BAD BOY MOWERS PINSTRIPE BOWL: RUTGERS VS MIAMI

December 18, 2023

Kirk Ciarrocca

Yankee Stadium

Rutgers Scarlet Knights

Press Conference

THE MODERATOR: We'll get started with Coach Ciarrocca.

Q. Just something that sticks out for you about this group from, let's say, the summertime to now that you've been able to appreciate.

KIRK CIARROCCA: I think their commitment and how accountable they are to each other. Every day they give me an honest day's work. Every day they come out and chop. So I mean, I feel blessed to have a chance. I told them before the last game that it's been a really fun year for me, and they're the reason. How hard they've worked and how they all want to be coached. It's great. It's a lot of fun.

Q. Congratulations on the contract extension. Wanted to ask you about that, your reaction, and what went into you wanting to be here for the long haul.

KIRK CIARROCCA: I think, first of all, thank you. Second of all, I am just enjoying myself. We have a great group of guys to work with. I love being around Coach. I've always enjoyed talking to him, and working with him and pulling in the same direction with him right now has been a lot of fun for me.

And the players, the culture that he has developed here, I love being around those players. They're energizing to me the way they come out every day and just keep chopping.

What does it mean to me? I don't know. I mean, it's great to be wanted, I guess, but at the end of the day we all have a job to do, and we know we get judged on how we perform on Saturdays, so I don't get caught up in all that other stuff.

But I'm enjoying myself. Really having a great time and look forward to us getting this program where we all want it to be.

Q. Just talk more about the development of Kyle Monangai and the season he has had this year leading the Big Ten in rushing. Just your thoughts on his efforts this year.

KIRK CIARROCCA: He's really done a great job. I think that really developing, I think you have to give Coach Shaw a lot of credit, and then you have to give him the credit. Then if you are going to give somebody else the credit, you would talk about the offensive line and the tight ends blocking.

He's really developed. He's always been a very intelligent player, but it's one thing to know information. It's another thing to be able to apply it to the particular play. He's done a great job with that.

I think that he probably grew a lot from watching himself the year before and seeing what worked for him and what didn't, what allowed him to be at his best. He ran violently this year, and besides his intelligence and his vision and all that, I think that's something that he needs to make sure that he just keeps doing.

He's worked really hard in the weight room. J.B. has done a great job there. But again, give him the credit. You have to do the work, and he's always willing to do the work.

So super happy for him. He's a great kid, and all the accolades he is getting he deserves.

Q. You guys hosted a transfer portal quarterback this weekend on a visit. I know you can't speak specifically about the prospect, but the fact you guys are pursuing a quarterback out of the portal, what does that mean for Gavin Wimsatt?

KIRK CIARROCCA: I think that's something that you need to talk to Coach about. Obviously I can't comment on anybody that's not signed. Gavin is just going to keep working hard and keep getting better.

Q. Can you kind of just talk about what you saw from the offensive line throughout the course of the season? And kind of Coach Schiano talked a lot about being an incremental progress those guys made. Where do you feel like this unit can go next season and where do you feel like improvements need to be made for them to be successful and for your offense to be successful?

KIRK CIARROCCA: I think the improvement is like the offensive linemen are chasing the holy grail. You can always have lower pad level. You can always have better footwork, and you can always have better feet with everything you do.

So you're always talking about they have to be lower, they have to have their hands inside better, strike better with it, but they did make tremendous improvement.

The kids just kept working and working, and our run schemes, it's not a deal where you memorize who you're blocking. You've got to understand the concepts and what the reactions are to the defense. And I think when people first learn anything, they memorize it first, and then they start to understand it, and then they master it.

Those guys definitely went from memorizing to understanding it, and that will help them play better. Now hopefully as we move forward they're going to be working on mastering it, which will allow them to play even a little bit better.

But Coach Flats has done a great job. Again, you can be the greatest coach in the world, but if you don't have a willing pupil, it's hard. Those kids have done a great job. They've been eager from the first day we got here to learn and to learn how we want to do it here and how we want to play now.

Again, the kids, I give them a lot of credit because they were kind of a group that was -- the perception of that group maybe when I got here wasn't the greatest, and they've battled through adversity. Every time they've been knocked down, they were able to get back up again and keep learning.

So I'm super proud of them and glad to see that people are recognizing that we had the leading rusher in the Big Ten, and he can't do that by himself.

But I'm also excited about where they can go in the future.

Q. I heard you say before earlier, obviously, you're ultimately judged by what you guys do on Saturday. Just wanted to hear your thoughts about your own assessment of how the offense went this season and how you would kind of grade yourself.

KIRK CIARROCCA: I think, first, you look at the season is not over yet, but what I always do every January is I sit down and as I start to watch the cut-ups, I think, did we get these guys to play to their ability level?

