ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Lobo head football coach Bob Davie held his weekly press conference on Tuesday in the U.S Bank Zia Level of the football press facility as a part of UNM’s weekly fall sports media luncheon. Here is what the head coach had to say about this week’s game with Air Force on Saturday afternoon at 1:38 p.m. Mountain Time in Colorado Springs. The game will be played on ROOT Sports.
Bob Davie: Alright, I’m gonna give you guys a little story here. James Carville, political pundit I guess is what you would describe him as, from Louisiana. I was watching something, and James Carville was talking about, you know he’s a huge LSU Tiger fans, huge LSU Tiger fan. I did some games down there where he was around a little bit. He made a great point. He said true fans, true college football fans that love their team, when their team loses, they can’t even that night put ESPN on, or the next day or the next several days read the newspaper. They just live and die it so much that you just can’t even turn the television on, read newspapers, get on the internet. That’s a true college football fan that lives and dies that. I’m really the same way. You will figure out where I’m going with this in a minute. I’m the same way you know, first of all, any time during the season I’m never looking at any of that stuff, you really don’t. I don’t really read anything, particularly when you’re not winning. When you start winning there’s a temptation to do that but you go down a slippery slope when you do that because there’s always something that’s going to take your focus away from coaching your team, right?
You’re going to read something whether you’re winning or whether you’re losing all it’s going to do is take something away from what you’re here to do and that’s coach your team, so as a result, I don’t really read anything. But I did today, I read our football notes, which sounds funny. I’m probably embarrassed to say that but I went through all those notes that Frank (Mercogliano) puts out and I’ll tell you something he does a great job, he really does. I mean I’ve read a lot of those notes because when I prepared for games I read that stuff obviously when I was broadcasting. There’s a lot of really good stuff in there that he’s dug out about trends about statistics, about roster and really it was a long way to go around it to say Frank’s doing a heck of a job. But also, with that message but just kind of the mindset of a coach. When you’re in the season whether you’re having success or not but particularly when you’re not having success, all you do is focus on coaching your team. That’s all you do.
Any coach that starts to kind of … let’s take Dan Mullen this week. Dan was a G.A. for me at Notre Dame for three years. Now that they are No. 1 and now that he’s built that program back, there a temptation maybe to want to sit there and watch a lot of things and hear a lot of opinions about things. Whether you are winning or losing just coach your team.
With that comes where you feel fulfilled and you feel like you’re building the process, and that’s pretty simple. So anyhow I think James Carville kind of came to me, for a lot of reasons. What Frank did, but also the situation we are in, with the situation we are in. Over years in coaching you become if you are made of the right stuff, you really do keep your eye on that singular target, of what can we do to get better, and you don’t concern yourself with other people’s opinion, because if you do that, it either seems better than it is or worse than it is, and either one of those things takes you off of what the target is.
So that’s kind of my philosophical thing for today men. Who’d have thought we’d be talking about James Carville and Frank today? Frank did I say that the way you wanted me to say that since the A.D. is sitting over there? (laughter)
[00:04:13] Alright, getting ready for Air Force, again a lot similarities. You look at our…we’ve turned the ball over the exact same number that they have. We’ve fumbled the exact same number, their opponents have recovered the same, we’ve thrown two interceptions, they’ve thrown two interceptions. We’ve forced the same exact number of turnovers they’ve forced. I think it’s seven…is it six interceptions and five fumbles (Frank gives the stats of seven interceptions and four fumbles). Yes seven interceptions and four fumbles. The point I’m making is we’re very similar in turnovers created, turnover, penalties…I think they have 30 for the season and we have 29. There are a lot of similarities between the two teams. Now they are 4-2. They beat Boise and Navy at home their last two home games, which are really impressive wins. You look at their offense it’s slightly different than last year, particularly because the quarterback’s back that was injured in the first game last year. He’s back off surgery, knee surgery, and he’s (Kale Pearson) is a heck of a player and a heck of a competitor. He’s from Tulsa Union High School and he’s fun to watch.
