With the Roadrunners on a bye this week the Monday media session had the feel of a Tuesday session as coach and players were available to speak. Today Coach Wilson, Kevin Strong and Josh Dunlop spoke with the media. Here is what they had to say.
Frank Wilson
Frank Wilson
- Bye week comes at a good time. We're like a lot of America, we're bruised up and banged up in some positions. This week is much needed for us. Our next opponent is really good so to have an extra week to prepare for them is important.
- The focus for us becomes reflecting, self scouting, looking at ourselves and improving on what we do best, on developing those young players who may not have gotten extensive time, now they get a lot of individual time with their position coaches. A huge emphasis and time allocated to individual work with some team stuff where we're sprinkling in some Southern Miss.
- No worry about breaking momentum.
- We've addressed the penalty situation. It's unacceptable, unexcusable and we need to be better and we will be.
- The one where Brett Winnegan runs into the end zone and as he crosses the goal line tosses the ball down and turns with his teammate to celebrate. I didn't know what it was. They called spiking it. We'll do better. We'll hand it to the referee. I don't think it was blatant but the rules are the rules and we will abide by them.
- They knocked Marcus (Davenport's) helmet off in the midst of momentum. He took several steps and did not pursue to make the tackle. I had that conversation with (the refs). I said when it comes off you're not going to just stop automatically. But again we'll veer off and go in an opposite direction and we'll coach from it. It's a teachable moment for us.
- The rule is when the helmet comes off your not supposed to continue in effort to engage on the play. They would like you to pull up. It's a safety rule. I'm respectful of the rule but its tough sometimes when momentum and your going full speed.
- Penalties encompassed most of Sunday's truth session. There were some communication things that we have to clean up. We still haven't played our best football.
- Offensive line played well. There were gaping holes for several backs that were very fortunate to gain tremendous amount of yardage. We say to the team, we score, we gain those yardage because its not a singular effort. It's something we've put together as a cohesive unit.
- We enjoy being at 3-0 but now it's Southern Miss. 4-0 is our aim.
- Having a top notch defense gets distorted when I see that we're the worst in the conference in terms of penalties. We're doing some good things but we have some things to clean up.
- Like the way defensive line is taking the line of scrimmage and restarting it in the opponents backfield.
- Offensively we had our most productive day. We had 14 explosive plays down the field. Those are runs that are plus 10 or catches that are plus 20. As long as we are able to make explosive plays and be 100 percent in the red zone I think we'll be in good shape.
