Sept. 15, 2008

General:

“Not a lot to report. We had three practices last week along with some conditioning. Our goal last week was to, obviously, just improve, which I felt like we had three pretty good practices for a bye week. I gave our players the weekend off. We came in yesterday and had a game plan done on Sunday, and now we’re going to gain an extra day today as far as practice goes for our preparation for the University of Houston. We’re going to go a little early today; we’re going to go at 2:30. Normally we don’t practice on Mondays, but we’re trying to steal an extra practice this week. But class conflicts dictate that we get a lot of guys out of here before 5, so we’ll do that. It’s an exciting time here on campus with the festivities Friday marking the ground breaking, which we’ve already started, on some facilities which we’ve said time and time again are needed, but will really help us in the future with our football program and our entire athletic department. Then also with the Hall of Fame weekend honoring some great athletes at Colorado State, in particular Anthoney Hill, who is an assistant on our staff, and will go in as a member of our football team who led us to the ’94 (conference) championship. So, some neat things happening this weekend.”

“You always gain by evaluating their personnel on both sides of the ball. From their defensive standpoint, our offensive standpoint, there’s only so much comparison that you can make in the styles of offense. It’s a good tape to look at because you can see how guys line up and how they play in space and those sort of things.”

On the Houston offense:

“They’re a dangerous offense. They’re averaging 40 points a game and over 500 yards. In this type of scheme, if you have an experienced quarterback, which this guy (Case Keenum) is. He makes them that much more dangerous. But he’s got some people to throw to, they’re extremely fast and they look talented at the skill positions. You know he’s well coached and doing a nice job when they put it up that many times (102) and he’s only thrown one interception. So we’re going to have to be on our game defensively.”

On whether Keenum is one of the most dangerous quarterbacks in the spread offense, as he is also their leading rusher

“Yeah, I think any time that guy can carry the ball it makes it difficult. But I think the nature of that offense is just making you have to defend the entire football field. They just spread you all over the place rather than just playing in between the numbers or the hash and the numbers, you have to make tackles all over the field. So they distribute the ball pretty good, spread the field pretty good, it really makes you have to play athletically on defense and tackle in the open field.”

On whether this is a different Houston team than last year

“I didn’t spend as much time on them in the offseason as far as personnel, knowing this was going to be a different coaching staff. But Houston’s one of those teams. Since I’ve been in college football, with the population base down there, it kind of reminds me of San Diego State, they’re always going to have good athletes and good team speed.”

On coaching against friend and former roommate John Skladany, the UH defensive coordinator:

“He’s a good friend of mine. I’ve got all the respect in the world for him, certainly as a football coach. He was part of that, I don’t know if you call it rebuilding or resurging or whatever that they did at Iowa State -- they did a tremendous job there -- and he was a big part of that as their defensive coordinator. He was on Sonny’s (Lubick) original staff here with Larry (Kerr), so I know John real well. Tremendous person, great family, and obviously a very good coach. Anytime you can compete against guys like that, it’s fun. He’s one of the good guys in coaching. Other than this Saturday, I wish him the best of luck.”

On their arrangement at Colorado State and whether he can take anything away from that for this game:

“When we first got here, he and I were over in student housing for, it might have been, a whole semester. I just know him as a football coach, when he was here and his philosophy and then having watched him at Iowa State. They’re similar to what Larry (Kerr) does here, it’s a similar scheme. There are some significant differences, but as a starting point they’re very similar.”

On whether Houston being out of its routine is going to be an advantage Saturday:

“The extra day (of practice) certainly helps us. But, turning the focus back on their situation, first of all, on behalf of our football program and athletic department, I wish them all the best with their situation with regard to the weather down there. Hopefully, their families and their homes and everybody are OK and it’s not too big on the road back to normalcy for them. I’m sure that’s first and foremost on their mind. Anytime you have to travel, and I’m sure every football coach in America would rather be at home, but then when you do have to travel, you’d like it to be as smooth as you can. In fact, because of Paul (Kowalczyk) and our administrators here, we’ve done some things with our travel that I think are going to be improvements. But they’re dealt a difficult situation and you just wish the best for their families, homes, and everything, and then the game is kind of secondary. But they’ll find a way to come in here prepared, I’m sure.”

On whether the difficult situation will bond the Houston team:

“Yeah, it’s like anything – half empty, half full. You can find positives or negatives with every situation. And sometimes some teams play better on the road. But their situation doesn’t affect the way we prepare or, in our minds, give us any advantage. They’re coming in here and they’re favored. They’ve got good athletes, and we’re trying to get better every time we go out there. It’s going to take our best effort to be in this football game.”