So their offense is the same style, but the quarterback is a heck of a player. Defensively statistically they are much better. Much Better than they were a year ago. Their tackles for a loss and their sacks are up pretty significantly. I think they had seven turnovers created against Boise, which, that’s unbelievable. For us on defense, it’s interesting. We’ve created now 11 turnovers I think it is for the season. We had 10 all last season. Now the unbelievable side of that thought, is last year at this time after six games we had 10 turnovers, and then we didn’t get one the whole second half of the season. So the key is we are ahead of pace right now, more than we had all last season, but it’s kind of where we were last year at this time, 11-to-10, so this is going to be a challenge.
Obviously going up there and playing them at their place. You look at it and say both defenses both kind of know how to play against this because that’s what your offense does but we all remember last year where really neither defense could stop either offense. You know I hope that’s not the case this year, I think it ‘ll be a little bit different maybe, but it’s a big challenge. You know going up there and playing, it’s a pretty neat atmosphere and one I think our kids will be prepared for and one I know our coaches are excited about, so, Rick?
[00:07:19] Rick Wright, Albuquerque Journal: Given the improvement they’ve made against the rush, do you expect them to stay with the three men down?
Bob Davie: I think that’s a great point. I think they’ll stay in the three down. In fact I’d be pretty confident they’ll stay in three down. Now maybe they’ll slide that three down into a four-man front some. Certainly we’ve seen enough four-down that if it’s four-down it’ll be pretty easy just from a schematic standpoint or a plan standpoint to adjust. If they stay in odd our defense is odd. We’re pretty similar. We’re pretty similar. I think that’s something every week where teams look at our personnel and they understand that this offense is a little different to a degree based on our personnel compared to where it was maybe the last two years, or even with Crusoe gone. And they’ve adapted and they’ve change. You know when Rocky does that, you know other people are taking a good hard look at doing that and that’s exactly what San Diego State did. I mean that’s the reality of where we are right now so we kind of anticipate that.
[00:08:33] J.P, Murietta, KOB: With SaQwan out does that mean more reps for Donnie Duncan?
Bob Davie: We have no choice. First of all I don’t mean that, I shouldn’t have said it that way, because that sounded a little different there. Donnie Duncan played his butt off, he really did. He was involved in three turnovers in a row in that second half and it was good to see. The reality is I.B. Brown is out, SaQwan’s out, Boatright is probably out, I mean we are down three corners, and we were this whole game against San Diego State. So Cranston Jones and Donnie Duncan will probably be the starting corners. We are going to move (Devonta) Tabannah to corner. We also have a young guy Bijon Parker that’s a redshirt(ing) freshman, we’re going to take him, again he’s a longer guy, a taller guy, I’d love to redshirt him. I hope we can get through it, because I think after the Air Force game and the open date, we are going to have those three guys I mentioned back, so we are a little thin obviously there at corner, and Donnie Duncan, he’s going to play. He’s going to play.
[00:09:42] Henry Tafoya, 101.7 The Team: Caach, have you ever considered or thought about it, talking with your coaches about it, about playing Gautsche and Lamar Jordan together at the same time in the same backfield? Gautsche as a fullback, a wildcat or a tight end? Has that ever crossed your mind?
Bob Davie: Yeah, it has. I think that’s kind of ironic because we actually visited about that this morning a little bit before practice. We do have to become the next step of this. A little more creative, take advantage of what our particular talent level and what our certain skill-set is right now. Certainly that has been discussed. You know Cole would be a big ol’ running back back there. Again, we are pretty… it’s Lamar and Cole, Clayton Mitchem. There’s some conversation about that, you know, is there a way to get Cole and Lamar in there at the same time? We haven’t really done anything with it yet but we’ve had some conversation about that. That’s a pretty good point.
Another guy, I think Romell Jordan, a redshirt freshman, he’s done some good things. I’m anxious to see him play at tailback. I think Ridge Jones, we have to find a way to get the ball to Ridge Jones a little bit. We’ve talked about Carlos Wiggins maybe even putting Carlos in some at tailback, particularly after you saw what 19 did for San Diego State. So yeah, all options are on the table because we’ve kind of got in a little bit of a funk the last couple of weeks. The UTSA game was a little deceiving because we had the big run by Lamar Jordan, we had the big run by Pressley. But we haven’t really run the ball. The second half against Fresno, we didn’t do much. We didn’t do much. UTSA we really didn’t do much running the ball, and the other night we really didn’t do much, and that’s been the conversation all week. How do we do what we do regardless of the personnel? We just have to tweak things a little bit.
