The University of Texas at Austin Athletics
Quotes: Tom Herman Press Conference
09.03.2018 | Football
Tom Herman spoke to the media on Monday afternoon.
HEAD COACH TOM HERMAN: Obviously the outcome Saturday was not what we had hoped for or expected.
But I said postgame and I said today in the Big 12 teleconference, and I'll say it again here: Although the outcome is similar to last year's opener, this one feels much different, and the reason for it is because the reason we played so poorly, in my opinion, is actually a good reason. Because of how close this team has become; how badly they wanted to perform for each other, for their coaches.
And the first quarter, we just -- you know, I told Gary Johnson, yesterday we were talking about it, and he had never read Of Mice and Men. I told him he needs to read Of Mice and Men. It was kind of Lenny with the rabbit and with George, right; that Lenny wanted so badly to touch the rabbit and play with the rabbit, and he squeezed it so hard, he killed the rabbit.
To me, I know that seems maybe out there a little bit, but I think that's what the first quarter was. We wanted it so badly that we got in our own way quite a bit, and that's correctible. That also means that when you suffer a setback like the one that we did, your locker room is still very strong, and everybody still believes in what we have spent the last year and a half creating and building here.
And talking to some other guys, too, I can -- we all know the what. It's the coaches' jobs to figure out the why. You know, the general fan, anybody can tell you the what. They can tell you that, you know, we looked disjointed on defense in the first quarter. We went I think four straight possessions of three-and-out. The what's are easy. We turned the ball over our last three possession on offense; that part is so easy to diagnose.
The why is where coaches make a living, and the first thing you do in my opinion is you treat your players like mature, grown adults, and you ask them what they were feeling and a lot of guys said, "Coach, we haven't tasted being this close before. You know, it was a different feeling."
So we have to learn how to manage expectations. We have to learn how to manage self-inflicted pressure. We have to learn to manage a lot of things and that's our job as coaches to make sure we are capable of doing that.
But the positive is there's a lot of really good things that happened in that football game. A lot of performances by some freshmen that we got out of the way. There were points in the game, many points in the game, when you had true freshman, B.J. Foster with true freshmen Caden Sterns with redshirt freshman Kobe Boyce in the backfield; there's a lot of learning that went on in that game, and all of our long-term goals are still ahead of us.
We told the guys that this one game will not define us. How we grow from it and respond to it, will. And so that's the biggest challenge now is growing and responding.
On Sam Ehlinger's confidence level: I thought as the game progressed, he got better confidence-wise. I thought the deep ball touchdown to Devin was an unbelievable catch, but it's also one that we have told Sam, you know, launch that son of a gun, because that dude is really fast out there, and he did, and Devin went and tracked it down.
You know, we found man-to-man coverage on Collin Johnson a couple times and connected there. He did a great job of checking us into some really good plays. A lot of the completions to L.J. were him checking routes based off of leverage to his side. I was pleased. I thought him, like the entire team, was a bit tentative early, but I think as the game progressed, he gained a lot more confidence.
On the quarterback and a possible change: I don't think now's the time to do that, I really don't. You start, you're going to wind up in the same situation that you were in last year. We made a decision.
I don't think, certainly Sam didn't play perfect, but nobody did, and his errors weren't egregious enough to merit just dumping him on the depth chart.
So you're going to -- if you start doing that, you're going to start riding a roller coaster and we've got a tremendous amount of confidence in him. If we need Shane, we've got a tremendous amount of confidence -- by the way, and I told him privately yesterday, and I will tell anybody that wants to listen, you want to talk about a mature, grown man, on the sideline, you should have been on the headset with Shane Buechele coaching the heck out of Sam Ehlinger, talking to us coaches about what he was seeing out there, very engaged in the game and very supportive of Sam, and I can't thank him enough.
I don't know many guys that would approach that role with as much class and maturity as he did and it was really cool to see, and really, again, one of the shining examples of the embodiment of our culture and taking some roots here.
On Sam Ehlinger and his performance: That's a lot of questions. We told him, while we watched video yesterday, that, yeah, on third down, you don't need to take that chance. Throw it away. Give us a chance on fourth down.
