MEET THE PRESS: Fritz Previews UAB at Weekly News Conference
Sep 11, 2018 | Football
Willie Fritz Weekly News Conference – UAB
Listed below is the complete transcript from Green Wave head coach Willie Fritz's weekly press conference leading up to Tulane's matchup with UAB on Saturday.
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Opening statement:
"It was a good win for us on Saturday. I've got a lot of respect for Coach Rebowe, their team, their staff. We do a lot of things with those guys as far as recruiting is concerned, and they're going to make a lot of noise I think in FCS football. I really think those guys are going to have a great, great season. We started off pretty good. They did a good job I thought scripting their initial drive down the football field, and they were really clean with their execution on that. I thought we had the game under control, and unfortunately we had that fumble right before halftime and gave them hope. If we had gotten points on that one, I think it would have been one of those games where you've got it under control at halftime. Second half, we bent, we didn't break too much on defense. We played well especially when we got inside the red zone. And then Corey Dauphine had a sensational game. He did a great job with his vision. The big thing for him is when he gets into open space, he's running fast and has great speed. I thought Darius Bradwell – there was a couple times he should have stayed inside and he tried to pop it wide – for the most part he had a pretty good game recognizing where the runs and cuts were. Great job by Darnell Mooney. I brag on him quite a bit because he always plays up to his talent level, every practice, every game. And then defensively, our players of the week – Rod Teamer had a great game. He got a bunch of kudos for the interception, but I thought the bigger play was having real good vision when they were trying to sneak the [running back] up the pipe, and [Teamer] came up and knocked the ball down. It was an outstanding play. Zach Harris had another good game. It's good to see your seniors – one of our mantras that we talk about all the time is 'recruit, retain, and develop guys.' We feel like if we keep our guys each year, they're going to get better and better and better and better. Rod's a good example of that. He's really stepped his game up, changed his body, and he's playing extremely well."
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On preparing Corey Dauphine for the heat of Birmingham:
"We are practicing out here in this heat quite a bit, so it shouldn't be too different. I think that's just him not having to play a game in a couple years. He played a little bit as a true freshman at [Texas] Tech, sat out last year, and all of a sudden he's playing. He had some big runs. The one run he probably ran 110, 120 yards maybe, I don't know, something like that. It was 69 yards but I guarantee he ran at least 100. He'll get in better shape, and we're lucky we've got a lot of good backs so we're going to be able to roll."
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On what clicked for Dauphine against Nicholls:
"He had some nice runs Week 1, there just weren't that many openings. What clicked is he got some space."
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On Dauphine's speed:
"When he kicks it in, he can go. He was the state champ in Texas, and I know they take outdoor track real serious around there. It's a year-round sport for some of those guys. He's got great speed. He was part of the 4x100 relay that set a school record here. So he's one of our faster guys, no question."
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On UAB's loss last week at Coastal Carolina:
"I'm sure they're upset. They had some opportunities against Coastal Carolina and didn't take advantage of them. So I'm sure they're looking to rebound just like we were looking to rebound last week."
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On getting Tulane ready for UAB after a poor performance at FIU last year, a similar game and opponent level:
"I was disappointed in that game. Part of that was the game plan. The head coach and coaches, it's always a team effort whether you win or lose. I don't change my approach to games each week. I do the same thing every week. Mature guys and better players do the same thing. They have a great approach to practice. I don't think you can tell the difference between me this week compared to last week. Hopefully you can't. We're going to have great attention to detail. Like I always say, you get 12 opportunities and work 365 days a year. You ought to put everything into every one of them. A great book called "Every Week's a Season," I don't know if you've ever read that book – John Feinstein – he traveled around the country and visited with different teams for a week and watched their preparation that week. It was interesting to see the good teams, they have the same structure and same consistency and preparation each week."
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On UAB running back Spencer Brown:
"He's a big fella. If you're a smaller guy you're going to have to lower your target area to tackle him. We work on tackling every day. The big thing with tackling that we don't talk about enough is your approach to tackling. We had 11 missed tackles on the quarterback last week. I don't know if he broke a tackle. He just broke leverage. We've got to do a better job with our approach to tackling and owning our leverage. That allows you to be aggressive."