On his expectations coming out of a bye week:

“Like I said last week, a bye with a veteran football team might be better off a little farther down the road in our schedule. With this young of a football team, I didn’t mind it at all because it gave us some extra practice time. Our expectations are still the same, just to get better every time we go out onto the football field. I do think we’re going to end up being a pretty good team, but we’ve still got to fight through the process and develop fast in certain areas.”

On whether they focused on any specific fundamentals in practice last week:

“It was more situational. I hired a good staff and I think we’re fundamentally fairly sound. The way we practice kind of lends itself to that as well. But we did hammer our third-down situation defensively. We need to improve there. We got to get off the field a little bit better than what we’re doing on third down. Offensively, we spent a lot of time in the red zone, more just to develop a comfort zone with our quarterback and our receivers down there with what we feel like we can do and with what I’m comfortable calling.”

On the injury situation after the week off:

“I think it helped a lot of people like Mike Sisson. There’s some guys, like Elijah-Blu (Smith), that are starting to get back on the field. There are some guys that are still not 100 percent, like Shelley Smith, that we anticipate playing and being 100 percent. But it helped some. We still got some nagging little things like any football team at this point in the season.”

On K Jason Smith:

“He’s going to see the doctor today and I think today or tomorrow we’re going to get a good feel for where he’s at.”

On the Cougars’ defensive speed and the problems it could pose to the CSU offense:

“Well, anytime a defense can run, they’re going to rush the passer well. When they do play zone defense they’re going to close cushions faster than teams that don’t have speed. I was really impressed with both their safeties. The way John’s (Skladany) doing it, he’s using their safeties in run support and both those guys cover a lot of ground, tackle well, and appear to be very good players.”

On whether CSU will call more runs to control the ball in attempt to keep the UH offense off the field:

“Well, maybe not run the ball, but definitely try and keep it away from them is certainly a good thing to do with their offense. Any time an offense is as productive as they are, you’d like to have the ball in your hands so that your defense isn’t playing 80 snaps a game against them. Whatever we have to do to move the football we’ll do, and hopefully we’ll control our share of the time clock with the ball in our hands.”

On the difficulty of getting to such a mobile quarterback in the spread offense:

“Well, if a guy’s got a quick release and a guy is in a fairly rhythmic pass offense, it’s more difficult. Certainly you’d like to go after those guys that hold on to the ball and are always trying to get it down the field. But when they throw on rhythm, and you can tell they’re well coached in terms of coordinating their drop with the route depth, you got to be good to get there. But that is where it starts, because if you can just somehow, some way get a guy out of rhythm with a pass rush, that’s the starting point for playing these type of teams. And facts aren’t always an indication of you doing that. I’m telling you, I stood back there as a quarterback. Sometimes it’s just a matter of inches, but if you can push a guard back just 4-6 inches into a quarterback, you’re not getting there, but it’s a little tougher to see over, it’s a little tougher to step and throw, and those type of things. So, sometimes just the push and the presence of your rush is as important as getting there.”

On whether he is antsy to get the Mountain West portion of the schedule:

“Yes and no. Obviously our conference schedule is important, but I’m antsy just to get to practice today and see if we can’t get a little better in practice and keep going in the right direction.”

On the strength of the MWC after going 4-0 against the Pac-10 this weekend

“I’ve said it all along: This is an extremely talented league, and I think the people that have to schedule for these teams in this league will tell you it’s not easy to go out and get a game. I think it’s well known out there how good Mountain West football is.”

On what stood out most during the bye week:

“I think I said it after our very first Wednesday practice: I was pleased with just how precise and how well we practiced on Wednesday after having a few days off. Normally, even in the NFL where I’ve been, when you take more than your routine number of days off and try to come back, sometimes you got to knock a little rust off. We weren’t perfect by any means, but I was pleased. I’ve said it all along, it started last February with the way we trained. I like our kids and I like our work ethic and I think they’re very willing to work and do what you ask of them. This has been so far just really a fun offseason and season to coach. I like going into our meetings with the kids, I like being around them because they’re so willing. And I think with that and with the coaches we have on board, we’re going to keep getting better. And as long as we keep getting better, everything eventually takes care of itself.”

On any lineup changes for this week:

“Not off hand, although every job is always open. Every day is a job interview, right? You either get it done or we put somebody else in there.”