A couple of things from coach weekly presser:
Is Kenny Hill still your starter, and how has he responded to the adversity of the last few weeks?
“They’ve both gotten reps over the last week and will both continue to get reps. Nothing has changed from last Tuesday. Just like every other position out there, we’re playing football. After what’s happened, there’s really nothing off the table at that point. It gets back to what I said earlier, change for change’s sake is impractical. What you have to do is have a reason for change. Is that reason your ability to be efficient and prove to people that you can handle what’s going on? Or, disprove that you’re ready to play in those practice situations? So credibility amongst the players and coaching staff is at a premium right now, particularly with where we are.”
Can you talk about the overall health of your team going into this week?
“Looking back and evaluating where we were, I probably underestimated the 8-game stretch and how we handled it. We didn’t handle it the right way. We had a substantial amount of guys banged up or beat up, and I would say mentally tired. That’s something we tried to address last week. I think the bye week came at a great time for us. Usually when you lose, particularly the way we did, the bye week is the worst thing that can happen. But in this situation it was much needed. It gave us an opportunity to look within, heal up as much mentally as physically. It’s never a good time in any program for a loss like that. But there are good times for bye weeks. And our bye week came at the right time for us. How we’ve taken advantage of it from a practice standpoint, I think we’ve been smart and we’ve gotten done what we needed to get done from a physical standpoint. But we’ve also been able to take the pressure off our guys from a mental perspective. I liked our attitude coming out for practice yesterday. The key is going to be sustaining. Anyone can do something once. Now what? Are we going back to where we were over the last 3 or 4 weeks? Or are we going back to the team we used to be? Based on how we practiced yesterday, I would say the latter would be the case.”
Could you talk more about not handling the eight straight games as well as you thought?
“I think the 8-game stretch took a bigger toll than we thought. I probably didn’t handle that properly, particularly with the three hardest coming at the end of that stretch. Our situation was a little bit different than most in the country (no bye week). That’s not an excuse, that’s something we needed to manage better. When you go through something like we went through, for some people it’s catastrophic if it continues. Fortunately that’s not who we are and who we’ve been. For me it starts with me. What can you do better in those situations, and if it’s presented a second time what are you going to do about it? You have to recognize that, not as an excuse, but something that happened and where do we go from here. That’s what last week was about, from a physical and a mental standpoint, the approach from here on out for the rest of the year.”