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On the Takeaway Beads:
"We're embracing New Orleans. We're New Orleans' college football team. Some of my coaches came to me and talked about it, I said, 'Hey, let's go ahead and do it and make sure that we have guidelines that we want to follow with it.' I think the kids have done a good job. I watch some games and [other players] are still worried about the turnover [object] two series later. You've got to move on. But we want to have fun and play this game the way it's supposed to be played. I think our guys enjoy it, and it was a good idea by the defensive coaches."
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On the rise of the turnover objects across the nation:
"Because of social media, because of TV, because of seeing all the things that are going on. These guys are actively engaged all day. Looking at their phones, looking at TV, talking to somebody. There's people all over the country who have said stuff to me about that, and it's through social media that everybody's heard about it. If we were doing this 20 years ago, it would have taken a whole season for someone to figure it out."
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On comfort with the offensive line:
"We played much better last week. We got bodies on bodies, opened up some seams and creases. We've just got to be assignment-sound. When you have good running backs, if you get people on people you've got a chance to make a play even if you're not blowing them off the football. We're doing some play where we've got to have some push, and we're doing some plays where we've got to have some push laterally, blocking both horizontally and vertically. I think that helps you out. We kind of added some outside plays that we didn't run last year."
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On Dauphine's performance:
"We were excited about it. He was chomping at the bit now. He played a little bit as a true freshman at Texas Tech. Not a ton, but a little bit. They're a lot more of a passing team. His deal obviously is getting the ball in his hands and running with it. He sat out all last year with us and had a great track season for Coach [Eric] Peterson and the track team. I know he's been excited. He's been banged up a bit during camp. But now he's getting healthy, and he really feels part of the offense. When he gets the ball in the open field, he can make things happen. Great speed. He's real close to having world-class speed."
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On the team being more equipped to win on the road this year:
"I think so. We've had some wins on the road. We had a big one against East Carolina in overtime. Fought through some adversity. Our preparation, sometimes you get on the road and it's a you-against-the-world mentality. You lock in to what you're doing. I think it can sometimes help you. But my experience has been the better team usually wins whether it's at home or on the road. So we just want our guys to prepare themselves and be ready to go Saturday at noon."
Â
On how running the ball well helps to take pressure off the quarterback:
"Big time. And it helps with protection because now they're in run mode. Getting to second-and-5, they've got to pick their poison. They can pin their ears back and we've got an opportunity to get some creases and holes in the run game. Or they can play laterally and you've got a play-action pass with an extra count or two to throw the football. Where it hurts you is where you get into third-and-10 when you know what you're doing and you've got to protect a little bit longer and you've got to run longer-developing routes. Being a good down and distance helps. We've got to stay away from negative plays. Not very many teams in the country are good when they start first-and-15 after a penalty, second-and-14. Those are tougher down and distances for anybody including us."
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On UAB's program revival:
"They've done an excellent job. They've done quite a bit with transfers and junior college (JC) guys. They've got guys really from all over the country. A lot of Mississippi kids, they've got Kansas JC kids, Texas JC kids, California JC kids. They've got some four-year transfer kids. During that time when they were sitting out, they really did a nice job recruiting and practicing four, five times a week, lifting weights. They had a spring, a fall, another spring and then they got into the season playing. They've done a great job of that. It'll be interesting to see the roster, the age. I think they might be about the same as us as far as juniors and seniors or pretty darn close to it. They've built a tremendous facility out there out on the highway. A nice indoor and all those other kind of things. I guess there's talk about them building an on-campus stadium now. They went from one extreme to the other. Coach Clark has done a fabulous job. A very successful high school going, Jacksonville State, and at UAB did a good job keeping that program together during all this chaos."
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On the UAB being a potentially big opportunity for the rest of the season:
"Last week was huge, the week before was huge and the week after. Every one of them is important to us. We're trying to get our program to where we're playing our 'A' game every single week. [UAB] is a big one for us."
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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 with UAB on Saturday.
