Quotes from head coach Todd Graham on September 4, 2017.
Opening statement…
It was a special week for us and a special week for me because of my friend Frank Kush. We are honoring the whole season with Sun Devil Tough. This week we will have the Sun Burst on the helmet and this will be the game that we recognize coach Kush. The greatest coach to ever coach here. He meant so much in so many different ways to this university. It is a special week for our guys. Getting prepared to go and make it a special one for us.
On the best memories of Frank Kush…
I had a little bit of a history there. When I was at Allen High School. My superintendent left Allen in ‘95 or ’96 and she came to Scottsdale. She said, “Hey you should come out here.” I came out for a trip and she said, “if you come out I have a little surprise for you.” I guess she knew coach. I got to come out and tour the facilities here as a high school coach. I got to meet Coach Kush. And obviously his reputation is being so tough and hard, but he was so gracious. Just sitting there, I even took a picture with him. Not knowing, years later I would be the head coach here.
He reminds me a lot of the same style coaches; Buddy Copeland who was the guy who changed my life, who was very similar. I just enjoyed talking to him; enjoyed having coffee with him. I was fascinated by how sharp he was. It was one of the last things he held on to. He just reminded me of the type of men that influenced my life and the reason why I am so blessed, getting to do what I get to do today cause guys like Coach Kush. I really connected with him that way. I liked it because you don’t have to worry about what he thought. He would tell you—exactly. I like people like that.
The world is different today. He was just honorable as coach. A guy that was very similar to a lot of the guys who influenced my life. My coaches were my dad. That is really why he meant a lot to me and I cherished the opportunities to get around him. People don’t realize, when he was sick he would travel to away games. He didn’t say much when we did well or win. Whenever we didn’t do well or win than he would say stuff...he was always he didn’t say much to me you know when we did well and win, but when we didn’t do well or whatever, he would say stuff. He was just different than everybody else because he understood. I guess being a coach, he understood how it was. It wasn’t warm and fuzzy stuff. It was also encouragement, and it made me feel good that I think he was pleased in how we did things. He knew we cared about the players and doing it the right way. In this day of age, it is true discipline and true toughness, accountability, those types of things. Things that are so very important to educational process.
On San Diego State’s rushing game?
It’s just old school, really similar to the kind of blend between what Stanford and what Boise has done in the past. So kind of a blend between Stanford and Washington’s power game when they used to run, they were Boise more in lines in what Stanford does. They are going to ground and pound, run play action passes and have had great tailbacks. They have great blocking backs. Their fullback is a blocker big guy, very physical, and they are a very good football team, with back-to-back 11-win seasons. They have been the conference champions two years in a row. They dominated Houston last year in the bowl game, and Houston beat Oklahoma and Florida State. This is, on the West Coast, a team that has really achieved. I know people talk about Boise State, but San Diego State has been very consistent. Their m.o. is they are going to play great defense, they are going to do a good job at special teams and they are going to pound the football. They’re obviously a big time challenge for us and very well coached. I know Coach Long and competed against him. I used to be an on stat guy and run the simmer defense, so very well coached football team. You look at defense, you look at special teams, and offense, and they know what their identity is. They’re pretty ingrained in it and do a great job at it.
On Coach Long’s defensive style…
I obviously like it. I’ve studied a lot of whenever he and I was doing it when I was at West Virginia and Tulsa. There weren’t many people doing it. There still aren’t. He’s involved, so you are going to see him. Where we used to always be just three down, he’s got some 4 down that he’ll do. Basically, attacking every down. They are going to create negatives. They have 48 interceptions, or something like that in two years. That is our whole deal, four scenarios. It’s all about creating exits, and they’ve been doing it a while so they understand what they’re doing and they do a good job with it. I like what they do.
