UNM Head Coach Rocky Long
Question: Is San Diego State running back Larry Ned similar to Utah running back Dameon Hunter?
Rocky Long: “He’s better. He’s more elusive and he’s faster. The two best running backs in the Mountain West Conference are him and (BYU’s) Luke Staley. They both can catch too – they both have pretty good hands.”
Question: Is San Diego State’s running game, in general, similar to Utah’s?
Rocky Long: “They’re both running teams, but the way they do it is not similar. Utah has become a two-back team and San Diego State wants to be a one back team, but they get into two-back formations using a tight end or an H-back as the fullback. They put (H-back Gray) McNeill, number 86, back there as their fullback so that they can run two-back running plays. Then sometimes he’ll walk up and be an extra tight end and then they run the whole running package of a one back set, so they have more running plays than Utah does. Utah will get into two tight ends and two backs also and SDSU won’t do except on the goal line and in short yardage situation. They way they block is not similar.”
Question: Do you have the same concern about facing a strong running team as you had before the Utah game?
Rocky Long: “I still have that concern. I thought at Utah they had one great receiver out there in (Cliff) Russell and I think San Diego State has two really good wide receivers in (Derrick) Lewis and (J.R.) Tolver. Those two are outstanding receivers, so if you say that you’re going to try and not let Ned carry the ball and you put eight guys on the line and he’s still able to gain yardage, so you put nine guys up there, all they have to do is complete two or three (long passing plays) and you’re out of the game. Those guys can take it the distance when they can catch it.”
Question: How would you describe San Diego State’s offensive scheme?
Rocky Long: “They give you one personnel group, but they show you a whole bunch of different formations. Now contrary to BYU and Air Force, it’s not really complicated. They give you a lot of the same plays out of a whole bunch of different formations, but Air Force had a whole bunch of different plays, as did BYU. Air Force doesn’t give you many different formations, they just give you a lot of different plays. San Diego State gives you a lot of formations, but basically the blocking and the running plays are all the same.”
Question: Does that make it easier to stop?
Rocky Long: “No because you have to learn how to line up to all the formations. What it makes it easier to do is draw up cards for practice. That’s as simple as it gets. So the kids get used to the way they’re going to block it, but you have to spend all your time getting lined up to formations, whereas against Air Force you had to spend a lot of time on the 18 or 19 different ways they blocked it. Now you get lined up because they only give you two formations, Air Force does, but they block it a bunch of different ways. SDSU is not nearly as complicated, so they try to disguise their plays by formation and by personnel too. The personnel doesn’t give you any advantages. We call defenses by personnel groups because usually the personnel group tells you which plays they’re running and in San Diego State’s case it doesn’t. It worries you because we slowed Utah down, but they eventually wore us down. Now the reason we didn’t get worn down the last couple weeks is because our offense has done such a good job of maintaining ball possession with sustained drives. Even in the BYU game, we didn’t score enough points, but we kept the ball away from them which is a real help to a defense.”
Question: Did you visit with offensive coordinator Dan Dodd two or three weeks ago and talk about expanding or improving the offense at all or has the emergence of quarterback Casey Kelly been the key to the offensive improvement?
Rocky Long: “I think it’s mostly how the quarterback has gotten better. We went from ‘why are you using four wide receivers, why don’t you run the ball?’ to ‘you’re running the ball too much, why don’t you expand?’ and now its ‘boy what a great combination of both’ and it’s basically because the quarterback is executing. I mean it’s exactly the same offense we’ve used since day one, but the execution has gotten better the last three weeks. If the execution’s better it’s funny how all of a sudden you’re calling the right plays.”
Question: How much does the “fly series” formation help the offense?
Rocky Long: “Now we put that in around the fourth week of the season. Because we defensed the fly series, I think it really helped the first week. If you don’t practice against it, it’s very, very effective, but once you see it in practice it’s not nearly as effective. Since it’s been effective for us, it’s part of the package, so you see it quite a bit, but you’ll notice that the fly guy isn’t carrying it as much as he did when it was first put in and you notice that it’s not nearly as effective anymore. In fact last week he carried it three times and twice it was tackled for one yard or less. Now it does cloud the vision of linebackers some so they don’t exactly know where the tailbacks are running the ball. People use it to varying degrees of effectiveness. Even Air Force has a fly series. They ran it one time and got nine or ten against us and the next time they got hit in the backfield and never ran it again.”
