Please find below the transcript for Bobby Wilder's weekly press conference.
Good afternoon everybody. Good afternoon to all our 12th Monarchs out there in Monarch Nation. Coming off a tough, very hard fought loss at Virginia Tech. Extremely proud of our team, we went up there shorthanded against one of the best teams in the nation and love the way we competed this entire game. Really appreciative of the tremendous fan support we had from our 12th Monarchs. We traveled strong. They were loud and proud throughout and our team recognized that as did I and we are all very appreciative for that.
It felt like down 3-0 with six minutes to go that we had a great opportunity to compete and win this game, but we just could not overcome the play differential. Virginia Tech had 89 plays, we had 50 plays and that was just too much for a team that personnel wise we were already shorthanded going in there with injuries. We just needed to get something positive to happen early in this game and we could not.
Special teams, Bailey Cate continues to perform very well. He punted for a good average, he’s number two in Conference USA and that will continue to help us as we build on that for field position. I felt our defense played really well early in the first 24 minutes. Virginia Tech, a team averaging 45 points a game, had three points, but we just got worn down. We just did not have enough without the ability to score or convert on offense.
Offensively, the story of the game is 2-for-15 on third and fourth down. The first drive of the game we got a fourth and one at midfield and can’t convert. They covered us extremely well, we could not get off their man coverage to have enough time to get in some routes. There were opportunities there, but we just didn’t play well enough outside. In his first start, I thought Steven Williams handled the atmosphere, the environment, going against one of the best defenses in the nation. His poise was outstanding. When you look back and see that it was only one sack when it could have been eight or nine sacks in this game. His ability to escape, to scramble, but we just didn’t make enough plays around him. He was on his reads, he set all the protections properly. He did a really good job and handled himself very well in this environment.
For our team it’s critical right now during the bye week to use this time to get healthy. We’re 2-2 at this point, everything’s in front of us in terms of the league, but we’ve got 49 players right now that are on the injury report. That is the most that I’ve ever seen as a coach, certainly the most we’ve ever had here. Thirty four of those guys are bumps and bruises, they’re playing with it, trying to play through it, but I’m going to give them four days off starting yesterday all the way through Wednesday. That’s time we’ll just spend in the training room. That’s time we’ll spend strength and conditioning, our normal routine, nothing more than we normally do.
At this point we’ve got 15 players that our out, we’ve got a total of nine that are out for the season and six that we hope to get back as soon as possible. Daniel Appouh, Lawrence Garner, Chad Hendricks, Marques Little, who was injured during the game on a catch on their sideline, Bunmi Rotimi and Melvin Vaughn. I’m hopeful that we will have the majority of those guys back for the Florida Atlantic game. At this point Appouh, Rotimi and Garner could be a little bit longer, but that is our biggest opponent, if you will, right now, is the injuries and trying to get our guys healthy.
As I look at Conference USA, I’ve watched all of our opponents, I watched them all yesterday and today studying the other teams. I think in my opinion right now Conference USA is up for grabs. There’s not one team that’s stepped forward and looked as dominate as some of the teams have in the past. I think it’s a balanced league and we talked about that yesterday as a team. This feels a lot like last year did in terms of we came off a couple of really tough losses at Appalachian State and North Carolina State. Similar to the losses we just had, North Carolina and Tech and then we opened at home in the league and we’ve got an opportunity opening next week at home in the league to get off to a strong start and that will be our goal.
Q: In a normal bye week where you have a half or a third of the injuries you have now, would you have still given them four days off, or is four a concession to that 49?
A: This is more time off then we’ve ever had and then the way I structured the practice on Thursday and Friday, we’re going out in just helmets and the spider pads to avoid contact and collision. It’s just more about the reflexes of playing football, just going through the very basics and we won’t get back into a regular practice mode until Sunday. It’s really six days of recovery, like I said I’ve never seen anything like it. We need this time right now desperately to just get healthy and that’s the number one priority right now more than football 101, more than the basics of football, it’s more about our health as a team. I really feel strongly if we can get this team close to full strength, that we got an opportunity to be successful in the league.
Q: With all of these injuries, especially with Ray Lawry, especially with Jonathan Duhart, how tough is it to get that offense the help that Steven Williams needs?
A: It’s certainly much more of a challenge when you lose arguably your two best players. Ray Lawry in my opinion when he’s healthy the best running back in the league. Jonathan Duhart one of the top wideouts, even Chad Hendricks, not having Chad in there. Melvin Vaughn is such a dynamic player, he can play tight end, h-back, back field, he can play wide receiver. That’s hurtful, that’s a lot of production on offense. The ability to get Hendricks back for FAU, to get Vaughn back for FAU, that’s a real shot in the arm that we need. Generally what happens in this situation is you have to fast-forward with some other players. Fulgham has to step into the number one role whether he’s ready or not. Guys like Hasaan Patterson and Noah Ellison, those guys have to step up and play. I’ve been talking to coach Brian Scott and our offensive staff, right now we’re going to revisit what we’re doing. We’ve got to revisit it with a new quarterback and what he does well and find guys around him that can be productive. We’ve been here before, we’ve been in these situations where we’ve struggled against really good teams and what you don’t want to do is you don’t want to throw the baby out with bath water. You don’t want to abandon what you believe in or what you think you do really well because you played against two teams that played better than you did. It’s about revisiting what we’re doing schematically and starting with Steven Williams and what he does best and build around him.
Q: You had an identity offensively at the beginning of the year, or at least you hoped to have one, how does that potentially change with the injuries and with the new quarterback?
A: Our thought going in to it was we would be similar to what we were last year, we would be a run first operation, a lot of play action pass and then you lose Ray Lawry. Jeremy Cox is playing hurt right now, he’s got a hip pointer that he got in practice before the North Carolina game. That is clearly bothering him, you can see it, I can see it when he runs. He’s trying to play through that pain because he knows that Ray is out. So what we’ve got to do now is build it around Steven, I still think we can be very successful running the ball in Conference USA. We’re not going to change who we are dramatically, but it’s more at this point about looking at Steven and what he does well and building around him. What I learned about him Saturday is that he’s got tremendous escape ability. I didn’t want to come out of the game saying that, but his athleticism going against some of the top defenders in the country, he clearly looked like he belonged athletically on the field. If we make a couple more catches for him during the game, then statistically it doesn’t look as bad as it did. It’s hard for me to stand up here and say we were 8-for-26 for minimal yards and this quarterback is going to be special, but you all saw what I saw. His ability athletically, he clearly belonged on that field Saturday and for his first start. We have to build on his strengths, we have to build around him and that is clearly his athleticism.