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Opening statement:
"It was a good win for us on Saturday. I've got a lot of respect for Coach Rebowe, their team, their staff. We do a lot of things with those guys as far as recruiting is concerned, and they're going to make a lot of noise I think in FCS football. I really think those guys are going to have a great, great season. We started off pretty good. They did a good job I thought scripting their initial drive down the football field, and they were really clean with their execution on that. I thought we had the game under control, and unfortunately we had that fumble right before halftime and gave them hope. If we had gotten points on that one, I think it would have been one of those games where you've got it under control at halftime. Second half, we bent, we didn't break too much on defense. We played well especially when we got inside the red zone. And then Corey Dauphine had a sensational game. He did a great job with his vision. The big thing for him is when he gets into open space, he's running fast and has great speed. I thought Darius Bradwell – there was a couple times he should have stayed inside and he tried to pop it wide – for the most part he had a pretty good game recognizing where the runs and cuts were. Great job by Darnell Mooney. I brag on him quite a bit because he always plays up to his talent level, every practice, every game. And then defensively, our players of the week – Rod Teamer had a great game. He got a bunch of kudos for the interception, but I thought the bigger play was having real good vision when they were trying to sneak the [running back] up the pipe, and [Teamer] came up and knocked the ball down. It was an outstanding play. Zach Harris had another good game. It's good to see your seniors – one of our mantras that we talk about all the time is 'recruit, retain, and develop guys.' We feel like if we keep our guys each year, they're going to get better and better and better and better. Rod's a good example of that. He's really stepped his game up, changed his body, and he's playing extremely well."
Â
On preparing Corey Dauphine for the heat of Birmingham:
"We are practicing out here in this heat quite a bit, so it shouldn't be too different. I think that's just him not having to play a game in a couple years. He played a little bit as a true freshman at [Texas] Tech, sat out last year, and all of a sudden he's playing. He had some big runs. The one run he probably ran 110, 120 yards maybe, I don't know, something like that. It was 69 yards but I guarantee he ran at least 100. He'll get in better shape, and we're lucky we've got a lot of good backs so we're going to be able to roll."
Â
On what clicked for Dauphine against Nicholls:
"He had some nice runs Week 1, there just weren't that many openings. What clicked is he got some space."
Â
On Dauphine's speed:
"When he kicks it in, he can go. He was the state champ in Texas, and I know they take outdoor track real serious around there. It's a year-round sport for some of those guys. He's got great speed. He was part of the 4x100 relay that set a school record here. So he's one of our faster guys, no question."
Â
On UAB's loss last week at Coastal Carolina:
"I'm sure they're upset. They had some opportunities against Coastal Carolina and didn't take advantage of them. So I'm sure they're looking to rebound just like we were looking to rebound last week."
Â
On getting Tulane ready for UAB after a poor performance at FIU last year, a similar game and opponent level:
"I was disappointed in that game. Part of that was the game plan. The head coach and coaches, it's always a team effort whether you win or lose. I don't change my approach to games each week. I do the same thing every week. Mature guys and better players do the same thing. They have a great approach to practice. I don't think you can tell the difference between me this week compared to last week. Hopefully you can't. We're going to have great attention to detail. Like I always say, you get 12 opportunities and work 365 days a year. You ought to put everything into every one of them. A great book called "Every Week's a Season," I don't know if you've ever read that book – John Feinstein – he traveled around the country and visited with different teams for a week and watched their preparation that week. It was interesting to see the good teams, they have the same structure and same consistency and preparation each week."
Â
On UAB running back Spencer Brown:
"He's a big fella. If you're a smaller guy you're going to have to lower your target area to tackle him. We work on tackling every day. The big thing with tackling that we don't talk about enough is your approach to tackling. We had 11 missed tackles on the quarterback last week. I don't know if he broke a tackle. He just broke leverage. We've got to do a better job with our approach to tackling and owning our leverage. That allows you to be aggressive."
Â
On the Takeaway Beads:
"We're embracing New Orleans. We're New Orleans' college football team. Some of my coaches came to me and talked about it, I said, 'Hey, let's go ahead and do it and make sure that we have guidelines that we want to follow with it.' I think the kids have done a good job. I watch some games and [other players] are still worried about the turnover [object] two series later. You've got to move on. But we want to have fun and play this game the way it's supposed to be played. I think our guys enjoy it, and it was a good idea by the defensive coaches."
