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C O A C H S P E A K • E X C E R P T S F R O M J A M E S F R A N K L I N ' S W E E K L Y P R E S S E R You said last Saturday that the issue on offense was not being able to throw consistently or successfully against Michigan State. A3er watching film, why did that happen? And Miles Sanders has just nine catches. Is that by design, or are teams taking that way? You guys have asked those questions before about design. You know, for us, we basically draw up routes and schemes that are very similar to what they have been in the past, with a few tweaks here or there, and it's all about what the defense is doing and the quarterback going through his progressions and things like that. So we don't have a whole lot of situations where we're really getting to a point where we're saying the ball is going to this guy on this play, unless it's a screen or something like that. You know, we need to be more detailed. We need to protect a little bit longer. We're not giving up a whole lot of sacks, partly [because of] how mobile Trace [McSorley] is. Making sure that we can hold onto the ball in the pocket and get the ball down the field more consistently in clean pockets [is important]. We need to be a little bit more detail-oriented in our routes, the depth of our routes, being able to create separation in our routes and then being able to consistently make the open catch or be able to make the con- tested catch. It's kind of a combination of all those things, and I think obviously also being a little bit more accurate, as well, all those things. It's not one thing. It's all of it together. We've just got to be a little bit better in all those areas. Midway through the season, I wanted to get your thoughts on special teams overall. How are you playing, and what are the areas you feel like you definitely need to improve during the second half of the year? For the most part, our return game has been pretty good. Kicking, from a kickoff perspective, some stuff that you guys probably wouldn't know in terms of the calls we're making and things like that, I think we're getting good distance and we're able to kick the ball into the end zone more for the most part, but a lot of times our location can be a little bit better in terms of what we're trying to get done. From a field goal perspective, obviously we need to be better there. We need to probably create a little bit more pressure in practice, making sure that on offense, defense and special teams, that we're making our preparation Sunday through Friday as gamelike as possible. … We're seeing good things [in practice] but we have to be able to transfer those things from the practice field to the game field at a higher rate. The fake punt [that Michigan State ran] is something we have to do a better job of. We worked on those things all week long. Had a plan. Had somebody responsible for that, as well as other guys, and we just didn't do our job consistently there. Obviously, we have to do a better job emphasizing it and showing plays. That fake field goal that they ran is the same exact fake field goal that they ran against Notre Dame. We had shown it on tape and watched it on tape and it repped it during practice, as well. You know, obviously we need to be clearer with those things. Being in a similar situation last sea- son, what are some of the things that helped the team get back on track on or off the field a3er the Michigan State loss a year ago? I think the biggest thing for all of us – coaches, players, everybody involved in the organization – is sticking to our process and focusing on the things that we can control, making sure our players are doing that as well as the coaches. You know, focusing on our schemes, making sure that we're being as detailed as we possibly can be in meetings, that we're holding everybody accountable to that standard every single day at practice and that the old guys are helping the young guys mature as much as they possibly can to understand, you know, the seriousness and the significance of that standard. So you know, I think the biggest thing that we have to do is make sure that we're sticking together, that we're staying posi- tive and that we're focusing on the things that we can control and get those things fixed and get better at them, because ob- viously, last week we did not do that. What are the attributes of a success- ful spread offense, and do you think you have them right now? Yeah, obviously that's something we spent a lot of time talking about since we've gone to this offense. We've had a lot of discussions about this part of the game. When you go to a spread offense, it's a lit- tle bit different than running a traditional offense, and had these discussions, really, over the last three years. I think the challenge is that you want to run the ball as much as you possibly can to burn timeouts, but ultimately, just like with Trace's run on the last [drive against Michigan State] on the third-down play, the most important thing you have to do is get first downs. For us, that is running our offense and doing both throw and pass. The challenge is, if you throw the ball and you throw an incompletion, the clock stops and that's obviously not what anybody wants. But if you run the ball and you don't pick up the first down, it really doesn't matter. You know, you've got to be able to do both and you've got to be able to pick up first downs. That's the No. 1 most impor- tant thing. I think that's what happened with Trace. We tell them all the time, if it comes down to getting the first down and running out of bounds, the first down takes priority because being able to get a new set of downs is much more important than staying in bounds. You have to make that decision. If you can fight to get the first down, you've got to fight to get the first down. Obviously, that wasn't the situation on Saturday. I think the challenge is that when you're running a spread offense, and they can outnumber you in the box, you have to be willing to throw the ball. And we also have to understand when you throw the ball, they had better be high-percentage throws where you're able to get people in space, because if you throw an incomple- tion, the clock stops, and we don't want that either. That's the challenge. We have had a lot of discussions, have had a lot of those dis- cussions with Joe [Moorhead] and a lot of those discussions with Ricky [Rahne] and Matt [Limegrover] and our staff now, and I think that obviously is a very, very im- O C T O B E R   1 7 ,   2 0 1 8 B L U E W H I T E O N L I N E . C O M 10

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