And then, no, I did not -- I didn't see -- you know, other than that one throw, yeah, he made a mistake. He played 70-something other snaps where he played really well and didn't make a mistake.
So I was pleased with his performance, save for that one decision.
On injury updates: Yes. So Kris Boyd had a little ankle sprain, too. If we were in the NFL right now, you got, what is it, probable, questionable, doubtful, out. Kris Boyd would be probable. I think both Davante (Davis) and Brandon (Jones) would be questionable and John Burt would be out. Probably not going to see John Burt for another week.
It's Monday of game week. Obviously those two guys are starters, the ones you asked about, Brandon and Davante and so we're going to continue to evaluate them throughout the week.
On Gary Johnson's targeting penalty: Yeah, I thought Gary was in the open field against a runner. Whether it's a quarterback or not, you know, I don't think, especially as good of runners as those quarterbacks were, you don't think of them once they break the line of scrimmage. They are ball carriers.
And so Gary went with his shoulder, targeted low, on a guy that was still running (snapping fingers) and then in a millisecond, that target changes. He had already -- you, know, and I asked the official. I said, "Don't tell me the rule. Tell me as a grown man that understands football, what am I supposed to tell Gary Johnson?"
And most of them, "I don't know. I don't know."
I understand the rule. The rule needs to exist. But I have been in favor and will continue to be in favor of -- you know, there's many different sports that legislate intent when determining personal fouls and ejections and so on and so forth, flagrant ones, flagrant twos, yellow cards, red cards, whatever you want to do.
So I get it. A bang-bang thing like that happens and you make contact with your shoulder to his head as he's sliding; should it be a penalty? Probably. But should the kid get kicked out of the game? I don't think so. I really don't.
We are going to continue to teach, you know, our -- we are going to go low and if we have an inkling that the guy is sliding, we are going to try to determine that as quickly in the very few milliseconds that we have to determine it, and try to pull up.
But again, he had already made the decision, and was in the process of making the tackle, when then the guy slid, and, you know, it's unfortunate.
On Keaontay Ingram: Oh, yeah, I think you'll continue to see his role progress and increase. There's no doubt in my mind. I think in a close game, on the road, after an hour-long rain delay, I made the call.
I said, Stan, we have a fifth-year senior that's been in a loot of college football games and he's running the ball well. I thought Tre had had a pretty good day up until that point, any ways.
I said, you know, we need to -- we need to be -- we need the experience here in the fourth quarter of a tight ballgame on the road against Power Five opponent. And so that was why you didn't see him in the fourth quarter, because coming out of that rain delay, we had 14 minutes to go win the game. We wanted to make sure that the guy with the most experience in our backfield was out there the most.
On the team learning how to win: I think we're learning. I think John, you told me, the University of Texas Football hasn't won three straight games since 2013.
So we're learning how to win. I think, again, losses are unacceptable. Losses hurt really bad. It was like a funeral home around our building yesterday and it should be. It should be. Because if it doesn't matter, then you don't care.
And so, it matters very, very much to those kids in that locker room. I think going from player to player and talking to guys that you trust on the team, you figure out that that's real; that they could taste it and they haven't even -- if you talked to a lot of the veterans, they haven't even tasted it before.
They have a lot of confidence. They have a lot of confidence. We have to channel that confidence in the right direction and again, that's our job as coaches is to teach that to them and because of that, I don't think it's the same problem as when we first got here.
Had we gone down and scored the game-winning touchdown in a two-minute drill, our plane ride home would have felt better. Our food would have tasted a little bit better. But the problems that existed up until that drive still would have existed: The first quarter slow start, the couple turnovers there in the fourth quarter, assuming you didn't turn the ball over and you scored a touchdown.
We still had a lot of issues to work through regardless of winning or losing. I know that the guys are chomping at the bit to go do that.
So to answer your original question, it's a work-in-progress but I think we're much closer to having that part down than we were when we got here. Not the same problem.
On why they went up tempo: We got on the headset and said these guys are thinking way too much. They were trying to be perfect. We were paralysis by analysis. You'd rather it that way than the other way, trust me; with the opposite being they don't care and they don't -- they are not paying attention or anything like that.
