Gattis Post-Army Presser

Summary:

 

What were some of the things he saw that he liked on Saturday?   Army was a good defense, credit to them.  We need to eliminate the mistakes on our end. We were able to run 80 plays, time of possession was good, but fumbles and mistakes cost us.  Kids battled - 7 explosive plays, 9 of 16 on third down vs a top 5 defense last year on 3rd down. Kids battled back.

Re: Time of Possession - What evened that out in the second half? Mainly not turning the ball over. Need our kids to just settle down and play the type of football we want to play. 

On turnovers and penalties:  7 turnovers, 10 penalties, 7 drops in two games, those are killing us. There's been a lot of positives - 160 plays, 17 explosives, and lots of plays that have just missed - need to get our timing down in every phase, eliminate mistakes

Are the mistakes mental?  Yeah our kids want to be great, there's a high degree of excitement, of pressure, and this is a good time to spend the bye week getting them calm. Need a voodoo expert to get rid of the ball security issues (joking) - tons of focus on not putting the ball on the ground. Not seeing it in practice so just need to calm them down in the games.

On playing at UW - can it help to calm them down by being on the road? I hope so - this game was a great learning moment. They understand where the mistakes are coming from, it'll get fixed. 

What do you admire/learn from Don Brown:  his mentality - an aggressive guy, the players trust him and there's a lot of mutual respects.

On Shea with Reads/Not Pulling- by design? No not by design. Army did some things to take it away. They brought pressure on 85% of the plays. Need to get back to film room on it.

It is a process on the reads now that they're doing it more this year?  No we just need to make the right decisions - understand what the defense is doing and make the best decisions.

Joel Klatt mentioned Shea was banged up - was that part of the problem? He's been banged up the past couple weeks - something he struggled with since first play of MTSU. Shouldn't afffect his decision making - there's a lot that goes into the reads that might not be seen to the average eye. Numbers, angles, how tight/wide the defenders are - if they're playing wide, it should give you advantages inside. he made some good decisions and some that you'd like to have back. Need to keep getting better here.

On Zach Charbonnet's emergence: He's shown who he is - consistent, mature. Wasn't anticipating getting him that many reps. Probably too many. Had some issues in the pass pro game that cost us two fumbles, and they trust Zach to pick up the pressures. 

On fumbles:  We need to clean up protection issues and secure the ball. But those three are huge because they kill momentum in the half and put the D in bad positions.

Is he happy with distribution of the ball/number of targets in pass game:  We've had some great plays and had some missed opportunities as well. Forced 4 defensive PI calls, We gotta continue to get better and not missed opportunities. We had some guys make some plays and some that we missed. When we guys wide open we gotta make those plays moving forward.

On the O-Line: Done great job. Mike Onwenu had a great week. Starting two freshman basically on the O-Line getting their first starts (Hayes, Mayfield) and they've done really well. Some penalties and little things we need to improve on, make sure we're picking up pressures. Wish we'd been more productive in the run game. We missed some runs too where the RB missed the hole. 

How is DPJ's absence felt:  DPJ had a great pre-season. Hard to say looking at some of the plays if that would have been a factor. Ronnie Bell's been having a good run this week, missing DPJ of course, Jon Runyan as well, but biggest factor is turnovers. 

On going for it on the 4th downs:  Analytics supported going for it on all three. They wanted to be aggressive. The last drive - they've been eating up the clock, and if they can convert they know army isn't a two minute team so felt like they had the right call and just need to excute that better.

Who makes the call on that last 4th down: Discussion with him and Jim. You can take the points and give them the ball back or try to end it on your terms. He needs to do a better job of getting them in a good position to get that first down.

{missed question here = muffled}: There's room for the kids to improve but it's on him to put them in the best position to be successful. Always call you can go back and look at but feels good about the game plans for both games and if there's times they're not executing, they need to fix that and fix the turnovers

Was there discussion of going for two in first OT? We felt good about where defense was playing. Going for it on a two point is hard in college football and felt good about getting the kick and going first in OT. 

Do they play the second drive in OT different than first given they don't know points needed? Nope - had guys open, wanted to be aggressive, missed Nico and Eubanks on a couple passes, but we wanted to get in there and score. 

For Shea and Dylan - how does the rotation look moving forward?  Yep they'll keep doing what they've been doing - keep working Dylan in there for plays. He's been doing well. They pick and choose when they want to bring him in. 

Jon and DPJ back for UW? I would hope so. It's a little early right now. Hopefully we can get them back

Team was pressing the first two weeks, why? Think they just want to be great and there's a lot of pressure to succeed. Our D's done a great job in supporting us. We'll get it cleaned up. 

How do you correct it?  We do tons of ball security stuff in practice - disciplinary standpoint, you fumble, you run in practice. They understand the severity.