Complete Transcript From Football's National Signing Day Press Conference
Feb 4, 2015 | Football
Opening statement
"First of all, I have a couple of announcements to make to get everyone caught up on where we are. Doug Lichtenberger will be our special teams coordinator and our linebackers coach. Carter Sheridan will coach our wide receivers. So all these letters coming in to me about these jobs, send them to Byron Ellis. He's our ops guy and is assisted by Wayne Cardova. David Johnson will be our overall recruiting coordinator. Detrick Belvin will be over recruiting, he and Lindy Wertz. And that is the newness of everything. Very few faces have changed but some people are just moving up in the world."
On the most important people in the recruiting process
"I'd like to thank all of these parents that came out and supported us [lists names of the signees' parents]. These are the most important people, I think, in the recruiting process - the parents. They were there. They saw the school. They saw the facilities. They saw what they thought was best for their [children]. Our offensive coaches, our defensive coaches and our personnel did a phenomenal job getting this recruiting class together."
On the signing class, overall
"We had a variety of signees this year. This is the first year where our numbers didn't skew as much as they have early on in the recruiting process here at Tulane. We had to go heavy on defense. You know we lost some critical, key defensive backs. One or two of them were surprises, but we knew we had to do that. We had to get some more offensive linemen in here. This is the breakdown of the class. On offense, we have three offensive linemen, two running backs and two wide receivers. These receivers are big, tall and physical - one thing we hadn't gotten [in the past]. We have seven defensive backs. In this league, everybody is playing with five and six defensive backs. Every year I'm going to stand up here and it's going to be a recurring theme. [We also have] two defensive linemen and a punter/kicker who can kick the ball to the sky. If you ever see this kid punt, you'll be amazed at how far this guy can punt. Among our signees, it's pretty incredible. We've got two state champions, four runner-up, two semi-finalist, 15 guys in the state playoffs and 14 guys that played 4A ball or higher. That was the theme of the year. We wanted to get guys who are competitive because this league is a very tough league. We wanted to get guys who are used to playing in big games because there won't be many games that aren't big games for us in the not-so-distant future."
On if the incoming receivers will have a chance to play right away with only four slated to return from 2014
"Absolutely. If you look at rookies in the NFL and if you look at our rookies when I was at Miami, we had young kids playing. They'll be fine. They're ready to play. The one thing we needed was we needed some bigger guys - some taller, more physical guys. I think we've addressed those needs."
On if today was more hectic with some high profile recruits considering Tulane
"It was very, very similar. There are always one or two kids that we find that we have a little bit of problems with. There's one we already know about. When you're doing that, you know you're in great competition. But I'll tell you this: our coaches are on kids so soon. We got two commitments this morning for 2016 kids. So they're already out there. They're already on these kids. In the next couple of days, I hear that we're going to get three or four more. For us at Tulane, to get them in school and to get on them this early, we've got to stay on top of them. But I think we're going to do absolutely outstanding again this year."
On Darius Williams not formally committing to Tulane earlier and taking visits elsewhere
"When you're a good player, it's like my wife. I'm telling you, she had about 20 men after her but I just won out. Whenever you have good players and good people, guys are going to go after them. If I didn't have Darius Williams locked up, I'd be trying to get a visit from Darius Williams. That's what I would have done. You never know. He's a very, very good player. He's with us and he's going to play a lot."
On other coaching positions on his staff
"Jason Rollins will be the co-defensive coordinator. Those guys work so well together. I just love to see two guys doing it on the defensive end of the ball. What you do is you have to understand how it goes. You have so much variety on offense and one guys probably does all of the option and the other guy does some of the other stuff. Those guys work so well together. I like Jon [Sumrall] and Speedy's - that's Lionel Washington - relationship. Jason and Speedy have that same thing. We interviewed a lot of people and Doug Lichtenberger was the best fit for what we do here. He understands this community. He understands Tulane. He's a fantastic special teams coach and at the linebacker position, he can do that also. He's a very, very smart guy and a heck of a recruiter. We just felt like those where the best guys to fit with this program. And Carter Sheridan was my assistant [with the Saints] and I promised him a job when I left for here. We got fooled because we stayed in the playoffs too long, and as soon as we had an opening, we were going to get Carter over here."