On the run defense in the first game…
Until you get out there the first time you don’t know how you’re going to be. We fit and did some really nice things. I thought we dominated the line of scrimmage. We had some mistakes and some mental mistakes and things like that, we had to add one long run about 30 yards that was late. Like I said I thought the first and the third quarters were really fitted well. We’re capable of doing a good job. They’re going to pop a run. People are going to pop a run. (We need to) get it down. That’s the thing we can correct - the angle of the safety, make sure they’re shuffling along the backside and things like that. We definitely need to improve, but I like the fact that we’ve made them earn things. And really, I never felt like the game was out of hand, other than I’d like to have had a bigger lead at halftime, but I thought after the third quarter the game was pretty much at hand. After last night [referencing UCLA vs TA&M] I don’t know how I’ll feel about that. I think we have the capabilities of being a solid run defense, we just have things we need to improve on. You don’t know until you go out there and play. Lots of good things, lots of things we need to work on getting better at and the key is to get better and to come out and be markedly better in week two.
On if he believes in the saying that the biggest improvement is from week one to week two…
No. I just think you get better every day. I don’t know - if you bank it on that, good luck. Here’s why people say that - there is something to it - because what happens is you go against each other so long, and you can’t help be competitive, so you start adapting and doing things to be successful against your own group, and then you go out and somebody does something that you hadn’t seen. That’s what happens in early weeks. And as well, you’ll see people go out and be 6-1, 5-1, and then they struggle down the stretch because it’s too scheme-driven. Because you’re just not going to trick people. You can only come up with so many trick plays. You have to get good at what you’re doing, have your identity and establish it. But there’s some merit to that but I think that’s why - you say these are some things you need to work on it and then I think you get a lot better. So you kind of get a gauge of where you’re at.
On the strength and weaknesses are of Christian Chapman, the SDSU quarterback…
I think he’s a really solid operator. He’s a guy that manages the system and understands what they’re doing. I think he does a solid job, he’s a good quarterback. They are a tailback driven offense, they’re going to hand the football off and pound it, and he does a great job with play fakes, he does a great job when the ball’s not in his hand carrying out his fakes and those types of things. He’s a solid player and he does a good job running their offense. He’s a championship quarterback.
On if the biggest improvement with his teams is week one to week two…
The key to winning is improvement every week. It can be hard to win no matter who you’re playing. You look and watch throughout, and everything everybody thought they go I forgot how that was. And then, those things will settle down as you get those things corrected that you can get corrected. Obviously staying healthy is a big part of it because you can’t get better if you aren’t practicing and working on those things. I think you’ll see a lot of improvement on things, there’s lots of things we can improve upon from week one to week two. There’s a lot of things we can fix, work on and get better at. It’s not just about performance.”
On playing the same 11 on defense….
“We’ve done it quite a bit, we’re going to rotate and play people and all that stuff. Part of that is having a mindset. Will (Will Sutton, DT), Carl (Carl Bradford, LB), Jaxon (Jaxon Hood, DT) and Davon (Davon Coleman, DE), those four guys played just about every snap in 2012/13. When we played Arizona, Will played 97 snaps. Not many people can do that, but one of the things you have to be able to do because of a no punter is you have to be able to play. We would like to do that, and we have guys that can do that, and we will rotate. When people are going fast, it’s hard to sub, but we want to get guys who can play 10, 15. We have guys that can do that for sure, and it’s not that we don’t believe in them, coach wanted to make a statement with his guys and that’s what we did. What was impressive is that I didn’t see a lot of fatigue. We had guys playing hard and I think all four of our defensive linemen are in the top for TFLs, sacks and active. We’ll rotate guys, play guys, mix guys in stuff like that, but what you ideally want to have are three tackles, three ends. That doesn’t mean they all play equal time. I don’t see us taking and subbing out, taking one out and subbing two guys in there, I think it’ll be more of a rotation there. I got a great belief in Renell (Renell Wren, DL) and George (George Lea, DL), I think those guys will start rotating in there. Corey Smith (OL) has been hurt, slowing his development down and his ability to help us right now, he wasn’t available for this game because of injury. I think we have some guys who can come on, Abe (Abraham) Thompson had a really good camp, but (Koron) Crump isn’t a guy who has to rest for many plays. You have to put your best guys on the field. It’s like with our receivers, Ryan (Newsome) couldn’t play and we had a couple guys with injuries and hurt there. We’re trying to keep them fresh down the stretch. Where that ends up, who we play, we ended up playing a few more running backs than we did think there, but we want to be able to sub those guys according to their reps. You want to get the best guys on the field, and the reps will be determined by that. That’s not something we haven’t done before. We haven’t subbed a linebacker or a defensive back out period. Nobody really does that. Defensive linemen, we’ll roll those guys a bit and start to work those other guys in there.
