Photo by: Parker Waters
MEET THE PRESS: Fritz Previews Tulsa at Weekly News Conference
Oct 23, 2018 | Football
Willie Fritz Weekly News Conference – Tulsa
Listed below is the complete transcript from Green Wave head coach Willie Fritz's weekly press conference leading up to Tulane's matchup vs. Tulsa on Saturday.
Opening Statement:
"Alright, well, you've heard me say this before, tough loss for us last Saturday. Looking at it, all three phases, there's some good things in the kicking game. I thought Ryan Wright did a good job punting the ball, being our punter exclusively. Zach Block had some great kickoffs for us. Offensively we just didn't get in rhythm at all. We had the ball I believe it was a seven-minute drive at the beginning of the game and we came away with no points. That really hurt. And then defensively I thought we played pretty good. Obviously we know we've got to close the game out, and we didn't close the game out there in the end with the long touchdown pass. So we've just got to find a way to do a better job there at the end of the game. One of the things we're trying to do is just get into some more situations. We work quite a bit on fourth quarter, down and distance, four-minute, two-minute, all those different things. We've just got to do a better job coaching them, and they've got to do a better job executing those assignments.
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"Tulsa's had a little bit of a similar year to us. They've had some really close ball games they've lost by a touchdown or less. They're a good squad. This'll be a road trip, we need to go out, play well on the road and come away with a win like I talked about last week. It didn't matter who we were playing. We need a 'W' and it's the same thing this week."
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On changing things up for the road game:
"One of the things we're going to do is we are going to go to the stadium beforehand, do our Friday practice at the stadium. I've been doing this a long time, so I've done it in different ways. I sometimes hesitate to make big changes when you've had a lot of success doing things one particular way, but that's something we are going to do this weekend and the remainder of the season. … Here at Tulane, yes [this is the first time we've done this].
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On what he expects this change will do for the team:
I think familiarity, doing something different. That'll be about it. One of the things we'll do is we'll go to the locker room and see where we'll be at in the locker room and divide up in those areas. Get on the sideline, have the coaches talk about where we're at on the sideline, use the launch pad, make sure we have the correct 11 out on the field, we'll go through all those different scenarios. We'll actually go through our movement prep that we do after we take a plane trip, we'll do it there at the stadium. So hopefully that's a good spark for us."
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What is typical for a road trip?
"We'll normally do it (the walk through) here on a Friday. We meet special teams, offense, come out here, kind of do all those same things here at our place. Talk about where we're going to play at. Most of my coaches or somebody has played at that stadium before so we've got someone who has a little familiarity with it."
Â
On SMU's two long TD passes on Saturday:
"They ran a little pick route, the motion guy came in and picked the linebacker and he's trying to get over the top to get the running back. So that was what happened on the first long touchdown pass. And the second one, we were doing a little zone blitz and we didn't get much pressure. That's probably the best pocket he had all evening. It was a longer-developing route. We just didn't do a great job with coverage on it."
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On pick/rub routes in college football and how to defend them:
"What you've got to do, there's two ways to play it. One is you stay with your guy. The problem that a lot of times occurs when you do that is out of their peripheral vision is they can see someone coming and they go ahead and get over the top or they slow down. Even thought there isn't contact, it was effective. The other way is combo coverage. You do an in-out, you can have three-on-three and one guy has the first guy inside, one guy has the first guy outside and one guy has the first guy vertical. You can even do that with four guys when they get into those bunch sets. There's a few different ways to play it. The particular coverage we had called that time, it was a lock-on man, stay with your man."
Â
On the importance of pre-snap communication on defense:
"Oh, it's big. You've got to have that communication. If you don't, you have one guy who's playing one way, the other guy's playing another, you've got big-time problems. So everybody's got to be on the same page. Normally we have ways of playing it based on the formation."
Â
On the quarterback position:
"Justin McMillan's going to start for us this week. Jonathan [Banks] just, like everyone, he did some really good things, and as I've said many times before, quarterback gets too much blame and too much credit when things go well. We've all got to do our 1/11th in order for Justin to have success. We have to do a good job in the front, the backs, the tight ends and receivers. We're looking for a spark right now, that's one of the reasons for it."
Â
On Banks' late-game performance against SMU:
"I don't know which plays you're talking about in particular, but sometimes it might have looked like the quarterback, it was on him, but it really wasn't."
