Below is the transcript to the Bobby Wilder Press Conference.Good afternoon everybody. Good afternoon to all our 12th Monarchs out there in Monarch Nation. Coming off a disappointing loss at home to North Carolina on Saturday. That puts our record at 2-1. Really disheartened with the way the game started. We had such a good crowd, atmosphere; everybody was in to it. I know I was excited, our players were excited. We just got off to such a poor start in this game, particularly on offense. We didn’t have a first down in the first quarter. Three consecutive three and outs and that really put us behind not only field position, but defensively we were on the field for too many plays in the first quarter. We had a poor punt that cost us field position and a turnover. It just felt like everything that could go wrong at the start of this game did and yet we were only down 11-0 after the first quarter even with as badly as we started. There’s no doubt in my mind our kids were excited to play, they wanted to play well and then I felt like the game really changed when we made the switch at quarterback. That gave us a new energy and we played much better after that. Special teams wise, we just got off to a poor start. We had a hold on a big return by Isaiah Harper that would have got us the ball at the 50-yard line. We had a 24-yard punt from Bailey Cate who has been punting like one of the best in the nation. After the first quarter he played much better, we played much better on special teams after that. Nick Rice, our freshman, hit a 48-yard field goal that would have been good from much farther. Defensively, the kids just tried to do too much particularly early in this game. We try to stick with the theme of just do your 1/11th on defense. We did not and that put us in some tough spots. Felt like we played much better about midway through the second quarter. We started to play better football defensively. Denzel Williams was outstanding filling in for Rob Thompson who hurt his groin last week in practice. Denzel stepped up, had 11 tackles (career high). The big theme for this week with our guys is just to do your job. Offensively, the first quarter we had 11 yards. After the first quarter we had over 300 yards. The turnovers’ really hurt us in the first half. Having two turnovers and a blocked field goal hurt our points. Steven Williams came in and I thought he did very well considering it was his first time playing. Young guy, true freshman, he went 9-for-20, 140 yards, two touchdowns. He had the big fumble on his first drive after a long run, which was disappointing. That was a ball security piece that we will work on with him. He had a couple explosive plays running the ball and throwing the ball. I feel like it gives us something to build on offensively at quarterback. We just didn’t have an identity the first two and a half games, that’s why I made the decision to go with him and now we have to rally around him. Similar to like our team did back in 2011 when we made the switch with freshman Taylor Heinicke. This week’s opponent, Virginia Tech, is outstanding. They’re 3-0. I have a vote in the USA Today Coach’s poll, I voted them number 11. I think they’re very close to being one of the top 10 teams in the nation. They’re really good in all three phases. There’s nothing I can see so far going back to last year watching all their games, this year, that they don’t do well. They have outstanding performers at every position. Offensively, they’re averaging 41 points per game. Their quarterback has been outstanding. Josh Jackson is completing 65% of his passes, eight touchdowns, no interceptions. They run the ball well, they do it by committee. They have a lot of good backs, couple hundred yards a game. They’re throwing for 276 a game, so very complete offense. Defensively, it’s what you would expect from a Bud Foster defense. They’re physical, they’re really good up front. Their linebackers are really good players, they do a nice job in coverage. They’re going to play a lot of man coverage, which will put us in a lot of opportunities for one on ones outside this week, but it’s typical of what you would expect from Bud. It’s a good mix of zone, man and a really good pressure package. They’re good on special teams, they average 46 yards per punt and they cover it well. So for us to have an opportunity to be successful this week, we will need to do everything at a high level. We’re playing a team that is outstanding. A team that last year in the ACC Championship game almost beat the National Champions. I know they got them next week as well. I think this is the best football team we have ever played and it’s probably not that close in terms of teams we’ve played. We’ve played some really good ones but I think Virginia Tech is by far the best team we’ve ever played and this will be a monumental task on Saturday, but one we’ll be excited for.Q: Coach you tweeted out that you are invigorated to get back to work after being punched in the mouth, is it not that hard to get your team to share in that?
A: We talked about it yesterday, that’s really what happened Saturday. We got punched in the mouth. There weren’t enough characters to put repeatedly punched in the mouth, so I had to just put punched in the mouth. That’s what it felt like Saturday. It was really disheartening, but I reminded them last year early in the year, there were back to backs where we got punched in the mouth at Appalachian State and NC State, then we rallied and got better as a team. The biggest thing when you have a game like that from a head coach perspective is just getting everybody back on task. They’re still young people, they hear it from their family, they hear it from their friends, what happened, who’s fault was it. That’s kind of the common denominator in our society nowadays, who do I point the finger at on this one. The biggest thing I reminded them is everybody’s got to point the finger right at themselves, starting with me. We all got to rally together and get better as a team. You have to own that when it happens. Unfortunately you never want it to happen, but when it happens in home in front of that crowd, you have to own it and you have to move on and that’s what we’re going to do.Q: What does Steven Williams bring to that position at quarterback potentially that you haven’t been getting to this point in the season?
