some individual plays that guys made, but there's going to be a lot that we've got to correct and a lot we're going to be disappointed with. Our players are disappointed. I promise you, they're not down there laughing and joking about it. It hurts when they lose. They invest a lot. They put a lot into it. We all do.

Hopefully we'll rebound and get better.

Q. I was going to ask you about Tyrell Robinson's second game back, 28 yards but he had the fumble on the first possession.

JEFF MONKEN: Well, I'm glad to see T-Rob back out there. He's certainly a talented player. I'm very disappointed about the fumble. But we had a couple like that.

When the ball is wet, you've got to be extra careful.

But we preach to our guys to have two hands on the ball if anybody comes close to you. His fumble, Hayden Reed's fumble, we had five, so I'm trying to think of all of them. Hayden didn't have two hands on the ball.

We can coach it. You've got to go do it. I'm not pointing the finger at those guys. They know. They've got to play with better fundamentals and we've got to coach it. I guess I've got a choice. I could bench them, say, come stand over here next to me, let the next guy go in there, see if he'll carry it with two hands. But we're trying to win the game.

Q. The fourth quarter Champ Harris had a 4th and 10, pass completion to Jaun Marshall, must be a confidence builder for him.

JEFF MONKEN: I think anytime a guy completes a pass as a quarterback, it helps his confidence. They were playing a prevent defense, so there's a lot of soft spots in the middle of the field.

The best thing he did on the play was step up in the pocket, they started to collapse on him, he stepped up and found them. It was a pretty heads up play. He didn't panic. Another play he got flushed out of it and he ran the ball, and he got flushed out going the other direction in the third quarter and threw the ball out of bounds. He made some heads-up plays.

That's progress, just him being more mature in those situations. If he has to play more, then all he can help -- he just naturally is going to be a byproduct. He's going to get better the more he plays.