On expectations for Utah
“It’s what I see every year from them. They’re very well coached. They play great defense. Very physical. Their offensive line is very well coached. I just see a really tough team. I have a lot of respect for Utah and Coach (Kyle Whittingham) in how he does it. They have a really good football team. They have played really good teams, in Stanford and USC and they’re really good at home. Physical, tough and hard-nosed football team. Since I have been in the league, one of the most consistent teams in the south.”
On instincts in big situations
“There are more factors than just you’re gut. You have to see who you’re playing; you’re opponent and how your performing. Also, you go into a game, you have a set of plays and you don’t have ten fourth down on the line plays. You may only have three and you might have used some earlier in the game, depends on how you feel so you can gauge what the risk is. We went for it on the first, fourth down; it was fourth and one, and I didn’t even hesitate because I knew the play and felt like the play was going to work. It was something that your only going to get one time. That has some factors in it—you’re opponent has a lot to do with it too. The feel for it is where you are in the game. It's not like I make up my mind to be reckless. I didn’t make up my mind before the game to make every decision I made on fourth down. I knew going into the game, if we’re going to beat the defending conference champion and the top-five team in the country, you cant be conservative. It’s a feel thing. It was a lot harder there at the end cause the play that we ran was a play that we had already executed once. We actually didn’t execute the play exactly right. Ceejhay (French-Love) did what he was supposed to do but we didn’t execute the underneath route the way we needed to but it all worked out.”
On gutsy calls earilier in career
“Kind of depends on your team. Each team is a little different in what you can execute. It has a lot to do with how confident you are. You go in the game with a lot of good fourth down calls and even third-down calls. One of the things that I have always believed, is that everybody kind of does the same stuff. Third and three; third and four. So if you do have more of that aggressive mentality, than you can break some of those tendencies, making you a little harder to defend. I probably was, but I haven’t thought about that.”
On performance of the defense
“Yeah, it’s got to be. If you want to win the Pac- 12, you have to have championship defense so that’s the defense you have to play. We have been showing the guys what their potential was and so much of it was there mindset. It was the mindset that our kids took in how they practiced, how they prepared and going out there and performing. I told them that we were going to defer and we want to play defense first. We wanted to go out and play championship defense, so we did. I think it gave us a lot of confidence and show what we were capable of.”
On dialogue with Phil Bennett after the game
“We said good job and now on to Utah. We spend a lot of time together as a staff. It was a team effort, that did a great job. We ran 42 plays on offense right before the half. I am really involved with the management of the time. We need to run this clock out and minimize the snaps. Just playing 20 snaps (on defense) was big. He (Phil Bennett) did a great job. We thought we could do well; we felt good about our guys. After the game, we celebrated the win, but quickly were moving on to Utah. We just talked about the things that we need to accomplish. We took a massive step forward in the confidence we played defense with and we found some things. A big thing was what we did with our personnel. Renell Wren played outstanding and George (Lea) played really well. Our front dominated. It had a lot to do with JoJo (Wicker) at the end. That was a big move for us that helped us. We talk about, what are some things that we did? Where do we need to improve? Where do we need to continue to improve? Are conservations are like that and we have been doing it for a long time, so there is not a lot of emotion for very long cause you just don’t have time, you have to go to the next game.”
On the emotions of the team
“If you’re not going to be an emotional team, you’re not going to be a championship team. It’s a doggie dog world being in this conference and we coached them pretty hard yesterday ( the day before the game). There was a whole bunch of things on film that we could do a whole lot better. We talked about those things and the kids were really good. We have a veteran team too. These guys have been here for a while and they know that, but it doesn’t matter what you did last week, you have to go to the next week. We’re going on the road to Utah which is one of the more challenging places to play in our league; against a team that our guys have a tremendous respect for because of the physicality they play the game with. You have to move onto the next game.”