On Coach Bennett wanting to make a statement on toughness…
Some guys, that might be the case. He runs the personnel over there. He runs the defense. I’ve instilled and trusted him in doing that. He can do whatever he wants to. One of the things I think we’ve established is toughness, discipline, and accountability for things. Our standards, like I say, are different from other people’s standards. There are guys…you have to earn the right to speak for the team, earn the right to represent the team, and earn the right to step on the field and get across the white line. I think that might be a little part of the thinking.
On (Mitchell) Fraboni and (Brady) White as the captains at the coin toss…
They’ll do that all year. One, being honest, for the first game with the new tradition with the Tillman statue, I wanted the captains to be in with the team. I wanted them to get the opportunity to do that. Then, obviously, Brady is an extremely smart, intelligent guy. Sharp. I don’t like to have a lot of different guys doing the coin toss so I kind of selected him to do it for me. Fraboni is just a guy in the same regard. They’re two of our smarter guys out there and can’t mess up that coin toss. They have it down pretty good. That doesn’t mean our captains had the options to go out with them, but they’re handling that for me. The captains could have gone out if they wanted to.
On the experience coming out of the Tillman tunnel for the first time
It was pretty cool. I think it was a neat deal. Pretty special. I think it s one of the most unique run-throughs in the country, or run-outs. The cool thing that you guys don’t get to see is that we have the big screen in the locker room. And, believe it or not, I don’t give a very long pregame talk. It’s about 30 seconds. We did a little talk and for the last three minutes in the locker room, we have this video of Pat (Tillman) doing his thing. It was interesting to watch our players…he just has a way without saying anything to ignite people. We were running basically his highlights, his passionate highlights, for three minutes. As they came on, you see guys stand up and then there’d be more guys standing up and guys moving around, “ooh-ing” and “aah-ing” and it was pretty cool. Obviously, when we break it down we come out of the tunnel and when you walk out of the tunnel, there are the former players that line the tunnel. It’s pretty cool. Coming out, it was pretty cool. That tradition will be there for a very long time and very deservingly.
On what he thought about Coach Napier’s offense plan…
Both coordinators did what they needed to do to win the game. There’s obviously things we need to do to improve on and get better on. Our number one objective is to be a disciplined football team and a team that plays with great discipline. That starts with owning the ball. We had 100% ball security. We had, really, +3 if you take the interception and the two-point play. We accomplished one of the most important goals. Secondly, we were 50% on TFLs (tackles-for-loss), sacks and negatives. Also, we had no penalties on defense, no penalties on special teams and we had one penalty on offense that cost us 30 yards. See, that one is a big penalty. From a discipline standpoint, both of our guys have command of their guys and are doing a great job. There’s a lot of things, offensively, that when you go out there, you see that are new. I thought (Coach Napier) did a really good job at half time of going back in. Coach Napier has been a guy in the box most of the time. On the field, it’s a little bit different. It’s a little harder to see. Obviously, you could tell in the third quarter he did a good job. He made some good adjustments and made a great call. We had like three or four times we had been second and 10. It was like the four previous series’ we had been second and 10. He came out and took a shot. Even when he did it, he said, “Hey, I’m going to come out and take a shot right here. I need to take a shot.” I told him to go with his gut. He’s a very hard worker. He’s very intelligent. For his first time calling plays in a while, I thought he did a nice job.