Â
Specifically, on Banks' performance on third-down conversions late that could have sealed a Tulane win:
"It would have been big. One of them I'm sure he'd like to have back, and the other one the receiver should have kept running and caught the ball. There's sometimes the routes are not exactly the depth and speed that you've got to have in order to complete the ball."
Â
On developing an offensive rhythm by getting rid of the ball quicker:
"You've got to be able to do that. But one of the things that's happened is we're getting a lot of man coverage. Getting rid of it quick, there's somebody there on the guy. A lot of times with man coverage, the routes are a little better at the second level and third level when you have a chance to create some separation between the receiver and the defender. We've got to do both. There's times where its third-and-8, and getting rid of the ball quick might end up making it fourth-and-2 or fourth-and-3, and you're putting the football anyway. We've got to do a better job protecting, and that's not just with the offensive line. We've done a poor job protecting with our backs and tight ends at times. We've got to do a better job with those guys. We call it a seven-man protection, we ought to be able to block that and sustain it for a long period of time. We're having difficulties with that."
Â
On McMillan's comfort with the offensive system:
"I think he's got good knowledge of what we're doing. He's a smart kid."
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On receivers beating man coverage:
"Well you've got to get some separation on it. You know, we play a bunch of man. You're always going to have somebody close to the receiver, but that's the answer nowadays with all the RPO stuff is playing man coverage. You've just got to beat it when they're up there playing. You've got to get some separation, and our guys have got to be able to do that. Sometimes we do and sometimes we don't. We've got to do it consistently."
Â
On Tulane's run defense:
"I think for a few plays we played pretty well defensively. We got some good pressure on the quarterbacks. I thought we played the run pretty darn well but we missed some tackles right there at the end on a long run. We can't do that. If we do that, it would have been a four-yard gain, I believe. It's not scripted that you've got to play well on all three phases. If you've got to do it defensively and you've got to get a stop, you've got to do it. Some games it's the offense that caries you, some games it's the defense, some games it's the kicking game, some games it's a combination of two or three sides of the ball. So if it takes defense to win, we've got to do it."
Â
On being mystified on the way the season has gone:
"I'm definitely frustrated, there's no doubt about that. I'm an optimist like everybody is. We've just got to continue to keep plugging away. Close is not good enough, and we've got to get better. Nobody feels worse about it than me."
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Listed below is the complete transcript from Green Wave head coach Willie Fritz's weekly press conference leading up to Tulane's matchup vs. Tulsa on Saturday.
Opening Statement:
"Alright, well, you've heard me say this before, tough loss for us last Saturday. Looking at it, all three phases, there's some good things in the kicking game. I thought Ryan Wright did a good job punting the ball, being our punter exclusively. Zach Block had some great kickoffs for us. Offensively we just didn't get in rhythm at all. We had the ball I believe it was a seven-minute drive at the beginning of the game and we came away with no points. That really hurt. And then defensively I thought we played pretty good. Obviously we know we've got to close the game out, and we didn't close the game out there in the end with the long touchdown pass. So we've just got to find a way to do a better job there at the end of the game. One of the things we're trying to do is just get into some more situations. We work quite a bit on fourth quarter, down and distance, four-minute, two-minute, all those different things. We've just got to do a better job coaching them, and they've got to do a better job executing those assignments.
Â
"Tulsa's had a little bit of a similar year to us. They've had some really close ball games they've lost by a touchdown or less. They're a good squad. This'll be a road trip, we need to go out, play well on the road and come away with a win like I talked about last week. It didn't matter who we were playing. We need a 'W' and it's the same thing this week."
Â
On changing things up for the road game:
"One of the things we're going to do is we are going to go to the stadium beforehand, do our Friday practice at the stadium. I've been doing this a long time, so I've done it in different ways. I sometimes hesitate to make big changes when you've had a lot of success doing things one particular way, but that's something we are going to do this weekend and the remainder of the season. … Here at Tulane, yes [this is the first time we've done this].
Â
On what he expects this change will do for the team:
I think familiarity, doing something different. That'll be about it. One of the things we'll do is we'll go to the locker room and see where we'll be at in the locker room and divide up in those areas. Get on the sideline, have the coaches talk about where we're at on the sideline, use the launch pad, make sure we have the correct 11 out on the field, we'll go through all those different scenarios. We'll actually go through our movement prep that we do after we take a plane trip, we'll do it there at the stadium. So hopefully that's a good spark for us."