A: I played the position and coached it, you never want to make a quarterback change. You never want to do that and we were trying to develop an identity offensively with either Blake LaRussa or Jordan Hoy. I was trying to get one of those two guys to take it. It’s certainly not all their fault. We haven’t been blocking very well up front, certainly not the level we did last year and we haven’t been catching the ball as well as we need to. When I decided to make the change right before half time, it was because we didn’t have any energy. Our team had lost all their energy and we didn’t have an identity. You go through it at times with quarterbacks where you get some highs and lows, but I just sensed from our team that they didn’t have any idea who we were. What Steven brings to our offense is he clearly has the strongest arm of the quarterbacks. He’s explosive, you saw that on Saturday. His first drive we called a third and long draw and he ran for about 20 yards, so he’s got the ability to run the ball. He can scramble, he can escape. He throws an absolutely beautiful deep ball. That 71-yard touchdown pass to Travis Fulgham while he was getting hit, he drops the ball in there. He is very dynamic, there’s a lot of things he does well. I like the fact that for a freshman who is 17 years old, he gives the impression to everybody in the organization that he absolutely loves football. He loves to play football. I mentioned the story the other night about getting back in July late from Conference USA media day and he’s just leaving the facility with all the other freshmen. He had been out throwing the ball with them. He’s the Pied Piper of the group. Everybody looks at him as boy this guy loves football, I’ll follow him. That’s what we need now, we need somebody offensively that they can follow. I also said to everybody at half time in the locker room and I repeated it yesterday, everybody has to play better now because we have a new quarterback. Everybody has to step up their game, all the coaches, all the players similar to what we did back in 2011. You can’t just put it all on that players and say okay go save us. Everybody’s got to improve. I talked to Steven this morning, I said congratulations you get your first college start this Saturday and it just happens to be against the number whatever team they are in the nation. I think they’re 11, I think they’re picked 13. He’s excited about it and we’ll have to do a lot of things to try to help him, protect him those type of things. He said to me, “Coach it’s time, I feel good about it, I want to play”, so he’s excited.Q: He committed in June before his senior season after a camp here, was that one of your satellite camps? How did the whole recruitment of Steven Williams unfold?
A: We had known about him about four months before that and then we got him down to one of Coach Whitcomb’s quarterback camps. Coach Whitcomb had said to me, “hey I got this quarterback Stevie Williams coming down, I would like to come see him.” First thing that jumped out to me about him, before I even saw him throw a pass, was that he was in the front of every line for Whitcomb’s drills, so he made that impression. Once I watched him throw I went over to Ron and said this is a no brainer, let’s go get this kid. He wasn’t heavily recruited, a lot of it I truly believe has to do with being left handed. People are afraid of left-handed quarterbacks for whatever reason. I think a lot of coaches don’t like to coach backwards. Everything you do you have to coach opposite, which I don’t buy into it. I think a good quarterback is a good quarterback. He’s also an inner city D.C. kid and you have to work to go there. You got to work to drive to where his high school is. Everything about him, his personality, his attitude, it just came across as this guy’s got that it factor that you need as a quarterback. He’s got leadership ability. All our kids Saturday you could feel on our sideline when I sent him in to the game, all our sideline just kind of picked up. To the recruiting part, he didn’t have a lot of interest. There just weren’t a lot of people looking at him and we felt like when we got him, that he was a Power five talent player. Just one of those kids that kind of slipped through.Q: Have you coached many left-handed quarterbacks?
A: This would be the second one. We had Dominique Blackman who was with us back in 2010 who was left-handed. Another big kid, athletic, could throw the ball. I don’t think it’s different, I don’t think it’s unusual. The way Coach (Brian) Scott calls the game, you don’t call it opposite. You don’t call it opposite of a right-hander, you just call your game. A couple things you do out of the pocket you got to evaluate if he can throw. Now when you got a left-handed quarterback, can he throw going to the right, which he can, so it doesn’t change our call. (Ron) Whitcomb doesn’t coach him any different, we don’t coach opposite handed. You just have to make it natural for them, if you start trying to coach it differently, then it becomes unnatural. Q: You didn’t have any at Maine all those years?
A: No, never did. There’s so few of them, a lot of coaches just won’t let a left handed guy play quarterback.Q: When you watched Steven Williams high school tape, did Sean Savoy jump of the screen at you to?
A: Yea, I would have loved to have made that a package deal. He’s special and his career is all right in front of him. He can do everything, he’s explosive, he’s the whole package. Stevie played with him, there were a number of really good players on that team. The interesting thing about Stevie, which has all been talked about, is how young he is. He was 13 years old when he started playing quarterback at a high profile school playing against really talented kids. He’s done it for a long time, for as young as he is, he’s done it and he’s had success. That’s another big part you can never overlook with quarterbacks, is did they have success where they’re coming from. This kid’s always been successful. I went back and studied all of his drives Saturday, he had the fumble in tight and we had the blocked field goal. In his eight drives he was in there, there could have been 27 points when he played. Their starters were in until about 10 minutes to go in the fourth so most of his work was against their top defense. That’s what gets me most excited when I go back and I review all his drives, there were a lot of good things happening. There were a couple kids that nobody’s probably heard of. Hasaan Patterson catches a touchdown, Noah Ellison with a couple big catches, a fourth down catch. Basically what happens now is when you got a quarterback like this, he’ll move the pocket. The throw he had to Patterson deep down the field where they had the pass interference, that wasn’t the primary read. So now when you play with him, you got to run your route and you have to expect the ball. The ball may not just go to who the play is designed to and this is a lot like what happened with Heinicke back in 2011. All of a sudden everybody is in play in the route. It’s good in a way for all the other kids to see that now. All the young kids think I better run my route because he’s going to do something with the ball that maybe doesn’t normally happen. That’s what has me so excited about him. His ability to create and his ability to involve everybody. We don’t have to shut down the playbook. Sometimes when you have a freshman, you have to take half of the playbook and you got to close it and move it out.
Bobby Wilder Press Conference (Video and Transcript)