Question: Does it kind of replace the option in some ways?
Rocky Long: “No, if you’ll notice the last two weeks we’ve run more option plays because of how the defense lines up. We’re not a true option team, so the option is used to take advantage of a defensive scheme rather than being a real major part of our package. Last week the pitch guy gained a bunch of yards and that’s because they were playing man coverage on the outside and the receivers were running them off, so they had nobody on pitch. I think the option game is a great way to keep people from overloading on coverages. It keeps us from blitzing some. When we play anybody that runs the option we run balanced blitzes. If they don’t use the option we run a lot of overload blitzes.”
Question: Why was running back Jarrod Baxter lined up in the slot sometimes versus Air Force?
Rocky Long: “He came in motion and blocked. It’s a disguise like San Diego State runs. They throw McNeill in there and you don’t know if they’re going to be in two tight ends, one back or if they’re going to be in the I formation or you put him out there and it looks like four wide receivers and you don’t know if he’s actually going to go out for a pass. If you put him lined up as a fullback, everybody says ‘hey guess what? this is a run.’ So you put him out in the slot and it looks like four wide receivers and everybody says ‘well we better call a pass coverage,’ they call a pass coverage and he slides in there and blocks like a fullback. This week I’ll bet you SDSU won’t overreact to it the way Air Force did last week. You’ll notice every good offensive coordinator does a little something different every week, like that, and you might never see it again, but it’s to take advantage of the defense’s scheme that week. They do it to us too. Air Force ran three play action passes last Saturday that we’d never seen before and obviously we’d never practiced against before and all of them went for big yardage too.”
Question: Is this the second best defense you’ve faced, behind Utah?
Rocky Long: I think the two best defenses are SDSU and Utah. I think overall they have the best secondary in the Mountain West Conference, counting all four guys. They’re solid and strong up front, they have a couple decent pass rushers. I don’t think they’re as physical as Utah up front, but I think their secondary is quite a bit better than Utah’s was.”
Question: How has New Mexico’s offensive line been able to protect the quarterback so well?
Rocky Long: “The offensive line is doing a good job, plus we’re throwing the ball on time and if you run the ball well it’s hard to develop a pass rush. Now we haven’t done what everybody’s doing to us this year, max protecting. Last year they didn’t, this year it starts from play one. Last year, everybody came into the game and tried to man protect to see if they could get away with it and then when it didn’t work a lot of them went to max protection. Now everybody we play is in max protection from the first play of the game.”
Question: Do teams go to max protection because your defense has had so much success against the run, but not as much against the pass?
Rocky Long: I think they’re trying to give their quarterbacks time to throw the ball. The spread teams just throw it quick and the other teams, like a Utah and Air Force, I mean Air Force three or four times ran a pass with just one receiver out and so did Utah. I think they want to give their quarterbacks time to throw the ball and that’s partly a reaction to our defense and it’s partly a reaction to us giving up some yards passing I guess.”
Question: How does San Diego State’s protection scheme compare to that?
Rocky Long: “They’ll max protect against us and anybody that puts pressure on them, they eventually do that against them too. If they know a team is only going to rush four each time, they’ll man protect. Against Ohio State they man protected the whole game because Ohio State never rushed more than four guys. Now against UNLV they did a lot of max protecting because UNLV was blitzing.”
Question: Because you’re playing a team that has turned the ball over a lot this season, does that give you an opportunity to force more turnovers than usual?
Rocky Long: “No, when a team is really struggling with turnover ratio, which they are, most of the turnovers are not forced. A lot of the interceptions are bad throws and their not under pressure. A lot of the fumbles are exchange problems. I’ve been on teams where turnovers were a huge problem and over half the turnovers were unforced, it was just kids not being careful with the ball. Their turnovers are not forced, but you hope that their problems continue when you’re getting ready to play them. I think the turnover ratio is one of the biggest telling factors of who’s going to win the game.