On the increase of Renell Wren's playing time
“I think early on it was trying to get the best guys on the field and with Krump (Koron) their, and the camp, AJ (Latu) had, we felt AJ has proved that. Leading our team in sacks and up there in tackles for loss. I think it was a more personnel deal more than anything and just his development learning the system; learning what he is doing and being dependable doing it and getting experience. I felt like once we lost Krump (Koron), we started looking at it logically. JoJo (Wicker) has started for two years at end and Tashon (Smallwood) started his entire career at the three. So let's get those guys in their home position and see if we can get somebody to step up in there. He (Renell) really did some things in the game, where he stepped up to a different level and so did George (Lea). I think that was a big deal and as well as some of the things coach Bennett did schematically helped. I think we got a lot better at our stems, what I mean by stems; Disguising, showing, not-coming, coming; pressuring sometimes with four, when it looks like we’re bringing six. We did a lot of things like that that looked really good. Kobe Williams played his best game. I thought he was a dominant corner on the field and that was exciting to watch. Our coverage was really good and we did some different things there that really worked out for us.”
On Michael Sleep-Dalton keeping Dante Pettis out of the game
"Yeah, I think the blocked punt was the play of the game. We said we had to win special teams, and I think Ryan did a great job for us fielding and returning punts. Our coverage did a great job. We kicked a couple of them right at (Pettis) him and one of them was a pretty scary, but I thought our guys did a great job of covering and getting down the field. I thought J’Marcus Rhodes did a great job of covering because (Pettis) he is probably the best punt returner in the league. And then you got this week. Special teams is a big deal this week because (Utah’s special teams) these guys are arguably the best in the league at it, so we found ourselves on special teams and got it back on track. It was positive and we need to have a big week as well.”
On the performance of DJ Calhoun and Christian Sam
"They played great. I think DJ (Calhoun) has really elevated his game tremendously. I think Christian leads the league in tackles and DJ is not far behind. Just getting our defense lined up and making the calls just shows a maturity about those guys. They’re kind of the heart of the defense. We’ve got a lot of experience out there and I think that helps. I think that they’re playing at a high level.”
On DJ Calhoun being in better shape
"He is moving better. I think I’d tell you that he’s in better shape. I think all of our guys are in better shape as we’ve really made an emphasis throughout camp to condition and to do some things a little bit differently. But, we’ve got a lot of experience when you look out onto the field: we’ve got DJ (Calhoun), Christian (Sam), JoJo (Wicker), and Tashon (Smallwood). There’s a lot of experience out on that field and I think that has helped. I thought those guys played really well. Defensively, I don’t think there was anybody that didn’t play well.”
On pressuring the quarterback
"I think the big thing we need to do is own the ball and get takeaways. So, obviously, we need to get more takeaways, but in this past game we got the ball out. We sacked the quarterback and got him to the ground. We had a couple opportunities for interceptions that had to do with pressure and some had to do with coverage. We did confuse the quarterback, so I thought we did make a dramatic improvement there. Then, with the negatives, we want to win negatives. Penalties are the first thing. We want to win penalties and we had one penalty, so I think our guys are buying into the discipline that it takes to do that. Tackles for loss and sacks are going to impact point number one, which is taking the ball from them. Since we lost Crump, we were concerned about that. So, to sack them five times and to have seven or eight TFL’s is something that we need to continue to do. Finally, scoring. There were a lot of fundamental things that we did wrong. We should have scored more points. Even though they’re a really good defense and a really good football team, we could have scored more points. There are lots of things we need to do to get better and we focused on those yesterday. That’s the thing we need to continue to get better on, which is owning the ball and having that be a big plus for us. That’s the key.”
On comparing Utah’s offensive and defensive lines to Washington:
“Statistically, they’re pretty much both one and two in most of the defensive categories. They’re just so big. I think they’re real similar inside. I think their defensive tackles are big, huge, physical guys. I give Washington a lot of credit. Number 50 (Vita Vea) is one of the best defensive tackles in the country and number 99 (Greg Gaines) is not far behind. They’re (Utah) going to have similar top guys. They’re going to be really solid up the middle of their defense, and they just run well. I’ve got a lot of respect for Kyle (Whittingham) because obviously, he’s defensive-minded guy, but every year I’ve played them, you look at the film and say these guys are solid and well-coached. In person, they have always played really hard, which tells you a lot about their training and the type of team they have, so they’re a type of team that’s built to win on defense and special teams. Also, they have a lot of talent on offense. They’ve got really good receivers. I think they’re better at receiver than they were last year. They have three really talented backs. They are very diverse in their skill set and I really think their offensive line stuck out to me. I think they’re really well-coached on their offensive line. I think they had three or four of those guys drafted last year, so I thought sure they won’t be as good as they were as last year on that, but then you watch them and then you see it looks pretty close to the same. So, they’re doing a great job. They’re a really well-coached football team and a team that has a lot of heart and character.”