Â
What is typical for a road trip?
"We'll normally do it (the walk through) here on a Friday. We meet special teams, offense, come out here, kind of do all those same things here at our place. Talk about where we're going to play at. Most of my coaches or somebody has played at that stadium before so we've got someone who has a little familiarity with it."
Â
On SMU's two long TD passes on Saturday:
"They ran a little pick route, the motion guy came in and picked the linebacker and he's trying to get over the top to get the running back. So that was what happened on the first long touchdown pass. And the second one, we were doing a little zone blitz and we didn't get much pressure. That's probably the best pocket he had all evening. It was a longer-developing route. We just didn't do a great job with coverage on it."
Â
On pick/rub routes in college football and how to defend them:
"What you've got to do, there's two ways to play it. One is you stay with your guy. The problem that a lot of times occurs when you do that is out of their peripheral vision is they can see someone coming and they go ahead and get over the top or they slow down. Even thought there isn't contact, it was effective. The other way is combo coverage. You do an in-out, you can have three-on-three and one guy has the first guy inside, one guy has the first guy outside and one guy has the first guy vertical. You can even do that with four guys when they get into those bunch sets. There's a few different ways to play it. The particular coverage we had called that time, it was a lock-on man, stay with your man."
Â
On the importance of pre-snap communication on defense:
"Oh, it's big. You've got to have that communication. If you don't, you have one guy who's playing one way, the other guy's playing another, you've got big-time problems. So everybody's got to be on the same page. Normally we have ways of playing it based on the formation."
Â
On the quarterback position:
"Justin McMillan's going to start for us this week. Jonathan [Banks] just, like everyone, he did some really good things, and as I've said many times before, quarterback gets too much blame and too much credit when things go well. We've all got to do our 1/11th in order for Justin to have success. We have to do a good job in the front, the backs, the tight ends and receivers. We're looking for a spark right now, that's one of the reasons for it."
Â
On Banks' late-game performance against SMU:
"I don't know which plays you're talking about in particular, but sometimes it might have looked like the quarterback, it was on him, but it really wasn't."
Â
Specifically, on Banks' performance on third-down conversions late that could have sealed a Tulane win:
"It would have been big. One of them I'm sure he'd like to have back, and the other one the receiver should have kept running and caught the ball. There's sometimes the routes are not exactly the depth and speed that you've got to have in order to complete the ball."
Â
On developing an offensive rhythm by getting rid of the ball quicker:
"You've got to be able to do that. But one of the things that's happened is we're getting a lot of man coverage. Getting rid of it quick, there's somebody there on the guy. A lot of times with man coverage, the routes are a little better at the second level and third level when you have a chance to create some separation between the receiver and the defender. We've got to do both. There's times where its third-and-8, and getting rid of the ball quick might end up making it fourth-and-2 or fourth-and-3, and you're putting the football anyway. We've got to do a better job protecting, and that's not just with the offensive line. We've done a poor job protecting with our backs and tight ends at times. We've got to do a better job with those guys. We call it a seven-man protection, we ought to be able to block that and sustain it for a long period of time. We're having difficulties with that."
Â
On McMillan's comfort with the offensive system:
"I think he's got good knowledge of what we're doing. He's a smart kid."
Â
On receivers beating man coverage:
"Well you've got to get some separation on it. You know, we play a bunch of man. You're always going to have somebody close to the receiver, but that's the answer nowadays with all the RPO stuff is playing man coverage. You've just got to beat it when they're up there playing. You've got to get some separation, and our guys have got to be able to do that. Sometimes we do and sometimes we don't. We've got to do it consistently."
Â
On Tulane's run defense:
"I think for a few plays we played pretty well defensively. We got some good pressure on the quarterbacks. I thought we played the run pretty darn well but we missed some tackles right there at the end on a long run. We can't do that. If we do that, it would have been a four-yard gain, I believe. It's not scripted that you've got to play well on all three phases. If you've got to do it defensively and you've got to get a stop, you've got to do it. Some games it's the offense that caries you, some games it's the defense, some games it's the kicking game, some games it's a combination of two or three sides of the ball. So if it takes defense to win, we've got to do it."
Â
On being mystified on the way the season has gone:
"I'm definitely frustrated, there's no doubt about that. I'm an optimist like everybody is. We've just got to continue to keep plugging away. Close is not good enough, and we've got to get better. Nobody feels worse about it than me."
Â
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