Â
On the rise of the turnover objects across the nation:
"Because of social media, because of TV, because of seeing all the things that are going on. These guys are actively engaged all day. Looking at their phones, looking at TV, talking to somebody. There's people all over the country who have said stuff to me about that, and it's through social media that everybody's heard about it. If we were doing this 20 years ago, it would have taken a whole season for someone to figure it out."
Â
On comfort with the offensive line:
"We played much better last week. We got bodies on bodies, opened up some seams and creases. We've just got to be assignment-sound. When you have good running backs, if you get people on people you've got a chance to make a play even if you're not blowing them off the football. We're doing some play where we've got to have some push, and we're doing some plays where we've got to have some push laterally, blocking both horizontally and vertically. I think that helps you out. We kind of added some outside plays that we didn't run last year."
Â
On Dauphine's performance:
"We were excited about it. He was chomping at the bit now. He played a little bit as a true freshman at Texas Tech. Not a ton, but a little bit. They're a lot more of a passing team. His deal obviously is getting the ball in his hands and running with it. He sat out all last year with us and had a great track season for Coach [Eric] Peterson and the track team. I know he's been excited. He's been banged up a bit during camp. But now he's getting healthy, and he really feels part of the offense. When he gets the ball in the open field, he can make things happen. Great speed. He's real close to having world-class speed."
Â
On the team being more equipped to win on the road this year:
"I think so. We've had some wins on the road. We had a big one against East Carolina in overtime. Fought through some adversity. Our preparation, sometimes you get on the road and it's a you-against-the-world mentality. You lock in to what you're doing. I think it can sometimes help you. But my experience has been the better team usually wins whether it's at home or on the road. So we just want our guys to prepare themselves and be ready to go Saturday at noon."
Â
On how running the ball well helps to take pressure off the quarterback:
"Big time. And it helps with protection because now they're in run mode. Getting to second-and-5, they've got to pick their poison. They can pin their ears back and we've got an opportunity to get some creases and holes in the run game. Or they can play laterally and you've got a play-action pass with an extra count or two to throw the football. Where it hurts you is where you get into third-and-10 when you know what you're doing and you've got to protect a little bit longer and you've got to run longer-developing routes. Being a good down and distance helps. We've got to stay away from negative plays. Not very many teams in the country are good when they start first-and-15 after a penalty, second-and-14. Those are tougher down and distances for anybody including us."
Â
On UAB's program revival:
"They've done an excellent job. They've done quite a bit with transfers and junior college (JC) guys. They've got guys really from all over the country. A lot of Mississippi kids, they've got Kansas JC kids, Texas JC kids, California JC kids. They've got some four-year transfer kids. During that time when they were sitting out, they really did a nice job recruiting and practicing four, five times a week, lifting weights. They had a spring, a fall, another spring and then they got into the season playing. They've done a great job of that. It'll be interesting to see the roster, the age. I think they might be about the same as us as far as juniors and seniors or pretty darn close to it. They've built a tremendous facility out there out on the highway. A nice indoor and all those other kind of things. I guess there's talk about them building an on-campus stadium now. They went from one extreme to the other. Coach Clark has done a fabulous job. A very successful high school going, Jacksonville State, and at UAB did a good job keeping that program together during all this chaos."
Â
On the UAB being a potentially big opportunity for the rest of the season:
"Last week was huge, the week before was huge and the week after. Every one of them is important to us. We're trying to get our program to where we're playing our 'A' game every single week. [UAB] is a big one for us."
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Players Mentioned
Tulane Tuesday: S Jack Tchienchou - 9/9/25
Tuesday, September 09
Tulane Tuesday: QB Jake Retzlaff - 9/9/25
Tuesday, September 09
Tulane Tuesday: HC Jon Sumrall - 9/9/25
Tuesday, September 09
South Alabama Postgame: HC Jon Sumrall, SPEAR Javion White, RB Zuberi Mobley
Sunday, September 07
