Meet the Press: Kansas State Game
Head coach Al Golden met with the media Tuesday to discuss the Miami Hurricanes’ second road game of the 2012 season – a road test at No. 21 Kansas State. Saturday’s game will kick at 12:05 p.m. EDT on FX.
Opening Statement…
“Thanks for your coverage. I saw a lot of you up in Boston, and appreciate your coverage. Thanks for coming out today.
“We’re excited about coming away with a win (at Boston College). Especially being down early with that type of adversity, it was good to see us fight back. Clearly there a lot of things that we have to fix, but those are the things that get exposed when you play a big-time, ACC opponent on the road. Some of it got exposed; we gotta get it cleaned up we know that. Some mental errors. Some explosive plays. Some drops.
“We played 58 Hurricanes in the game, which is a great number. Davon Johnson is a guy that came up big for us. He made an excellent 3rd-and-5 catch, and on the next play Duke (Johnson) scored. (He) Had a great block on Malcolm Lewis’ TD and another great block on Allen Hurns’ catch-and-run that put us in a 2nd-and-1 in a four minute situation. We had a lot of guys like that that executed their roles, and we’re going to continue to need that.”
On the upcoming match-up with Kansas State…
“Clearly this week against Kansas State, we have a Herculean challenge out here. Excellent football team. Tough environment. Well-coached. Don’t beat themselves. Control time of possession. Led the Big 12 in least penalized teams. They had 30 drives of 60 yards or more. Big time quarterback. Really as good as there is on defense with Arthur Brown at (middle LB). It’s going to be a great challenge for our team and one that we’re preparing for as I speak.”
On Eddie Johnson’s improvements…
“I see more consistency. The biggest thing is there is some consistency in his approach and his routine, and I think it showed up on gameday. If you can contrast the play where he caused the fumble, that was kind of who we were the other day; we made a mistake, but finished the play, were aggressive, were reckless. We weren’t paralyzed by our mistakes. We kept fighting. Eddie’s play kind of personifies that. He gets beat, chases the guy down and knocks the ball out. We need that kind of effort. If we do that, we’ll continue to minimize the mistakes. It’s much harder to teach that assertiveness, aggressiveness and recklessness, and it was good to see Eddie have that in his first outing.”
On the performance of the offensive line…
“We like to play more guys. We’re going to have to play more guys. For whatever reason it didn’t work out that way. Clearly Ben Jones, Jermaine Johnson, Jeremy Lewis, [Jared] Wheeler, Seantrel [Henderson], we’re going to have to have a better rotation. I don’t know what the heat is going to be like Saturday. Typically, it’s hot out there this time of year, and the turf adds a couple of degrees to the heat index. Clearly excited. I think [Ereck] Flowers played really well for any guy, really. He graded out excellent.”
On Ereck Flowers…
“I don’t know if he’ll ever be a loud guy. I don’t know if he’ll ever be vocal, but certainly he’s demonstrating some leadership qualities because of the way he’s performing. He’s surrounded by Brandon [Linder], Shane [McDermott], and those guys do a good job of communicating with him. It happens so fast out there on gameday, and I was just so pleased with his poise, just the look he had on the sideline, his ability to talk it through different looks we were getting. He’s going to be challenged this week. Good pass rushers, excellent defense, and hopefully we continue to make progress with Flowers.”
On Dyron Dye’s rise on the depth chart…
“I think he’s one of those guys that had a good offseason and a good summer. He got his weight down, he looks different. His technique and a couple blocks wasn’t perfect, it’s similar to what I was saying about Eddie. But he was very aggressive when we needed him to be, and we have to continue to build his confidence. I thought Asante [Cleveland] came in and did a nice job. Clive had two excellent blocks on the long runs. I expect all those guys to improve this week. Dye’s been working hard.”
On Wildcats’ quarterback Colin Klein…
“He is good. I can’t imagine there’s a better running quarterback in the country. He’s fast in terms of his top end speed – he’ll make you miss – and then he’ll run you over. His durability must be off the charts. He gets strong as the game goes on. We’re going to have to get a lot of hats on him, and certainly account for him in our schemes this week.”
On the difficulty of changing defenses depending on the opponent…
“That’s college football. If you look at our schedule, every week is different. You really need to have a defense that’s flexible and can account for all the different styles we’re getting – not only just in the ACC, but our non-conference schedule. It’s difficult. And the challenge for us right now is to minimize the mistakes we made last week on defense, eliminate some of the mental errors, and that’s hard to do because we get a whole new set of formations and schemes.”
On whether the defense is better at stopping run than pass…
“We’ll find out Saturday. I thought we were tough in short yardage situations – that wasn’t the case last year. I thought we were stronger up front. We’ll see if we can do a better job to stop this attack. It was excellent a year ago.”
On defense players picking up assignments…
“I’m not going to sell anyone out. It was a couple of guys who blew an assignment and they led to explosive plays. Sometimes that’s communication, poise. I’m not going to say it’s experience or (lack of) experience, because the bottom line is you have to be able to do it. You have to be able to think on your feet. You have to be able to communicate – if you’re a corner with the safety nearest to you or if you’re a safety with an outside linebacker. We have to do a better job there – there are no excuses. We gave up too many explosive plays and, quite honestly, that’s what allowed them to make it sticky at the end.”