Opening statement…
It was a special week for us and a special week for me because of my friend Frank Kush. We are honoring the whole season with Sun Devil Tough. This week we will have the Sun Burst on the helmet and this will be the game that we recognize coach Kush. The greatest coach to ever coach here. He meant so much in so many different ways to this university. It is a special week for our guys. Getting prepared to go and make it a special one for us.
On the best memories of Frank Kush…
I had a little bit of a history there. When I was at Allen High School. My superintendent left Allen in ‘95 or ’96 and she came to Scottsdale. She said, “Hey you should come out here.” I came out for a trip and she said, “if you come out I have a little surprise for you.” I guess she knew coach. I got to come out and tour the facilities here as a high school coach. I got to meet Coach Kush. And obviously his reputation is being so tough and hard, but he was so gracious. Just sitting there, I even took a picture with him. Not knowing, years later I would be the head coach here.
He reminds me a lot of the same style coaches; Buddy Copeland who was the guy who changed my life, who was very similar. I just enjoyed talking to him; enjoyed having coffee with him. I was fascinated by how sharp he was. It was one of the last things he held on to. He just reminded me of the type of men that influenced my life and the reason why I am so blessed, getting to do what I get to do today cause guys like Coach Kush. I really connected with him that way. I liked it because you don’t have to worry about what he thought. He would tell you—exactly. I like people like that.
The world is different today. He was just honorable as coach. A guy that was very similar to a lot of the guys who influenced my life. My coaches were my dad. That is really why he meant a lot to me and I cherished the opportunities to get around him. People don’t realize, when he was sick he would travel to away games. He didn’t say much when we did well or win. Whenever we didn’t do well or win than he would say stuff...he was always he didn’t say much to me you know when we did well and win, but when we didn’t do well or whatever, he would say stuff. He was just different than everybody else because he understood. I guess being a coach, he understood how it was. It wasn’t warm and fuzzy stuff. It was also encouragement, and it made me feel good that I think he was pleased in how we did things. He knew we cared about the players and doing it the right way. In this day of age, it is true discipline and true toughness, accountability, those types of things. Things that are so very important to educational process.
On San Diego State’s rushing game?
It’s just old school, really similar to the kind of blend between what Stanford and what Boise has done in the past. So kind of a blend between Stanford and Washington’s power game when they used to run, they were Boise more in lines in what Stanford does. They are going to ground and pound, run play action passes and have had great tailbacks. They have great blocking backs. Their fullback is a blocker big guy, very physical, and they are a very good football team, with back-to-back 11-win seasons. They have been the conference champions two years in a row. They dominated Houston last year in the bowl game, and Houston beat Oklahoma and Florida State. This is, on the West Coast, a team that has really achieved. I know people talk about Boise State, but San Diego State has been very consistent. Their m.o. is they are going to play great defense, they are going to do a good job at special teams and they are going to pound the football. They’re obviously a big time challenge for us and very well coached. I know Coach Long and competed against him. I used to be an on stat guy and run the simmer defense, so very well coached football team. You look at defense, you look at special teams, and offense, and they know what their identity is. They’re pretty ingrained in it and do a great job at it.
On Coach Long’s defensive style…
I obviously like it. I’ve studied a lot of whenever he and I was doing it when I was at West Virginia and Tulsa. There weren’t many people doing it. There still aren’t. He’s involved, so you are going to see him. Where we used to always be just three down, he’s got some 4 down that he’ll do. Basically, attacking every down. They are going to create negatives. They have 48 interceptions, or something like that in two years. That is our whole deal, four scenarios. It’s all about creating exits, and they’ve been doing it a while so they understand what they’re doing and they do a good job with it. I like what they do.