We felt like the best way to get them to stop thinking so much and being so tentative was just go fast and take the thinking out of it for them and just go play, go play, go play. And it helped. It helped.
But it was a collective decision offensively to say, we've got to get out of this funk and why -- again, we all know the what. The what was the four three and outs. What's the why? Well, they are out there, they are paralyzed right now because they are analyzing way too much, okay. We diagnose the what; we diagnose the why.
How do you fix the why: For us, that was go up-tempo, take the thinking out for them and maybe that's the way you start some ballgames around here, so they don't have any time or energy to be nervous or uptight.
On going up tempo in the second quarter: I think when you do go up-tempo, you create a little bit of chaos. We were not perfect assignment-wise. That was one thing that -- we turned some guys loose but we had ball carriers break tackles.
You know, Sam, we threw four verticals, but it was up-tempo. So Sam really hadn't diagnosed the coverage, and it was a one-high-man coverage. And normally the ball should go, by definition, should go to the outside receiver, but he threw a beautiful back shoulder ball to LJ down the seam when he was covered in man.
Now, in the playbook, does it say: Hey, one-high-man; throw a back shoulder to the seam? No. It says player one-on-one matchup outside.
But he was going fast. He made a play and L.J. made him right. So that that, I saw a lot of confidence being built in the players as they went.
Yeah, we didn't block the nickel on power when he was blitzing. Guess what, Tre Watson made him miss and bounced around and made six yards. So we are not perfect. We have to get better when we are up-tempo, but the chaos it created on the other side of the ball, coupled with the confidence that it gave us, I think were the two biggest takeaways from it.
On staying positive while demanding accountability: I think honesty. This is one game. This is one game that doesn't count in the Big 12 standings. There was a lot of reasons that went into why we lost, and you address the why. The kids know the what, just like everybody knows the what. You address the why, and you just -- very honest with them. Like I told you guys, it's not going to define us. It's not.
Week one will never define anybody. I imagine Penn State is not going to be defined by a home overtime escape or any other school that had a rough go of it in week one. How you grow from it and how you respond to it is going to be paramount. Being very honest with them. We have 11 more of these guaranteed to us, 11 one-game seasons and we've got to learn from it and move on.
Again, you never want to get used to losing. That's toxic and these guys aren't. It's painful. That's good. It's still painful to lose. That means we've still got them. That means they still care. Then you've got to teach them how to move on.
On the two point conversion at the end of the half: Yeah, that was -- we were playing a lot better defense, and I wanted to tie the ballgame up. Down by two on the chart that every coach has says, you know, yes, and the little parenthesis: Coach's decision based on point in the game.
And so felt like we were -- you know, we had had three really good offensive series. We had told the referee to put the ball on the left hash prior to the drive, even. We said, hey, we are going to score a touchdown on this drive and when we do, we are going to go for two, and want the ball on the left hash.
And they put in in the middle. And because of the new clock rules, if the 40-second -- because of the time we realized it -- they know we said left hash; the play clock was under 25 and you can't move the ball once it's under 25.
So we had to run a play that we hadn't practiced from the middle of the field. I can't remember if we had time-outs at that point or not. I don't think we did. I think we used them --
We dumped the ball to Kyle and we had to use the last time out. We were going to run it because we had called it.
On the penalties and mistakes made: I was surprised -- again, I think Maryland had nine penalties, so there was a lot of flags being thrown out there. That's sometimes the way that ballgames go. The one thing that I was happy with was that we had a delay of game on purpose.
We had a delay of game because we had a fake punt called and they weren't in the right look and Andrew Beck didn't realize how -- the play clock, he's the captain of our punt team and he's just checking us out of it and just took too long.
But other than that procedurally, we had a holding call on Shack that I think was very disputable, but we overcame it and actually scored a touchdown on that.
Then, pass interferences, Davante certainly was. Kris Boyd in my opinion, turn -- you know, we send a lot of the ones that we dispute, a roughing the passer, following through on a pass rush from Charles.