On the possible of becoming a “no-huddle” team…
“One of the concerns [with Kansas State] is they’re around 33 or 34 minutes in time of possession. You’re sitting here going no huddle, and when they’re already at 33/34, they might end up at 40 [minutes in possession]. We have to be careful there, how we do that. Our execution has to be good. We can’t have the drops. We can’t start drives with penalties like we did and get behind the chains. I know they don’t play the triple-option, but they’re very much like Georgia Tech in their methodology – you have to get some negatives to keep them out of third and shorts, or otherwise their big guy will fall forward for them.”
On the play of the team’s freshmen in the season opener…
“Malcolm Lewis, his first play and he goes in and catches a ball for 11 yards on a sight adjust. He was just relaxed. I think it’s a tribute to the leadership of our team and unity on our team, and the upperclassmen embracing those guys. It wasn’t really about – this is where sometimes we get kind of lost – the media is saying, ‘he’s playing all these young guys.’ Really the young guys are completing the upperclassmen. The focus isn’t on the young guys. They’re helping us fill in the holes of the upperclassmen. They’ve done a great job leading, mentoring and embracing them, and I think that’s what’s allowing a lot of those guys to relax and go play. There’s no angst, no animosity. Tracy [Howard] was out there. Deon [Bush] was out there. Tyriq [McCord] was out there. Jelani [Hamilton] was out there. There were more [freshmen] out there than I’d like to admit.”
On junior safety A.J. Highsmith…
“AJ played at safety, too. I thought AJ played a couple series at safety and does a great job on special teams, but AJ did a great job when he was in there. We want to play five in there at safety and he’s in that mix of five, and he’s smart. That’s not going to change. They’re going to continue to compete for playing time.”
On freshman safety Deon Bush…
“Deon is talented. He’s fast. He studies the game, he prepares. We have to get him to be a little more vocal – you can’t really play at this level and not be vocal. We’re trying to bring all those guys along. I think having Deon and Rayshawn [Jenkins] and those guys competing is important for us. They have to grow up fast.”
On the botched punt attempt against Boston College…
“I’ve never seen that. There was nothing in any practice or any of our special teams scrimmage or anything that was even close to indicating there would be that type of catastrophe. [The snap] ended up getting the left pad of Olsen Pierre, who is our left shield guy. It was an errant snap – it’s as simple as that. Dalton Botts made a great play and saved the day for us there. It wasn’t an issue for us afterwards, it has never been an issue since I’ve been here. We’ve never hit any of those guys. It was really rare.”
On moving sophomore Denzel Perryman to middle linebacker…
“I just think if he’s in the middle, he has a chance to run to both sidelines – he’s that kind of player. He’s very fast, he’s explosive. He’s starting to become a leader, and he’s smart enough to do it. He’s instinctive. Sometimes you move a guy in the middle and he can’t see it, and then you slow him down and move him back to SAM (linebacker) or WIL (linebacker). In his case, we moved him in the middle and he could see it. He could react well. He’s smart now. He prepares. He’s not wasting his time. He’s up here early. He loves the game. We need to continue to get more guys like that. He’s a tremendous player. What can you say? He had a good first outing. He’s levelheaded. He prepared the same way today as he did last week.”
On the impact of Flowers’ emergence on junior Seantrel Henderson…
“We’ll see. We’re going to go with the best five. Our best five are starting right now. It’s up to Seantrel [Henderson] to chip away at a position. If he ends up in the best five, we’ll move anybody we have to get the best five out there.”
On the preparation for Kansas State…
“We better be ready for them. Clearly [Chris] Harper’s a really good player, caught over 40 balls and five TDs a year ago. [Colin] Klein can throw it, he can run it. They have a good group of receivers. The fullback gave us all we could handle a year ago. He was physical. That’s what makes them good. They were in the top 10 last year, going into the bowl game. They’re top 21 right now in the country.”
On memories from last year’s loss…
“It stuck with us all year, what can you say? I think we finished the year converting 14-of-15 goal-to-go situations. That was the one (we didn’t convert). Give them a lot of credit – they fought until the end. Their guys stepped up and made plays on the two-yard line there in succession, and they earned the right to win that game by the way they played. We didn’t execute and they did – bottom line.”
On Colin Klein’s emergence…
“We kind of knew about him going into last year, and you can see because he was running through people. I think they held a lot back going into last year’s game, but clearly we know who he is now and now it’s just a function of stopping him. It’s going to be a great challenge for us.”
On Duke Johnson’s play…
“All of those guys have roles. As I said yesterday, we might have seen more of Duke [Johnson] on those two series if he didn’t score. I wasn’t going to recommend taking a knee to do it. It is what it is. Those guys are all going to get touches. I think Mike James ran the ball really well. OT [Eduardo Clements] did a tremendous job in short yardage and goal line for us. All those guys are going to continue to rotate. We’ll make sure they all get touches, and it’s going to change week to week, who’s doing what.”
On why Malcolm Lewis was able to rise…
“I think he’s mature. He prepares. Consistency. That’s the one thing that freshmen – if there’s going be a hiccup – it’s going to be in that department. It’s going be in that consistency, just understanding that process and how demanding that is constantly, and having the discipline to adhere to it. I think Malcolm [Lewis] has been able to do that so far. I think some of those guys are going to keep coming – they’re going to help us.”
On Malcolm Lewis’ route-running…
“He’s getting there. I think you’re going to hear from other receivers in that group before the season is over. It’s a long season, and even today I was watching some of the defensive lineman that haven’t played yet and they practiced better. Everybody learns at a different pace, and that light comes on for everybody. We’re just trying to move the guys in the right direction.”