On the run defense in the first game…
Until you get out there the first time you don’t know how you’re going to be. We fit and did some really nice things. I thought we dominated the line of scrimmage. We had some mistakes and some mental mistakes and things like that, we had to add one long run about 30 yards that was late. Like I said I thought the first and the third quarters were really fitted well. We’re capable of doing a good job. They’re going to pop a run. People are going to pop a run. (We need to) get it down. That’s the thing we can correct - the angle of the safety, make sure they’re shuffling along the backside and things like that. We definitely need to improve, but I like the fact that we’ve made them earn things. And really, I never felt like the game was out of hand, other than I’d like to have had a bigger lead at halftime, but I thought after the third quarter the game was pretty much at hand. After last night [referencing UCLA vs TA&M] I don’t know how I’ll feel about that. I think we have the capabilities of being a solid run defense, we just have things we need to improve on. You don’t know until you go out there and play. Lots of good things, lots of things we need to work on getting better at and the key is to get better and to come out and be markedly better in week two.
On if he believes in the saying that the biggest improvement is from week one to week two…
No. I just think you get better every day. I don’t know - if you bank it on that, good luck. Here’s why people say that - there is something to it - because what happens is you go against each other so long, and you can’t help be competitive, so you start adapting and doing things to be successful against your own group, and then you go out and somebody does something that you hadn’t seen. That’s what happens in early weeks. And as well, you’ll see people go out and be 6-1, 5-1, and then they struggle down the stretch because it’s too scheme-driven. Because you’re just not going to trick people. You can only come up with so many trick plays. You have to get good at what you’re doing, have your identity and establish it. But there’s some merit to that but I think that’s why - you say these are some things you need to work on it and then I think you get a lot better. So you kind of get a gauge of where you’re at.
On the strength and weaknesses are of Christian Chapman, the SDSU quarterback…
I think he’s a really solid operator. He’s a guy that manages the system and understands what they’re doing. I think he does a solid job, he’s a good quarterback. They are a tailback driven offense, they’re going to hand the football off and pound it, and he does a great job with play fakes, he does a great job when the ball’s not in his hand carrying out his fakes and those types of things. He’s a solid player and he does a good job running their offense. He’s a championship quarterback.
On if the biggest improvement with his teams is week one to week two…
The key to winning is improvement every week. It can be hard to win no matter who you’re playing. You look and watch throughout, and everything everybody thought they go I forgot how that was. And then, those things will settle down as you get those things corrected that you can get corrected. Obviously staying healthy is a big part of it because you can’t get better if you aren’t practicing and working on those things. I think you’ll see a lot of improvement on things, there’s lots of things we can improve upon from week one to week two. There’s a lot of things we can fix, work on and get better at. It’s not just about performance.”
On playing the same 11 on defense….
“We’ve done it quite a bit, we’re going to rotate and play people and all that stuff. Part of that is having a mindset. Will (Will Sutton, DT), Carl (Carl Bradford, LB), Jaxon (Jaxon Hood, DT) and Davon (Davon Coleman, DE), those four guys played just about every snap in 2012/13. When we played Arizona, Will played 97 snaps. Not many people can do that, but one of the things you have to be able to do because of a no punter is you have to be able to play. We would like to do that, and we have guys that can do that, and we will rotate. When people are going fast, it’s hard to sub, but we want to get guys who can play 10, 15. We have guys that can do that for sure, and it’s not that we don’t believe in them, coach wanted to make a statement with his guys and that’s what we did. What was impressive is that I didn’t see a lot of fatigue. We had guys playing hard and I think all four of our defensive linemen are in the top for TFLs, sacks and active. We’ll rotate guys, play guys, mix guys in stuff like that, but what you ideally want to have are three tackles, three ends. That doesn’t mean they all play equal time. I don’t see us taking and subbing out, taking one out and subbing two guys in there, I think it’ll be more of a rotation there. I got a great belief in Renell (Renell Wren, DL) and George (George Lea, DL), I think those guys will start rotating in there. Corey Smith (OL) has been hurt, slowing his development down and his ability to help us right now, he wasn’t available for this game because of injury. I think we have some guys who can come on, Abe (Abraham) Thompson had a really good camp, but (Koron) Crump isn’t a guy who has to rest for many plays. You have to put your best guys on the field. It’s like with our receivers, Ryan (Newsome) couldn’t play and we had a couple guys with injuries and hurt there. We’re trying to keep them fresh down the stretch. Where that ends up, who we play, we ended up playing a few more running backs than we did think there, but we want to be able to sub those guys according to their reps. You want to get the best guys on the field, and the reps will be determined by that. That’s not something we haven’t done before. We haven’t subbed a linebacker or a defensive back out period. Nobody really does that. Defensive linemen, we’ll roll those guys a bit and start to work those other guys in there.