To be honest with you, it's never been yes, 100%, but some teams are a little bit -- you get them a little closer to their ability level than other teams. That's really kind of my scoreboard, is how I try to look at things.

I am going to be judged by my superiors based on how many points we score and how many games we win. I know that, but I'm not going to judge myself like that.

So it's really going to be more in January. Did I come here to go 6-6? No. Okay? I'm not fully committed to anything that could be 6-6. I came here to win championships and to build an elite-level offense, and we're not there yet.

Am I proud of the progress we made? Yes, I am. Am I proud of the way the kids have responded? Yeah, I definitely am. But I also know that there's a long way to go to get to where we want to be and where I plan on taking them when I came here.

Better? Coach says it all the time. Better is a relevant term. So we have a long way to go, but I am proud of what they've accomplished. I'm proud of what we accomplished as a team and a program. But at the same time I think there's a lot of meat left on the bone, and I told the guys that after the Maryland game. I'm not -- I'm disappointed, but I'm not discouraged, and I'm excited about where we can go because I see what we can do, and you're going to go to your position meetings right now, and you're going to see it too, how we can get better.

At the end of the day, that's really what chopping is all about, is making sure we get better every single day. That's what we control. And again, Coach has done a great job with the culture here. These kids believe that, and they put the action behind those words every day.

So we'll get there when we get there. Look, I wanted -- I wanted it in the Northwestern game, you know, but it wasn't there. I've been doing this long enough that you see signs at different times that you're moving in the right direction, and there reaches a point where you know, you absolutely know you're moving in the right direction and it's going to happen. You don't know exactly when, though, but you know it's going to happen. It's not if. It's when. When they're ready, it happens.

Q. Can you assess the season performance of Gavin Wimsatt? And where do you think he is in his overall development as a quarterback?

KIRK CIARROCCA: I think Gavin is a guy that's come a long way since January. He has improved every day. I think Gavin, if he was sitting here right now, would tell you that he needs to be more consistent with it, but like any young quarterback, he had some highs, and we had some lows, and then we had where we were just kind of in between that with it.

For me it's normal growing pains that you see in a young quarterback. The important thing is that he just keeps working hard and keeps learning from his mistakes and moving forward. He has a ton of ability. So we just need to see how he continues to grow.

Q. Kirk, Gavin had the lowest completion percentage among qualified FBS quarterbacks this season. Did his accuracy struggles impact you, what you can call, and just did it limit the offense?

KIRK CIARROCCA: I don't know. I don't think that's really relevant. I think what -- offensive football is the ultimate team game, and there's 11 guys that are totally interdependent upon each other. That's why when you see really good offensive football, it's a beautiful thing to watch, but one guy is a little off here or one guy is a little off there, I mean, it can be ugly to watch, hard to watch sometimes.

So I wouldn't say anything is one particular player's fault that we played a certain way or how we did it. I think that as an offensive coordinator I think one of my strengths is I look at what the strengths and weaknesses are of the players that we have and try to mold things around their strengths and limit their weaknesses.

Then you also try to think about what's the whole team? I think Coach is one of the best I've ever been around at being able to assess an opponent and have a picture for how he feels like the game needs to go.

I always relate it to a boxing match. It's going to be a boxing match. How do you want the fight to go in order to give yourself the best chance to win that particular fight? Do you want to pin this guy against the ropes? Do you want to dance around the ring?

I think Coach is as good as anybody I have ever, ever been around, and that was one of the things I learned being with him the first time is the whole idea is to win the game on Saturday. We don't get anything extra for having way more yards than somebody else or anything like that, but it's nice.

Believe me, I'm not giving them back. But we have to score one more point than our opponent. And I wouldn't say it was -- every position, every area, everybody needs to grow for us to get to where we want to, including me and our coaching staff.

We've got a great coaching staff, but we understand that. We're all learning every single day, and that's what's going to help us become the best we can be.

Q. You brought in a lot of wide receivers in this freshman class. We saw Ian Strong and a few guys a little bit, but having to work with them over the course of the season, what kind of role do you expect those guys to play next year in this wide receiver group?

KIRK CIARROCCA: I'm really excited about the young wide receivers we have in our program. I was just talking with Coach Brock the other day about it, and they're at a certain point right now, and they keep getting better and better, and you got to see a couple of them. A couple of them had some injuries as the year went on, or you would have seen them too.

It's where can we get them by next September? That's what our mindset has -- we had a great seven practices, developmental practices leading up to now, and I saw growth there, but we're going to need to sit down in January and really put together a great plan for how can we get them to where we need them to be by September of next year.

But I'm really excited about their talent, excited about their work ethic, and just see where they can go.

I do think we have a chance to have some special players at that position. I'm sure of it. I just don't know when, but we need to be there by September.