Head Coach Butch Davis Press Conference Comments
Sept. 3, 2000
Comments Of University of Miami Head Football Coach Butch Davis From Friday, Sept. 1, 2000, Press Conference
General comments on the victory over McNeese State:
“Obviously when the game is over you have somewhat mixed emotions because your first blush is you tend to sometimes focus on the negatives when you look at things. You have to pause yourself and go back and think about how many good things came out of the game last night and I think that list is considerably longer than the negatives. I thought that offensively we were very productive in just about everything we did. We didn’t give up any sacks, all three quarterbacks didn’t throw an interception, we made big plays in the passing game, big plays in the running game. We got all the high profile skill guys involved in the game plan. That diversification is really something we have to continue to achieve, to spread the ball around. If somebody wants to focus on taking Santana Moss out of the passing game, obviously, Andre King and all those other guys had chances to make plays and they stepped up and made plays last night.
“Kicking game is always a major concern in the first couple of ballgames because there are so many phases of the kicking game that you can’t work on full-speed in practice. You’re not going to go out as a coaching staff and do kickoff coverage and just blow people up. There are too many violent collisions. You’re not going to run the risk of injuries on that. So, you have to practice them at game speed in games. Your kicking game will probably make at least a 50 percent improvement in the first couple of weeks. I thought we found some guys that really did a good job. We probably played as many as 20 different guys on kickoff coverage. It was almost an audition. We’ve got 8 or 10 guys we feel good about, but we needed to find some guys from the younger players who would step up and make some plays and we did. Jason Geathers and Darrell McClover did some good things. It was good to see Chris Harvey play well. We talked for about a month about our deep snapper and how he was going to do in a ballgame. I thought Chris did a nice job. All his snaps were good, Aaron Moser did a good job of getting the ball down and Todd Sievers kicked the ball well. We hated the fact that Todd got nicked. I really wanted him to get a chance to try that long field goal. The doctors held him out. He got a minor concussion making a tackle on the sidelines, so they held him out on that. I really would have like for him to have gotten that opportunity, just from an experience standpoint.”
“Defensively, the three interceptions was good. We had a chance for another three in the ballgame. Those guys did a nice job. I thought our effort was good. We looked at film this morning and guys were hustling and giving great effort, but I didn’t think we tackled very well. I think we could have cut the yardage completely in half just by making good tackles. If we would have come in here today and we’d have held them to 200 yards, instead of 400 yards, everybody would have been thrilled to death. A lot of their yards came on runs after a catch where someone missed a tackle or guys had chances to tackle them after a 2 or 3-yard gain and they made 10 or 12. I’ll take personal responsibility as the head coach for that. I think I handicapped our defense and our defensive coaching staff by backing off some of the live contact tackling things because we had so many guys nicked up with injuries (near the end of fall two-a-days) going into the ballgame. About a week ago, I said let’s just try to get them well and not risk getting people injured and not able to play in the ballgame. One thing I know about defense, having been a defensive coordinator, you have to continue to hone those skills. Defensive players have to stay fundamentally sound and continue to work on those things. We won’t fall into that trap again.”
“One other thing. You try to orchestrate things in practice that simulate games and there are some things that you can’t (simulate). One area you can is the two-minute drill and I was happy to see that we got an opportunity for Kenny Dorsey and the offense to operate a two-minute drill. They took the ball down and we would have liked to have culminated the drive with a touchdown, but it did end in a field goal. It’s one of those learning experiences where players now know they can go 75, 80 yards with 1 or 2 timeouts and get the ball in scoring position because it certainly different in a game situation from a practice situation.”
Q: In terms of what you did defensively, it seemed you did things a lot differently from what we saw last year. Seemed like you didn’t use as many blitzes, seemed like a basic approach.
Davis: “It was. We were pretty basic and pretty vanilla in the ballgame, but that still doesn’t excuse the poor tackling.”
Q: Was that just trying to hold off for something down the road?
Davis: “We went into the game to play as many basic, fundamental things to challenge our kids to try to play that way without getting into a lot of blitzes. Still, it doesn’t excuse our poor tackling.”
Q: How is Najeh (Davenport) feeling? He looked kind of tentative yesterday.
Davis: “I don’t know that he did. He ran reckless. He tried to jump and hurdle and leap over guys on one screen play down there. He was in on that entire two-minute drill. Like I said last night, I wished he had gotten another half dozen opportunities but they were playing a lot of defensive fronts that made us audible out of some things and we threw the ball to get them out of it. He may have been slightly tentative, but I guess he’d have to tell you that. My impression was that he wasn’t holding anything back and it was good because he got through a game. I think what you’ll see is him get stronger and more confident in his knee and in his ability to play and he’ll get better every week.”
Q: You played a lot of freshmen last night. Anyone who surprised you?
Davis: “Obviously, Jonathan Vilma played a huge role defensively after Dan Morgan got the concussion and was taken out of the ballgame. I thought he handled the situation very well. He made some mental mistakes, he line up a wrong a couple times, which hurt us in the running game. But he flew around and made tackles. I thought D.J. Williams, in the limited amount he was able to learn in a week’s time, certainly did a very good job. Some of the other true freshmen showed up and made some plays in special teams situations.”