On Coach Bennett wanting to make a statement on toughness…
Some guys, that might be the case. He runs the personnel over there. He runs the defense. I’ve instilled and trusted him in doing that. He can do whatever he wants to. One of the things I think we’ve established is toughness, discipline, and accountability for things. Our standards, like I say, are different from other people’s standards. There are guys…you have to earn the right to speak for the team, earn the right to represent the team, and earn the right to step on the field and get across the white line. I think that might be a little part of the thinking.
On (Mitchell) Fraboni and (Brady) White as the captains at the coin toss…
They’ll do that all year. One, being honest, for the first game with the new tradition with the Tillman statue, I wanted the captains to be in with the team. I wanted them to get the opportunity to do that. Then, obviously, Brady is an extremely smart, intelligent guy. Sharp. I don’t like to have a lot of different guys doing the coin toss so I kind of selected him to do it for me. Fraboni is just a guy in the same regard. They’re two of our smarter guys out there and can’t mess up that coin toss. They have it down pretty good. That doesn’t mean our captains had the options to go out with them, but they’re handling that for me. The captains could have gone out if they wanted to.
On the experience coming out of the Tillman tunnel for the first time
It was pretty cool. I think it was a neat deal. Pretty special. I think it s one of the most unique run-throughs in the country, or run-outs. The cool thing that you guys don’t get to see is that we have the big screen in the locker room. And, believe it or not, I don’t give a very long pregame talk. It’s about 30 seconds. We did a little talk and for the last three minutes in the locker room, we have this video of Pat (Tillman) doing his thing. It was interesting to watch our players…he just has a way without saying anything to ignite people. We were running basically his highlights, his passionate highlights, for three minutes. As they came on, you see guys stand up and then there’d be more guys standing up and guys moving around, “ooh-ing” and “aah-ing” and it was pretty cool. Obviously, when we break it down we come out of the tunnel and when you walk out of the tunnel, there are the former players that line the tunnel. It’s pretty cool. Coming out, it was pretty cool. That tradition will be there for a very long time and very deservingly.
On what he thought about Coach Napier’s offense plan…
Both coordinators did what they needed to do to win the game. There’s obviously things we need to do to improve on and get better on. Our number one objective is to be a disciplined football team and a team that plays with great discipline. That starts with owning the ball. We had 100% ball security. We had, really, +3 if you take the interception and the two-point play. We accomplished one of the most important goals. Secondly, we were 50% on TFLs (tackles-for-loss), sacks and negatives. Also, we had no penalties on defense, no penalties on special teams and we had one penalty on offense that cost us 30 yards. See, that one is a big penalty. From a discipline standpoint, both of our guys have command of their guys and are doing a great job. There’s a lot of things, offensively, that when you go out there, you see that are new. I thought (Coach Napier) did a really good job at half time of going back in. Coach Napier has been a guy in the box most of the time. On the field, it’s a little bit different. It’s a little harder to see. Obviously, you could tell in the third quarter he did a good job. He made some good adjustments and made a great call. We had like three or four times we had been second and 10. It was like the four previous series’ we had been second and 10. He came out and took a shot. Even when he did it, he said, “Hey, I’m going to come out and take a shot right here. I need to take a shot.” I told him to go with his gut. He’s a very hard worker. He’s very intelligent. For his first time calling plays in a while, I thought he did a nice job.