They were all aggressive penalties. They weren't false starts. They weren't -- we had one false start. There weren't a whole lot of false starts, illegal motions, off-sides. You know, procedural things, that you would say your team is undisciplined or lacked focus. They were aggressive penalties that will get corrected and coach off of.
It looks like a lot on paper, and certainly you feel it in the terms of the field position battle is where we felt it the most because our starting drive field position, after, you know, punts, was not great, you know, because their offense had crept towards the 50 quite a bit. Even when we were playing decent defense, we gave them new life.
So it was a little surprising, and certainly we felt the effect of it.
On the fans being upset: I would tell them, we expect to win every game. We're extremely disappointed when we don't. But the sky is not falling. The sun is going to come up. Hopefully tomorrow, we're going to get to practice tomorrow. If it don't come up, we're all kind of screwed on that deal, right. (Laughter).
So we are going to continue to get better. We are going to continue to improve. We are going to continue to develop. I would hope that they saw the same things that I did that breeds confidence and some hope that, you know, if we get this tentativeness issue fixed, that we're going to be fine.
But they should be upset. We're upset. But we expect to win every game, and there's nobody that's going to put -- pressure's not the right word. There's nobody that's going to put more expectations or set higher expectations for us than us.
So we failed to meet those expectations for one game, and it's not Armageddon. We're going to learn from it, and you should see a much improved team.
On Brandon Jones at punt returner: Yeah, that's as good of two punt returns that we've had around here in a while.
So kind of the thought to be honest with you was Brandon was the sure -- the guy that was going to catch it and the guy you trusted, and on the road against a Power Five opponent, in a pro stadium, first game of the year. D'Shawn Jamison being the backup.
I think we feel good. D'Shawn, he got a touch on offense and he got some returns in the kickoff game. So if Brandon can't go, I think D'Shawn will be a very, very acceptable backup.
But Brandon did surprise me. Not that -- surprise is probably too hard of a word, but the intent of putting him back there was a guy with a lot of game experience, that also can run, but that you trust in an environment like the one we were facing.
But he definitely showed some dynamism out there, and I thought the guys blocked their tails off for him, too, especially the last one.
It was a great call by Coach Naivar. We sent two guys, I think it was Josh Thompson back deep to make sure we coached Brandon on the sideline; hey, this ball is probably going to land inside of the eight where that's kind of the No Man's Land where you want to see if you can get a touchback, and we said, we're returning this, this punt; and if you catch it outside the end zone, you're running it, because you've got Josh as your personal protector.
I thought it was a great adjustment by Coach Naivar and the special teams staff. I thought it was great execution by the other ten kids on the unit, as well.
On the improvement from game one to two being due to having game film to evaluate: Yes and no. I think, you know, Maryland offensively, created such unique challenges with the fly sweep element to their game because, one, brand new coordinator with brand new personnel. So do you know that this is his M.O., certainly, but you don't have the specific formations and who is getting it.
Normally, if you play a team like that, week 7, 8, 9, you say, okay, when 34 is in the game and he motions here in this formation, you're going to get X, Y and Z, or maybe just X and Y, right. But when you have a new coordinator at a new school with nothing on video; and -- it's similar to playing triple-option football. You have to have assignments, right. You can't just go think you're chasing the ball because the ball is -- who knows who has the ball at certain times. So you have to have very sound assignments. I thought we settled down and settled in once we made some adjustments.
But in a more traditional run-style that we'll see this week, and moving forward, I think, yeah, that you'll see the numbers, at least, bare some improvement.
On Sam working on his pocket presence in 2018: I did. I hope you guys did, too. I think that was maybe the most noticeable improvement in his game. You know, he had one or two that you probably say, he might have got out of there before it was time. But I thought he stood in there. I thought the O-line, really, we had guys covered up pretty good, too. We had one sack and that was -- they were in two-man, so everybody was covered and he was trying to take off because there was nobody for quarterback, and they twisted right and they got, as he was trying to scramble.
It was not really the O-line's fault. It was more of a coverage sack, if you will, but he was trying to get out of there. But yes, to answer your question, I thought he was markedly improved in that area.