Q: The defensive line basically had 3 new starters with William Joseph switching sides from last year. How did they play?
Davis: “On the whole, they didn’t get many opportunities because of the nature of the way everything went. There was a lot of flanker hitch screens, one-step passes and the quarterback in the shotgun unloading it real quick. So, we didn’t really get a good chance to assess the pass rushing element of it. I thought they played solid, but I didn’t think the were spectacular. As far as the number of plays on the bright side, Clint Hurtt made some plays. Adrian Wilson and Matt Walters played very, very hard. But they didn’t have the opportunity to make a lot of plays because of the nature of the game and the way it was played.”
Q: (linebacker Ken) Dangerfield made a lot of tackles.
Davis: “Kenny played solid. Like everyone else in their first start, he made some mental mistakes. But he gave great effort. You can coach all the other things, but as long as he gives great effort he’ll do well.”
Q: How about the tight end position?
Davis: “(Jeremy) Shockey had three catches. Ivan (Mercer) had two, maybe. Robert and David Williams looked pretty good. It was solid. The wide receivers stole the show because most of the balls were going in that area. I think it was a good start for them. It was good to see Shockey get a chance to play because he missed 7 or 8 days with the ankle injury and we were anxious to see if he would get the chance to play. He did and he did some good stuff.”
Q: Ethenic Sands seemed to play pretty well.
Davis: “I was pleased with Ethenic. He had a good first outing. He threw the ball very well. He made one outstanding read and a great throw to Andre Johnson for the touchdown. He read the coverage exactly the way he was coached to.”
Q: How is Sheven Marshall doing and could you describe his condition?
Davis: “He was troubled a year ago with all the neck problems. About four days ago, in a blitz drill, he hurt it again. It was not as severe, but the doctors wanted us to hold him out six or seven days. It will be touch and go whether they will release him for the Washington game. It certainly is something that’s disappointing. Things were going so good for him that he stopped some of his rehab work because he just felt he was past that hurdle. Obviously, it’s something where the doctors have said that he needs to continue to do that as long as he plays football. He just felt so good for about three or four weeks without doing it. All through training camp he had no problems, but he just needs to make sure he does all the rehab so he can return.”
Q: Is Dan Morgan going to be back to play soon?
Davis: “Dan got a concussion diving over a pile and he hit the crown of his head on the ground. Prior to that he had played 30 plays and made 7 tackles with 1 pass broken up. So he was involved in 7 out of 30 plays.”
Q: How long will he be out?
Davis: “Probably until about 4 o’clock today.”
Q: How did he look to you at middle linebacker?
Davis: “I thought he looked good. He stepped up and punished guys.”
Q: How much have you worked on Washington?
Davis: “About all we’ve done is stuff we did in the Spring and the Summer. We spent the first two weeks of training camp working on us and the last week getting ready for McNeese State. Now, we’re turning our players’ full attention toward Washington. The coaching staff, we’ve done some preparatory work but not anything since this Summer.”
Q: What kind of transition is it from a 1-AA team to Washington?
Davis: “Well, it’s a big one. There’s a lot more depth and talent at most all the positions. They’re going to be more physical and the speed of the game will be faster.”
Q: What are your thoughts on the trip out there and getting acclimated?
Davis: “I’m not as worried about that as a lot of people. I had some doctors do some research in sports medicine in the area of jet lag. It’s a considerably bigger issue when you travel from the West Coast to the East. But, in our situation, it’s not as much of a problem with the time change. One of the most important things to be aware of is staying properly hydrated. Just to drink a lot of water. We’ll keep our routine as normal as possible, as far as when people wake up and go to sleep. We’ll get there Thursday night in time to go to sleep. Friday we’ll do a walk through as if we traveled on that day. Then we’ll get up the next morning and play the game. We’ll probably only be in Seattle less than 48 hours, so it shouldn’t be a big deal.”
Q: Have your players faced a quarterback like Marques Tuiasosopo?
Davis: “Only the guys that have been on the team long enough to have played against (Syracuse’s) Donovan McNabb. They’re very similar. Excellent throwers. Look at the film of his game last year against Stanford. That’s probably the prototype of what he’s capable of doing. He threw for 300 yards in that game and rushed for more than 200. So he’s a dangerous runner and he’s got an excellent supporting cast.”
Q: What about the rest of the Washington team?
Davis: “Well, Tuiasosopo’s got an excellent supporting case as I just said. They have excellent running backs who are big play guys. The have very good receivers, the offensive line is massive. And they always play physical, outstanding defense. They’re known for their special teams, as well. We’ve got quite a challenge ahead of us in all phases of the game. They always have excellent athletes.”
Q: I guess you weren’t surprised about Santana Moss’s performance?
Davis: “That’s why he’s on scholarship (laughing). Yeah, he played well. He did some things last night that we’ve come to expect him to do. He’s one of the country’s best punt returners the reverse, coach (Larry) Coker did a great job of setting that up. We’ve just got to continue to find ways to get him the ball and, certainly, running the ball is one way.”