On how to counter road noise in Salt Lake City
"Well, get everybody to go to Salt Lake City. One of the tough things is playing on the road and winning on the road. Our home field advantage here has everything to do with our crowd. That was an electric atmosphere. It was awesome. Going on the road, you just have to be twice as focused and twice as disciplined. You’ll have a few fans, but it’s pretty much a hostile environment, so you got to be focused. You can’t be distracted. You can’t have things happen momentum-wise that lets the crowd back into the game. Utah is a place that is very difficult to play because their fans do a pretty good job.”
On teaching players discipline to limit penalties:
“Just education. In recruiting, we recruit kids that fit our program; Character, smart, disciplined and tough. They have to value their academics and value being smart, which should be one of their top attributes. We want to be fast, strong, and talented, but it’s more education. We educate our players every single day. We have officials at practice, a lot of people probably don’t do that. We coach it and we harp on it. First, we should go by the rules. Second, it helps us win. My whole deal is that I just don’t want negative plays. I hate working to execute a play, but then someone gets a penalty and it’s called back. I don’t like that, so it’s too hard to get positive plays, for us to be careless. One of the biggest things is staying with the interpretation of the rules because the rules every year are constantly evolving. It’s similar to basketball because if you have the same officials, then you know how they call fouls. Are they going to let them play or are they not going to let them play? There is so much subjectivity in that. For our players to know exactly how there officiating it and exactly what they’re looking for are things that we work really hard on. So most of it is education and you get what you emphasize. That’s why I think it’s just something we constantly have to stay on top of."
“It’s what I see every year from them. They’re very well coached. They play great defense. Very physical. Their offensive line is very well coached. I just see a really tough team. I have a lot of respect for Utah and Coach (Kyle Whittingham) in how he does it. They have a really good football team. They have played really good teams, in Stanford and USC and they’re really good at home. Physical, tough and hard-nosed football team. Since I have been in the league, one of the most consistent teams in the south.”
On instincts in big situations
“There are more factors than just you’re gut. You have to see who you’re playing; you’re opponent and how your performing. Also, you go into a game, you have a set of plays and you don’t have ten fourth down on the line plays. You may only have three and you might have used some earlier in the game, depends on how you feel so you can gauge what the risk is. We went for it on the first, fourth down; it was fourth and one, and I didn’t even hesitate because I knew the play and felt like the play was going to work. It was something that your only going to get one time. That has some factors in it—you’re opponent has a lot to do with it too. The feel for it is where you are in the game. It's not like I make up my mind to be reckless. I didn’t make up my mind before the game to make every decision I made on fourth down. I knew going into the game, if we’re going to beat the defending conference champion and the top-five team in the country, you cant be conservative. It’s a feel thing. It was a lot harder there at the end cause the play that we ran was a play that we had already executed once. We actually didn’t execute the play exactly right. Ceejhay (French-Love) did what he was supposed to do but we didn’t execute the underneath route the way we needed to but it all worked out.”
On gutsy calls earilier in career
“Kind of depends on your team. Each team is a little different in what you can execute. It has a lot to do with how confident you are. You go in the game with a lot of good fourth down calls and even third-down calls. One of the things that I have always believed, is that everybody kind of does the same stuff. Third and three; third and four. So if you do have more of that aggressive mentality, than you can break some of those tendencies, making you a little harder to defend. I probably was, but I haven’t thought about that.”
