DeKALB, Ill. - Northern Illinois University head football coach Rod Carey spoke at NIU's weekly press conference at the Jeffrey and Kimberly Yordon Center to talk about the upcoming game at USF. Joining Carey were linebacker Renard Cheren, offensive lineman Lincoln Howard and defensive tackle William Lee. Below are excerpts from the press conference.
NIU Head Football Coach Rod Carey
Opening Statement
"I just don't think we made plays. Certainly, we had plenty of opportunities to do that. When you play good in the kicking game, you have some people on offense do some dynamic things, you have the defense that goes nine possessions without giving up points you sure think you're going to win that football game. You didn't because of in those same areas we had critical mistakes or lack of execution which certainly was the case. So, we're disappointed but that's over that's done with. Today we hit the field. The first thing we have to do is correct our mistakes of execution and then the next thing we have to do is get going on South Florida, which we are well, well into right now."
"I have a ton of respect for South Florida. I don't know Coach Taggart at all, but you can see on film he has a well-coached team and a real dynamic team with great personnel. It will definitely be a challenge going down there, one I know our guys will be excited for and ready to get down there. We have some guys on our team from Florida so a lot of them will be excited to get back down and play in front of family and friends."
On if he was surprised in the mistakes made at Wyoming
"Yeah, I was surprised from the standpoint that we got up to a fast start and we weren't making those mistakes. Then, later on we were. Again, I'm not pointing the finger I'm pulling the thumb. That's my job to make sure we are on top of that and we didn't stay on top of that. It was as much my fault and the coaches' fault as anybody elses."
On the play of Bobby Jones
"Bobby played a whale of a game. Really was where he needed to be all the time. Made a lot of good plays, played physical and certainly played downhill. I thought Renard Cheren played really well too. I thought, Folliard, even though he was a little rusty, missed a little time in camp, he played a lot of football. I thought our linebackers, for the most part, played good. The defense overall, we didn't tackle good enough. That was part of the execution issue that we had. Certainly did not tackle well enough. Some of that is expected in the first game of the year. Some of these execution things are kind of normal. The sting of it right now is we didn't find a way to win that football game and make the execution corrections. We will definitely move on today and I know we are all excited to get back on the field today."
On the delay
"Yeah there were challenges with that. I'm not going say that there weren't, but certainly not going to let that as an excuse in any way shape or form. Whatever challenges we had as it pertained to the delay, they also had. I don't want to sit here and harp on those things too much."
On if it takes a while for the players' bodies to bounce back
"Sure, we had to change up we gave them Sunday. We pulled in about 9:30 or 10 am into the Yordon Center. We normally practice on Sundays and we weren't going do that. We changed it up. Thankfully, we had Labor Day so we didn't have class conflicts on Monday. So we moved our Sunday to Monday. Although, the coaches got off the bus and worked a full day and into the evening on Sunday. And then again last night, late into the night, just because of the schedule having to be rearranged. Players got up, got moving yesterday, I think that was good for them. Then today we're back on the field."
On if the players caught up now
"Yeah I think they're very caught up, listening to everyone. Caught up yesterday, so they are pretty caught up tonight."
Injury concerns
"Trequan Smith probably is doubtful for Saturday. Brandon Mayes went out the game and TQ came in and made a couple nice plays. But then, unfortunately, he tweaked his hamstring a little bit. For DBs, that's kind of a big deal. I know he's working hard trying to get back and we will see later in the week how that goes."
On if it was fundamentals that caused the mistakes
"There were three factors that, played into the execution that I'm talking about. One, certainly we made adjustments to what they were doing. They came up with a different game plan, give them credit. Two, it was absolutely fundamentals. You saw that from how we were maybe on the edge of blocks, offensively, and lack of disengaging later, defensively. Early we were think on blocks and disengaging. For sure, the third thing was guys knowing what to do having already done it and missing assignments. So mental errors there as well. All those things played into execution issues"
NIU Head Football Coach Rod Carey
Opening Statement
"I just don't think we made plays. Certainly, we had plenty of opportunities to do that. When you play good in the kicking game, you have some people on offense do some dynamic things, you have the defense that goes nine possessions without giving up points you sure think you're going to win that football game. You didn't because of in those same areas we had critical mistakes or lack of execution which certainly was the case. So, we're disappointed but that's over that's done with. Today we hit the field. The first thing we have to do is correct our mistakes of execution and then the next thing we have to do is get going on South Florida, which we are well, well into right now."
"I have a ton of respect for South Florida. I don't know Coach Taggart at all, but you can see on film he has a well-coached team and a real dynamic team with great personnel. It will definitely be a challenge going down there, one I know our guys will be excited for and ready to get down there. We have some guys on our team from Florida so a lot of them will be excited to get back down and play in front of family and friends."
On if he was surprised in the mistakes made at Wyoming
"Yeah, I was surprised from the standpoint that we got up to a fast start and we weren't making those mistakes. Then, later on we were. Again, I'm not pointing the finger I'm pulling the thumb. That's my job to make sure we are on top of that and we didn't stay on top of that. It was as much my fault and the coaches' fault as anybody elses."
On the play of Bobby Jones
"Bobby played a whale of a game. Really was where he needed to be all the time. Made a lot of good plays, played physical and certainly played downhill. I thought Renard Cheren played really well too. I thought, Folliard, even though he was a little rusty, missed a little time in camp, he played a lot of football. I thought our linebackers, for the most part, played good. The defense overall, we didn't tackle good enough. That was part of the execution issue that we had. Certainly did not tackle well enough. Some of that is expected in the first game of the year. Some of these execution things are kind of normal. The sting of it right now is we didn't find a way to win that football game and make the execution corrections. We will definitely move on today and I know we are all excited to get back on the field today."
On the delay
"Yeah there were challenges with that. I'm not going say that there weren't, but certainly not going to let that as an excuse in any way shape or form. Whatever challenges we had as it pertained to the delay, they also had. I don't want to sit here and harp on those things too much."
On if it takes a while for the players' bodies to bounce back
"Sure, we had to change up we gave them Sunday. We pulled in about 9:30 or 10 am into the Yordon Center. We normally practice on Sundays and we weren't going do that. We changed it up. Thankfully, we had Labor Day so we didn't have class conflicts on Monday. So we moved our Sunday to Monday. Although, the coaches got off the bus and worked a full day and into the evening on Sunday. And then again last night, late into the night, just because of the schedule having to be rearranged. Players got up, got moving yesterday, I think that was good for them. Then today we're back on the field."
On if the players caught up now
"Yeah I think they're very caught up, listening to everyone. Caught up yesterday, so they are pretty caught up tonight."
Injury concerns
"Trequan Smith probably is doubtful for Saturday. Brandon Mayes went out the game and TQ came in and made a couple nice plays. But then, unfortunately, he tweaked his hamstring a little bit. For DBs, that's kind of a big deal. I know he's working hard trying to get back and we will see later in the week how that goes."
On if it was fundamentals that caused the mistakes
"There were three factors that, played into the execution that I'm talking about. One, certainly we made adjustments to what they were doing. They came up with a different game plan, give them credit. Two, it was absolutely fundamentals. You saw that from how we were maybe on the edge of blocks, offensively, and lack of disengaging later, defensively. Early we were think on blocks and disengaging. For sure, the third thing was guys knowing what to do having already done it and missing assignments. So mental errors there as well. All those things played into execution issues"
