Head coach Herm Edwards opened his presser with:
“Excited about entering the Pac-12... our division. We have nine games left in the season, and we go into it with a record of 2-1 against a team that’s highly-touted, and they should be.”
He continued to talk about Saturday’s opponent — the Washington Huskies very good defense and skill position players.
Frank Darby
After the “controversial” catch-no catch, Edwards was asked about the wide receiver’s health.
“He’s fine. He’s a tough guy, he’s from Jersey. I call him Jersey Frank. He’s good. He’s alright. That was a heck of an attempt by Frank too, nice throw by Manny, just went up and competed for the ball. Just had a good day, Frank had a good day, made some big-time plays for us. We love the guy, we love the way he competes. He’s sneaky fast. He seems to get behind people.”
He joked that Darby and himself joke about their New Jersey connection, and Edwards calling him, “Jersey Frank.”
Edwards also believes moving forward that there will be a discussion of whether or not the targeting penalty will be a spot foul in the future.
Rushing Game Struggles
Edwards was asked if running backs Isaiah Floyd and/or Trelon Smith should’ve got more carries due to starter Eno Benjamin only gaining 21 yards on 13 carries a week after getting 27 yards on 13 carries against Michigan State.
“Well... we say that but I think what happened — you got to give San Diego State a lot of credit. They were in our backfield a lot, no clean runs. They got after us pretty good. They had an opportunity to study us and they did a good job of stopping us from running the ball. The problem is you can’t get discouraged, you got to continue to run the football.”
Run Defense
After being the top run defense the first two weeks, San Diego State rushed for 311 yards in the Aztecs win. Edwards mentioned a little of what went wrong in the loss.
“Well, a couple things. Some of them, the box wasn’t set up correctly on us. We didn’t line up correctly. Some of that is just alignment error and that’s what you dread the most, some of the guys -- and I don’t know if it was fatigue or guys just didn’t trust it and wanted to make a play. And what [SDSU] did, they did a good job of really getting the ball to the second level where our safeties and corners had to tackle. If you look at the tackle list when your corners and safeties are making a majority of the tackles that’s a bad day because that’s not how it’s constructed at all. They have to make some, they do a great job of bringing those receivers in, cracking the support and asking the corner to come up there. But it’s one thing for a corner to come up there it’s another for a guard to come up there trying to hit the corner. And we’ve got tough guys but it’s just, they did a nice job of really putting us in that situation at times due to sometimes their scheme, due to sometimes we failing not to line up correctly and our own scheme. So it’s a teaching moment, I think the guys watched the film yesterday. We’ve gotta do a better job of that this week and we’ve just gotta stop the run, it’s just, it’s painful to watch.”
Despite safety Jalen Harvey having 13 tackles in the loss, it isn’t the performance the team truly needs from his position.
Venue
Edwards talked about Husky Stadium and how the team might practice in the bubble this week in attempt to practice with crowd noise.
“This place, going up to Washington, boy I’ll tell you, it’s a fantastic thing to play a game in. It’s going to be loud. I can remember when I first played a game there as a freshman in college. The quarterback was Sonny Sixkiller. I said, he’s got a good football name, Sonny Sixkiller. Playing those guys up there and the venue, I think they’ve taken the track out of there and now it’s even more tight. They’ve got a great fanbase. It’s going to be spectacular. Night game again, these are the types of venues you want to play in with this excitement and all that stuff. I think I’m going to be forced to go into the bubble one day this week just for crowd noise. Put us in the bubble so we can get used to the noise. It’s going to be noisy for our offense. It’s one of those things that I think I’m considering because it’s in the best interest for our team.”
The full video of Herm Edwards’ press conference can be seen here.