[00:11:54] Van Tate, KRQE: Coach can you talk about D’Avanzo and how he’s playing?
Bob Davie: It’s good to have him back. You know he was a guy we were counting on this season. He had a great spring, he had a great summer, and then all of a sudden he kind of disappeared a little bit there. We played the first two games without him. Probably our most consistent defensive lineman. He’s really played well, He’s come back and really played well which is what we expected from Nic D’Avanzo.
[00:12:23] J.P. Murietta: Coach with two wins on the road and none at home is it as simple as just a better level of competition at home or does the team perform better on the road?
Bob Davie: No, I don’t think it’s that. I think it’s the first. You look at it, you know UTEP and us are about the same. We said that going in, we said that last year. It came down to the final quarter, we didn’t get it done in the fourth quarter with a winnable game. And then it’s Arizona State, Fresno State and San Diego State, and the next one coming in here is Boise State, and then it’s Wyoming. I said this before the season. This is as tough a home schedule that I’ve ever been around, comparatively speaking. This is a very tough home schedule and I think it’s totally, totally the case. Man we’ve tried to break out new uniforms the last two week, so we’ve done everything we can. We’ve had two Friday night games. You know we’ve closed the gap. We had a great stage with Fresno and San Diego State and we just weren’t quite good enough and didn’t execute enough to get it done, but it’s totally who you play, and where you play them.
[00:13:39] Van Tate: Coach looking ahead to Rutgers, a game scheduled in 2016. You’ve been on the other side of those big money games. Share your philosophy on those?
Bob Davie: On playing games? Oh I agree 100% and our schedule reflects that, particularly moving forward. I mean to go on the road and make a million dollars? That’s what you have to do. That’s what you have to do. There’s a lot of them that are doing it at our level two or three times a year doing it. I think there’s a balance there. I think our schedule has been very well thought out. I think it gives us a chance to establish this program and make progress, and I also think moving forward financially, it’s the smart thing to do. So, playing one of those games a year, on the road, for a million dollars is a no-brainer. A no-brainer to me.
[00:14:33] Van Tate: Do you look at that as an opportunity also?
Bob Davie: Sure…sure. I mean I think as we grow it does give us an opportunity. The gap isn’t that big, I mean you look around the country, there’s teams doing it. Once we get good enough it not only provides a million dollars it does provide a tremendous opportunity to make a name for this program, and I think that’s the logic behind it.
[00:15:03] J.P. Murietta: Is David Guthrie, coming off a good game, one of those “dudes” you were referring to?
Bob Davie: He’s a dude-and-a-half when it comes to just what he’s all about. He and Bowers both. I mean I’ve talked about this before, to bring bout of those kids in here, not redshirt them and they’ve played every down for us. The thing with David Guthrie, and David Guthrie knows this better than anybody, he makes tackles, but he misses tackles. He misses tackles because he’s over aggressive to a degree and he ducks his head. If you go back and watch the first play of the game against San Diego State, he comes up and fits the game and 19 comes up and spins out, and if 19 doesn’t stumble, 19 takes the first play of the game 75-yards for a touchdown. Later in the game it hurt us, so he’s a dude. The downside of David is he misses tackles in key situations, and that has been our number one, number one problem. But as a kid I love him. Man the kid is unbelievable, unbelievable. Unbelievable kid.
J.P. Murrieta: Is he going too fast sometimes?
Bob Davie: No it’s not that so much, I mean he comes to power and breaks down. Something because we have … you know we’ve studied this so closely because this is what’s gotten us beat right now is we continue the right guys on the field and develop guys. I’m telling you this. There are certain guys that can tackle, and there are certain guys that can tackle some of the time, and there’s certain guys that really have a hard time tackling. And truthfully we’ve had some guys out there, and continue to a degree still, to have some guys that really have a difficult time tackling. Now I’m not going to mention names. You go back and put the tape on and you can put last year’s tape, you can put this year’s tape, and particularly in the secondary, teams are making your defensive back tackle. And, when you’re playing against good backs that we’ve played against, UTEP, Arizona State, and this Friday night, there are some guys that really have a hard time tackling. By size, by length of their arms, by just … whatever it is, and that’s a big piece of it. Getting all guys out there that can tackle.
