NEW MEXICO HEAD COACH ROCKY LONG
(on if the team was close to hitting its stride at Air Force): “Well, I thought that’s the best we’ve played so far this year, but we’re still a ways away from being a contender of any kind. I think we proved that we’re a competitive football team, but we have to prove that every week. It doesn’t mean that we’re ready to win against teams of that caliber.”
(on what aspects need the most improvement): “I think the entire team needs to be more consistent. I think we’re inconsistent in every aspect of the game. Sometimes we throw it well, sometimes we catch it well, sometimes we throw it bad, sometimes we drop passes. Sometimes we run the ball real well, then when we need it bad, we get stopped for no gain. Sometimes on defense we cover pretty well, sometimes we run to the ball and tackle really well and sometimes we run to the ball and miss a ton of tackles. We’re hot and cold.”
(on the status of RB Dontrell Moore): “I think Dontrell looks rusty and I don’t know exactly why. He’s practiced two weeks, so I don’t think it’s his knee that’s bothering him. I think it’s the speed of the Division I game that’s bothering him. He’s used to those holes opening up and having time to wait and get into them. Now days they open up for a split second and by the time he realizes it’s there, it’s already been closed. He and Tony Frazier need to start playing better because I think Quincy (Wright) is carrying too much of the load. He’s not a 230-pound back, where the more he carries it, the stronger he gets, he wears out a little bit.”
(on if he anticipated the team’s inconsistency over the first several games): “I thought we were going to have some growing pains, but I didn’t necessarily know what they were going to be. They’ve surfaced and we’re getting a little bit better at the things that are bothering us, but we still have a ways to go. Going into the season I had no idea about the way it was going to work out. I was a little surprised that we didn’t play North Carolina State closer, but since then I haven’t been surprised by how the games have turned out at all. I knew the Air Force game was going to be exactly the way it was. I knew they were going to score early, I knew that we were going to come back and I knew it was going to come down to a last second play. I knew that going into the game and I knew the Weber State game was going to be like it was too. And the Baylor game is going to be just like the Air Force game, it’s going to be real close and decided at the end.”
(on Baylor in general): “Baylor is very talented. You can see a definite difference in athletic ability when you play Big 12 teams and ACC teams, and Baylor is a Big 12 football team. They have a big budget, big recruiting base and they have real good athletes.”
(on Baylor’s new offensive coordinator): “It’s improved them because now they’re more diverse. Now they can run the ball instead of just throwing it. They use some two-tight end sets, they use some two-back sets, they’ve used some one tight end sets and they still have their four and five-wide receiver set too.”
(on the success of new Baylor starting QB Aaron Karas): “I just think he makes good decisions. I don’t think he’s any more physically gifted than (former starter Greg Cicero), but he’s throwing it to open people and he gets out of trouble a little bit better.”
(on UNM’s inexperience on defense): “I think we’re over that inexperience factor. We made very few assignment errors on Saturday (against Air Force). We played a lot harder and with a lot more instinct and we didn’t look tentative anymore.”
(on the relevance of last year’s game tape vs. Baylor): “It does not help at all. It helps them because we haven’t changed our offense or defense, but their offense is different and their defense is different. We look at it to evaluate their personnel, but we can’t formulate a gameplan from it. They didn’t have to run any trick plays versus Samford and they were out of the game so fast, they didn’t have to run any against Cal. So all those trick plays that they practiced during two-a-days, they’re coming out this weekend.”
(on changing the collegiate overtime format to the NFL format): “I like it the way it is now. I think the NFL ought to change to the college format. For everybody that’s hung up on stats, it’s terrible for stats, but it’s going to end pretty quick and there’s a lot of tension and pressure on every snap and that’s the way it should be. I think the NFL (overtime periods) gets boring sometimes.”
(on QB Casey Kelly’s performance through three games): “I think Casey has played a lot like he did at the end of last season, but this is a different football team. We don’t have pound it at you runningbacks, our ball control isn’t the same and we’re scoring with more big plays. Right now we’re not as dominant or consistent on defense, other teams are scoring more points, so that means our offense and our quarterback have to be more productive. I think Casey is playing just as good as he did at the end of last season, but he has to play better than that for us to have a legitimate chance to win games and he knows it. The best part about our football team is that they take responsibility. They never blame anybody else, they never blame coaches and they never blame the opponent. Casey is our starting quarterback for the next 10 games because he’s got the ability and now the experience to do it. In the last two games I’ve seen flashes where he’s been brilliant and I’ve seen flashes where he hasn’t been very good also, but he’s shown flashes where he’s been as good a quarterback as there is in this league.”
(on the defense returning to last year’s form): “It’s all determined by how much our kids develop, but I think we have enough athletic ability. We have to have a corner develop and we have to have a couple of the junior college linebackers play better than they’re playing right now, guys that are playing in place of Gary Davis and Mohammed Konte. The kids that we have on our team that played all of last year, they’re playing just as good as they did last year. I thought the defense in the second half (vs. Air Force) looked like last year’s defense.”
(on what he likes about his time right now): “They’re playing really hard and they want to win really bad. About half the teams in Division I on Saturday, when they were down 24-10, the game would’ve been over. I like their attitude and I like that they’re fighters, but we just need to get a lot more consistent.”Ya