On performance of the defense
“Yeah, it’s got to be. If you want to win the Pac- 12, you have to have championship defense so that’s the defense you have to play. We have been showing the guys what their potential was and so much of it was there mindset. It was the mindset that our kids took in how they practiced, how they prepared and going out there and performing. I told them that we were going to defer and we want to play defense first. We wanted to go out and play championship defense, so we did. I think it gave us a lot of confidence and show what we were capable of.”
On dialogue with Phil Bennett after the game
“We said good job and now on to Utah. We spend a lot of time together as a staff. It was a team effort, that did a great job. We ran 42 plays on offense right before the half. I am really involved with the management of the time. We need to run this clock out and minimize the snaps. Just playing 20 snaps (on defense) was big. He (Phil Bennett) did a great job. We thought we could do well; we felt good about our guys. After the game, we celebrated the win, but quickly were moving on to Utah. We just talked about the things that we need to accomplish. We took a massive step forward in the confidence we played defense with and we found some things. A big thing was what we did with our personnel. Renell Wren played outstanding and George (Lea) played really well. Our front dominated. It had a lot to do with JoJo (Wicker) at the end. That was a big move for us that helped us. We talk about, what are some things that we did? Where do we need to improve? Where do we need to continue to improve? Are conservations are like that and we have been doing it for a long time, so there is not a lot of emotion for very long cause you just don’t have time, you have to go to the next game.”
On the emotions of the team
“If you’re not going to be an emotional team, you’re not going to be a championship team. It’s a doggie dog world being in this conference and we coached them pretty hard yesterday ( the day before the game). There was a whole bunch of things on film that we could do a whole lot better. We talked about those things and the kids were really good. We have a veteran team too. These guys have been here for a while and they know that, but it doesn’t matter what you did last week, you have to go to the next week. We’re going on the road to Utah which is one of the more challenging places to play in our league; against a team that our guys have a tremendous respect for because of the physicality they play the game with. You have to move onto the next game.”
On the increase of Renell Wren's playing time
“I think early on it was trying to get the best guys on the field and with Krump (Koron) their, and the camp, AJ (Latu) had, we felt AJ has proved that. Leading our team in sacks and up there in tackles for loss. I think it was a more personnel deal more than anything and just his development learning the system; learning what he is doing and being dependable doing it and getting experience. I felt like once we lost Krump (Koron), we started looking at it logically. JoJo (Wicker) has started for two years at end and Tashon (Smallwood) started his entire career at the three. So let's get those guys in their home position and see if we can get somebody to step up in there. He (Renell) really did some things in the game, where he stepped up to a different level and so did George (Lea). I think that was a big deal and as well as some of the things coach Bennett did schematically helped. I think we got a lot better at our stems, what I mean by stems; Disguising, showing, not-coming, coming; pressuring sometimes with four, when it looks like we’re bringing six. We did a lot of things like that that looked really good. Kobe Williams played his best game. I thought he was a dominant corner on the field and that was exciting to watch. Our coverage was really good and we did some different things there that really worked out for us.”
On Michael Sleep-Dalton keeping Dante Pettis out of the game
"Yeah, I think the blocked punt was the play of the game. We said we had to win special teams, and I think Ryan did a great job for us fielding and returning punts. Our coverage did a great job. We kicked a couple of them right at (Pettis) him and one of them was a pretty scary, but I thought our guys did a great job of covering and getting down the field. I thought J’Marcus Rhodes did a great job of covering because (Pettis) he is probably the best punt returner in the league. And then you got this week. Special teams is a big deal this week because (Utah’s special teams) these guys are arguably the best in the league at it, so we found ourselves on special teams and got it back on track. It was positive and we need to have a big week as well.”
On the performance of DJ Calhoun and Christian Sam
"They played great. I think DJ (Calhoun) has really elevated his game tremendously. I think Christian leads the league in tackles and DJ is not far behind. Just getting our defense lined up and making the calls just shows a maturity about those guys. They’re kind of the heart of the defense. We’ve got a lot of experience out there and I think that helps. I think that they’re playing at a high level.”