On the signing of Miller-McCoy defensive tackle Brian Webb
"His mother was the one who said he had to come to Tulane. Education, education, education. He was a kid that was going to Mississippi State at one time. It was us. It was Mississippi State. It was Ole Miss. It was all across the country he was going, and I said it must be like Dorothy - there's no place like home. He ended up signing with us and he's a big get for us. A very, very good player."
On recruits that may have gotten away
"The kid from Jesuit, he had two good choices - us and LSU. He made a good choice. This is a great school and a great choice, but hey, that's up to him and his family. Best wishes to him. He's an in-state kid and he went to an in-state school. I pull for all the in-state schools. I'm sorry. I don't have a rivalry with anyone. I love the Saints. I love LSU. I love all of those places. But you know what, among the guys we do have, these two corners from Warren Easton are shut-down corners. As Lionel [Washington] would say, they're long. They're long, they're tall and they can run. We're looking for them to come in and play, and to play right away."
On not signing a quarterback this year
"We don't want to take on every year. We have a junior, a sophomore and a freshman. That's what you want to do. You want to build it freshman, sophomore, junior and then come back with a freshman. If we were to run an offense where the quarterback was runner, we'd take more. I like the guys that we've got. They're classic drop-back passers. They're good players and we like where we are with the quarterbacks."
On playing true freshmen right away
"We do stuff just like the NFL. You play rookies, you play anybody. It doesn't matter where they come from, how old they are or whatever. You're going to make some mistakes if you play a lot of them, but we're going to give everyone a chance to get on the field. Everybody wants to run through the smoke. Everybody wants to run out through the tunnel. Everybody wants to score in this endzone. We sell guys on that you're going to play early. We've proven it. Those young kids have played. They've been effective. Last year, they did some good things, and these kids will come in and help us win this season."
On his focus of building a physically stronger team
"We looked at ourselves and we looked at the teams we have to beat. We looked at Houston and Cincinnati. Those guys were much bigger than the teams we had grown accustomed to playing in Conference USA. So we had to go out and change our philosophy a little bit. We had to get bigger players and I think we did. We really addressed it with our offensive and defensive lines."
On improving team discipline from a year ago
"We led the free world in penalties last year. The one thing we have to do is we have to get more disciplined and that comes with maturity. We had a bunch of young kids playing and they would jump offsides. I would get mad and they would look at me like, `Coach, it's no big deal. We did it in high school all of the time.' Well, it is a big deal so now discipline is one of the things we've worked on. We tried to go out and get smarter players and players who were on winning football teams."
On listing Malik Eugene at safety, and if that could possibly change
"I won't say it's not an open-ended conversation because I don't want Jason [Rollins] and Speedy [Lionel Washington] to kill me, but it's definitely an open-ended conversation. He's such a great athlete. But those guys are looking at me now and they're chomping at the bit to get Malik Eugene on the field. They've got the right position for him. They know he can run. He's a big hitter. I'd like to see him catch the ball out of the backfield and do some other things, but I think those guys might win out. They're meaner than I am."
On if the offensive line recruits can make an impact as true freshmen
"Offensive line is the hardest position on the field. Offensive line and corner, really, but for different reasons. The offensive line has to learn the line calls and be in the right position. I think [Leeward] Brown is going to help us somewhere in the offensive line. I don't know if it's going to be in game one or if it's going to be in game six. I'm looking forward to him coming in. It's going to be hard for me to not play this kid and play this kid early and often."
On where he felt the team could use more recruits
"You always want to do a little bit better. You want to get more offensive linemen and more defensive linemen in the trenches. Those are the two positions you always want more of. Maybe we could have gotten another receiver from somewhere. If you ask me where the misses were, I'd say that. I was so nervous last night. I went to sleep last night and woke up early. I started to think about this class, and my problem with the class was I can't believe we're getting this kid and I can't believe we're getting this one. I can't believe we're getting Malik [Eugene]. I can't believe we're getting Slim [Darius Washington]. I can't believe we're getting [Andrew] Hicks. It was so many `I can't believes', that really couldn't sleep. I scared myself. But all of these kids ended up signing with us and it is a great day for us."