And I really believe, again, that we will have that. We will have a team of 11 guys and four or five guys in that secondary that can tackle. And it’s taking us time to do it, but we’re down to that piece now, where we got a few that can really tackle. Like Markel Byrd, he was a quarterback in high school. You watch him, he can tackle. He just tackles…he comes to power, he has long arms and he tackles. I think Ricky Bennett is a guy that can tackle. Boatright can tackle, Saqwan’s doing better, but he can tackle. He actually has the skills to tackle, the body type. I think I.B.’s that. I know Daniel Henry is going to be excellent at that. We’ve got a couple other younger guys that are a little longer, longer arms, that can tackle. And I know the rugby tackle thing’s going to come up here because I see our guy (Marty Watts) licking his chops.
[00:18:27] Marty Watts, 101.7 The Team: Well all you have to do is look at Pete Carroll’s take on the rugby tackle, and I think David’s problem is he doesn’t wrap up or use the rugby tackle.
Bob Davie: I think that’s fair to say. I think that’s true. I agree 100% and I do agree that … for a bunch of years I was on probably, the coordinator of teams they said were the best tackling teams in college football. I remember Bill Belichick one time watching our defense and this was before Bill Belichick was Bill Belichick, coming in and saying I’ve never seen a team tackle like your guys tackle. I’m also smart enough to know that recruiting guys that can tackle, and like Pete Carroll drafting guys that can tackle, is a high, high percentage of it. Because there is an inate ability of whatever that is to come to power, be able to tackle without getting overextended or your head going down. A lot of it has to do with just length and body type, it really does. So I agree, I’m not, I mean we develop guys, we coach it, we technique it. I realize a lot of it is recruiting guys and whether it’s rugby or whatever you want to call it, trust me, that’s a big piece of it.
[00:19:43] Scott Stiegler, UNM Radio: So coach can you teach a guy with short arms and short stature to tackle?
Bob Davie: We’ve be trying! Have you looked at who’s been playing for us in the secondary since I’ve been here, and some positions? Right? I mean…
Stiegler: Do you have players that you can remember in your history that you can remember that were like that?
Bob Davie: Yeah I had two kids that became first round draft picks at A&M a kid named Aaron Glenn, Kevin Smith who played a long time for the Cowboys, they weren’t the biggest guys. Now they were big-time, big-time, big-time players, they were just a little bit undersized. But again, I don’t want to get into a whole thing, I think we are methodically getting to be where we’re going to be able to put guys out there that can tackle, and all of a sudden our drills will look a lot better, our idea of how you think we practice because we’ll have guys tackling. And we’re a lot closer than where we were, but certain get exposed. Certain guys get exposed, and certainly we’ve had some guys exposed.
[00:20:46] J.R. Oppenheim, Daily Lobo: What do you see in the high school ranks? Are they getting coached?
Bob Davie: Yeah it’s hard because honestly your defensive backs in particular come from other positions. You know we just talked about Markel Byrd who’s really a good tackler who was a quarterback. Jadon Boatright was a wide receiver/slotback, played no defense. Go through it, most of the defensive backs out there weren’t playing defensive back in high school, and that’s hard. It really is hard. But, what you look for is just the toughness and then the length. Just so much of it is length, of just getting guys down without just having to submarine and just throw your body, just being confident to get into a football position to be able to reach and tackle without overextending.
So, I had our offense, I made a cut-up of every run 19 had in the game Friday night against us, and I gave the tape to the offensive coaches, and our running backs as a group particularly. I said I want you to go through that tape and just tell me what you see. Tell me why did he run for 200-something yards and really, just you’re looking at it as an offensive staff, you’re looking at it as running backs, our running backs, Jhurell Pressley and those guys.
It came back to 19 made us miss. Nineteen made us miss. Made us miss, so our fits were pretty good. There were a couple of times we didn’t fit things, like the one toss sweep and he just took it right up the pipe we didn’t fit it right. That was poor coaching and poor angles. But a majority of them were he made guys miss, and I think we are improving on that. Our missed tackles have been down significantly, but at the end of the day you’ve got to have guys out there that you know can tackle. You kind of come to a point when you’ve seen a lot of guys for a lot of times, some guys can and some guys can’t, so we’ve spent a lot of time on that. Where did we even start? David Guthrie being a real dude or not, that’s where that all started right?