On DJ Calhoun being in better shape
"He is moving better. I think I’d tell you that he’s in better shape. I think all of our guys are in better shape as we’ve really made an emphasis throughout camp to condition and to do some things a little bit differently. But, we’ve got a lot of experience when you look out onto the field: we’ve got DJ (Calhoun), Christian (Sam), JoJo (Wicker), and Tashon (Smallwood). There’s a lot of experience out on that field and I think that has helped. I thought those guys played really well. Defensively, I don’t think there was anybody that didn’t play well.”
On pressuring the quarterback
"I think the big thing we need to do is own the ball and get takeaways. So, obviously, we need to get more takeaways, but in this past game we got the ball out. We sacked the quarterback and got him to the ground. We had a couple opportunities for interceptions that had to do with pressure and some had to do with coverage. We did confuse the quarterback, so I thought we did make a dramatic improvement there. Then, with the negatives, we want to win negatives. Penalties are the first thing. We want to win penalties and we had one penalty, so I think our guys are buying into the discipline that it takes to do that. Tackles for loss and sacks are going to impact point number one, which is taking the ball from them. Since we lost Crump, we were concerned about that. So, to sack them five times and to have seven or eight TFL’s is something that we need to continue to do. Finally, scoring. There were a lot of fundamental things that we did wrong. We should have scored more points. Even though they’re a really good defense and a really good football team, we could have scored more points. There are lots of things we need to do to get better and we focused on those yesterday. That’s the thing we need to continue to get better on, which is owning the ball and having that be a big plus for us. That’s the key.”
On comparing Utah’s offensive and defensive lines to Washington:
“Statistically, they’re pretty much both one and two in most of the defensive categories. They’re just so big. I think they’re real similar inside. I think their defensive tackles are big, huge, physical guys. I give Washington a lot of credit. Number 50 (Vita Vea) is one of the best defensive tackles in the country and number 99 (Greg Gaines) is not far behind. They’re (Utah) going to have similar top guys. They’re going to be really solid up the middle of their defense, and they just run well. I’ve got a lot of respect for Kyle (Whittingham) because obviously, he’s defensive-minded guy, but every year I’ve played them, you look at the film and say these guys are solid and well-coached. In person, they have always played really hard, which tells you a lot about their training and the type of team they have, so they’re a type of team that’s built to win on defense and special teams. Also, they have a lot of talent on offense. They’ve got really good receivers. I think they’re better at receiver than they were last year. They have three really talented backs. They are very diverse in their skill set and I really think their offensive line stuck out to me. I think they’re really well-coached on their offensive line. I think they had three or four of those guys drafted last year, so I thought sure they won’t be as good as they were as last year on that, but then you watch them and then you see it looks pretty close to the same. So, they’re doing a great job. They’re a really well-coached football team and a team that has a lot of heart and character.”
On how to counter road noise in Salt Lake City
"Well, get everybody to go to Salt Lake City. One of the tough things is playing on the road and winning on the road. Our home field advantage here has everything to do with our crowd. That was an electric atmosphere. It was awesome. Going on the road, you just have to be twice as focused and twice as disciplined. You’ll have a few fans, but it’s pretty much a hostile environment, so you got to be focused. You can’t be distracted. You can’t have things happen momentum-wise that lets the crowd back into the game. Utah is a place that is very difficult to play because their fans do a pretty good job.”
On teaching players discipline to limit penalties:
“Just education. In recruiting, we recruit kids that fit our program; Character, smart, disciplined and tough. They have to value their academics and value being smart, which should be one of their top attributes. We want to be fast, strong, and talented, but it’s more education. We educate our players every single day. We have officials at practice, a lot of people probably don’t do that. We coach it and we harp on it. First, we should go by the rules. Second, it helps us win. My whole deal is that I just don’t want negative plays. I hate working to execute a play, but then someone gets a penalty and it’s called back. I don’t like that, so it’s too hard to get positive plays, for us to be careless. One of the biggest things is staying with the interpretation of the rules because the rules every year are constantly evolving. It’s similar to basketball because if you have the same officials, then you know how they call fouls. Are they going to let them play or are they not going to let them play? There is so much subjectivity in that. For our players to know exactly how there officiating it and exactly what they’re looking for are things that we work really hard on. So most of it is education and you get what you emphasize. That’s why I think it’s just something we constantly have to stay on top of."