Question: What would you consider a good game in slowing down Larry Ned?
Rocky Long: “We never go into game like that. A good game is if we win. Wyoming thew for a ton of yards against us and the only ones that bothered me were the last hundred because they were in the last four minutes of the fourth quarter. Yardage has no bearing on the game. Wyoming gave up almost 600 yards to Air Force and the score was 24-13, so who cares if they got 600 yards? Now if they’d scored 50 points out of the 600 yards, then its a big deal. BYU gave up 240 (rushing yards by Ned) and won by 30, so that would be just fine with me. I don’t think we’ll beat them if he has 250 yards of rushing against us.”
Question: How is yardage and ball control important to you’re team’s success?
Rocky Long: “I wouldn’t mind either if we scored on the first play every time we had the ball, but I think a part of our success lately is because the offense has maintained the football and has had long time-consuming drives.”
Question: How have you improved you third down conversion percentage?
Rocky Long: “Last week we were great. It’s all execution. The receivers are catching the ball better and part of that is the ball is where they can catch it more often. We had two drops last week that should’ve been caught probably, but I also think that we’re making some catches that are not easy catches and every once in awhile we’re making catches that you think should be dropped. A lot of that has to do with the quarterback, putting in places where they can catch it.”
Question: Quarterback Casey Kelly has come along so well, but yet what flaws can you see that he needs to improve upon?
Rocky Long: “The ball seems to float on him every once in awhile and I’m not a good enough technician to know why. He might not be following through or he might be tightening his grip. The hardest completion to make is when the guy is wide open because instead of just throwing it, you try to aim it. Good throwers don’t aim anything, they just throw it, baseball’s the same way.”
Question: If you win this week, you’re back to .500, do you start thinking of a bowl game?
Rocky Long: No. I think we have to win out to be invited to a bowl game. We talked a lot about it last year too and we blew up at the end. We’re in the exact same position as we were last year, we’re playing the exact same football team. They were down in the dumps, down and out, weren’t going to have a winning record and if we could’ve won two of our last three, we were going to a bowl and we lost.”
Question: How has the attitude been this week – are you more upbeat?
Rocky Long: I think everybody was disappointed that we didn’t play better earlier, but I don’t think our kids have changed much. In fact maybe I’d like to see a change, a little more urgency about this week’s game. I try never to put one game more important than any other game, but I think this is the season this week. If we win this one, I think we’ve got a heck of a chance to finish it off right and if we don’t win this one, it’s like San Diego State’s playing right now, it’s all for pride.”
Quarterback Casey Kelly
(On the Air Force game.)
“Last week was a good week on offense. We were able to run and pass and do some things we haven’t shown all year. Hopefully we can carry that over into this weekend’s game and come out strong against the Aztecs.”
(On how it felt playing well last week.)
“I think I felt a little bit better than the game before, and each game I am feeling a little bit better and more comfortable. Hopefully this week will be no different and I can come out and have a good game.”
(What concerns you about SDSU’s defense?)
“Defensively they have some good athletes. They have a couple of All-MWC guys returning and we’re going to have to play hard to beat their good athletes. We are going to have to come out with a good scheme and execute our game plan.”
(Is there a swagger on this team after putting up that many points last game.)
“No, not really. That’s one game and we need to put a couple of games together like that before we start feeling good about our chances for the post-season. Once we get a couple of games like that then we will really being to feel confident about our chances.”
Brian Johnson
(Was last week fun?)
“Definitely, the whole defense was very surprised on how well the offense moved the ball. I feel confident that they are capable of doing that again this week.”
(On SDSU running back Larry Ned)
“Last week he had a boot on his leg also, but he still ran for over 200 yards, and he is capable of doing that again. We definitely expect a heavy dosage of Ned. Their offensive line does a good job of opening holes for him. I think that will be our main challenge on defense is to stop the run.”
(On the importance of the SDSU game.)
“From here on out, every game is important. Last week the season was on the line and we came through. We definitely have to win out to make sure we are bowl eligible and make sure we get an invite. They tripped up us last year when we had a chance to go to a bowl game as well. You can’t overlook these guys because they are a good football team.”