[00:22:48] Rick Wright: On Pumphrey’s 93-yard run, he juked, Cranston barely touched him at all. What happened there, what should he have done?
Bob Davie: Two things happened. You go back and look at the last couple of years, a lot of times what they do is they take these teams that are the I-kind of teams, and they will take that outside receiver and crack down. He’ll come down, and the safety has the gap OK, the safety has the gap. So the safety starts to fill the gap, and the corner comes down and cracks the safety, He kind of comes off like he’s going to, he comes off and cracks the safety, and the corner has the close that gap right now, and as soon as he cracks that safety the corner comes off the receiver and he’s got to be the run support guy.
Right there in the hole. So they get a hat on all the guys, and they force your corner to tackle by cracking down with the wide receiver on the safety so the safety can’t fill. We’ve had a bit of a problem of filling tight enough and fast enough off that crack so there’s not so much air in that whole. You noticed the one Cranston missed, he missed him but there was a pretty good, there was a lot of air in there, it wasn’t an easy tackle. So part of it was the angle of coming off that crack, off that wide receiver’s butt to take the air out of that hole tighter, so number one there was too much air, and number two the kid just juked him in the hole. And the last thing, the safety has too, as soon as he sees this, if the safety comes faster, just down into the gap, he just closes right now, then that angle for that receiver cracking comes tighter so the corner can come off faster. If the safety takes a little bit of hesitation than the guy comes at more of an up the field angle so the corner has to backpedal a little bit because it might be pass, and no there’s air there.
So it’s a collective thing of the safety coming right now, the guy cracking him has to come so flat, which brings the corner down so flat, and no there’s no air in there, because to come back and say well Cranston missed the tackle, that’s easy to say. On that particular one, there’s a lot of guys that would’ve missed that tackle because there was space there. So, it’s always more than one thing, and there were other times we did it pretty darned good. That’s the piece I’m encouraged about. There were a lot of really good fits in that game, and a lot of really good plays in that game. We’re still bit by the oh &$*%, there he goes thing. I mean honestly we are all, you guys are, I am, we all are. We have less of those now, but we still have them, and that’s the piece of just maturity, reps, confidence going faster, and then having more guys that can honestly tackle. It’s a process man, and we’re getting a little closer, getting a little bit better. For the first time since I’ve been here, honestly, I can see that we have a chance to be a good defense.
[00:25:52] Fred Hultberg, 101.7 The Team: I think we need to bring a whiteboard for you.
Bob Davie: It’d be a lot simpler. I’m serious I’ll bring you some video tapes and just show you, exactly what it is.
[00:26:02] Henry Tafoya: Coach if it’s not too private what did you and Rocky share with one another after the game?
Bob Davie: I don’t think you want to know. I got a lot of respect for him in that he knows football, he knows the University of New Mexico and he knows the environment here and he knows the culture here. You know it’s good to just have a chance to visit with him.
[00:26:24] Robert Portnoy: How do we get the option rolling again?
Bob Davie: It’s us, right? It’s us. It’s us. You know I did a lot today. We’ve been no excuses. No excuses. You guys are tired of hearing it. I mean Rick knows more about the 4-2, make the guy give the ball on the dive right? We all know, no excuses. So they play a 4-2, does that mean all of a sudden ‘Oh my God now what?’? Let’s get beyond that. Let’s get beyond we played good on defense 60 snaps but well they had nine runs for 280 yards. Let’s cut all that B.S. So yeah we have to get our running game going. I don’t want to coach a team that can’t run the ball and a team that can’t tackle, right? I’m tired of it. I don’t want to be that guy that we can’t run the ball, and we can’t tackle, but we have excuses why we couldn’t, right? And I hope you guys don’t take me talking about these things as excuses, because that is not who I am, and that’s not who we are. I’m just trying to give reasons for things, but I’m so sick of that, you know, ‘we played 62 plays but we had nine where the guy went for 280’ at the end of the day. But there are some positives that are in there that are important that we see as well. Alright guys? Alright men.