Embattled defensive coordinator Justin Wilcox covered a variety of topics while speaking with reporters Wednesday. Below is the full transcript of his Q&A session.
What would say the identity on defense is? What do you want it to be? What is the goal for you guys with your identity on defense?
Justin Wilcox: “It’s intangibles, first and foremost. You want to be, everything starts with toughness, playing physical and playing with great effort. And that, no matter what front you play, no matter what coverage you play, that’s where everything begins. It’s how you operate every single day. It’s not just a Saturday, it’s everyday of the week, it’s the offseason, it’s meetings, it’s all that.”
Do you already feel like that’s your identity or are you still trying to work to build it?
JW: “Yeah, they’ve been working at it everyday.”
What do you think the guys do well, what would you say the team does well as a defense?
JW: “As a coach, you’re always finding the things that you need to improve upon because when you’re playing defense, you don’t have leeway to have a critical mistake, especially against a good team. It’s every single play, it’s the consistency, that’s what we need to find. I think everybody thought we would perform better than we did, on every level. In terms of the run game, making plays in the pass game and then just some critical mistakes. Those are going to be things that are constantly worked on and that’s all we can do is go back and continue to try to improve on it.”
Coach Sark laid out these bullet points last week for defending Stanford and it didn’t seem like a lot of them got executed. What happened?
JW: “It’s the winning the first down. We weren’t as physical in the run game as I thought we would be. I think the players, we all felt like that coming out of the game. Things just started to bleed a little bit. We had some critical mistakes on key plays, on key drives and then some of the one-on-ones, we were about a step away. And that’s where the reaction, the instinct to be a step early, whether it’s in the run game or the pass game to go make one of those plays. That’s really what it boiled down to after watching the tape.”
Was it surprising that USC wasn’t as physical as you expected?
JW: “I thought, we all thought, we would play better against the run. I thought we would have made a few more of those plays, overall. I think kind of the critical mistakes you look at on every drive, there was just a play that we didn’t execute well enough. And at the end of it, it’s going to come to the down in, down out execution. We didn’t do a good enough job of that. It all starts with the coaches and we have to go out and give the guys the best chance to succeed. That’s what you come back and work on. It’s unacceptable how we played and that’s why we come back and meet and go back to work. I know our guys are going to come back and fight and we all expect to play better than that, there’s no doubt. It’s just unacceptable.”
Was it harder getting after the quarterback than you thought it was going to be?
JW: “For us, we have to continue to improve in that area. You pick and choose your spots on pressuring. Sometimes you want to be able to rush with four guys, sometimes your going to bring five or more. We did both and we just weren’t effective enough in making him uncomfortable. We had a couple opportunities to make some plays back there and we didn’t quite finish them. So you have to take advantage of those opportunities when they present themselves and it all goes back to us working on it and getting better at it.”
Do you feel like you made the proper adjustments against Stanford?
JW: “Anytime they make a good play, you’re going to say, well we could have done that better, we could have played this coverage, would have helped us out. Then you get into, hey they’re going to run a lot of different plays, they’re going to give you a lot of different pictures, so you got to play some plays on on principle. Whether it’s man coverage or zone coverage. We thought we’d play base against their run game to stop it early on. We thought we’d have a better chance to do that than we did, so we started substituting and going bigger people. We just felt like there were certain downs that we thought we could probably do a better job against the run in base and we didn’t. And it goes back to us. And again, yeah we’re going to always, you can look back in hindsight and always do that and it’s the first thing we do on Sunday. I always do that the first thing coming in Sunday morning and then we, as a staff, do that.”
Do you feel the heat and pressure coming off a game like that?
JW: “Everyday I’ve ever coached college football there’s that. For us, it’s all we work on, it’s everything you do, 365-days a year. So it’s disappointing when you don’t go play as well as you think you can play. We need to take corrections. Coming out and screaming and yelling and not giving direction, you know, if its effort and toughness, then yeah, absolutely we’ll get after guys for that. But if it’s corrections, then we have to correct them and we have help them to perform better.”
Sark said yesterday that he felt Stanford mentally taxed you with their offense and all the formations and stuff. Why do you think that happened?
JW: “They give you a lot of different formations and personnel groups. So you can match them and then they’ll break the formation. So again, it goes back to what I said earlier. You have to play some plays on principle. You cannot practice every single formation and play Stanford gives you, you don’t have enough plays in practice. You can play one defense and then you’re at the mercy of Kevin Hogan and they all know what you’re in. So there’s always a fine line there. They did give us a ton of formations, motions and were we a little bit, could we have adjusted a little quicker at times, yeah, we could have. And so there’s certain things we can do to help settle that down. And that means being a little more vanilla so we can play maybe a little bit faster that way. Again there’s always give and take in that.”
What’s different in the way you prepare for Arizona State this weekend?
JW: “Well really your preparation shouldn’t change. We understand, nobody felt good coming out of that game about how we performed. So to say, well, we’re going to work harder this week, we need to work hard every single day getting better at out craft, every coach, every player. So that’s what we have to do and give direction to help fix the problem. And some of it, we have to do in terms of the intangible things. We have to play physical every single down, we have to tackle well, we have to have the mental toughness to execute the technique every single down for 80 plays if that’s what it takes. Those one play lapses can really cost you against a good team and it did.”
Takeaways were a problem too, is that just swarming around the ball?
JW: “Yeah and making plays on the football when it’s in the air. I think we had one PBU, I thought we have got our hands on more footballs than that. But again, we just have to perform better. It’s multilevel, if there’s one quick fix, it would be an easy answer. We just have to perform better. And it’s got to be really everything, we have to execute better, we have to play with better fundamentals, we have to finish plays when we have a chance to finish them and we have to have the metal intensity to execute down in, down out. On a critical third down if we’re containing the rusher or if we have a chance to sack the quarterback, or knock a ball down, we have to make those plays.”
What would say the identity on defense is? What do you want it to be? What is the goal for you guys with your identity on defense?
Justin Wilcox: “It’s intangibles, first and foremost. You want to be, everything starts with toughness, playing physical and playing with great effort. And that, no matter what front you play, no matter what coverage you play, that’s where everything begins. It’s how you operate every single day. It’s not just a Saturday, it’s everyday of the week, it’s the offseason, it’s meetings, it’s all that.”
Do you already feel like that’s your identity or are you still trying to work to build it?
JW: “Yeah, they’ve been working at it everyday.”
What do you think the guys do well, what would you say the team does well as a defense?
JW: “As a coach, you’re always finding the things that you need to improve upon because when you’re playing defense, you don’t have leeway to have a critical mistake, especially against a good team. It’s every single play, it’s the consistency, that’s what we need to find. I think everybody thought we would perform better than we did, on every level. In terms of the run game, making plays in the pass game and then just some critical mistakes. Those are going to be things that are constantly worked on and that’s all we can do is go back and continue to try to improve on it.”
Coach Sark laid out these bullet points last week for defending Stanford and it didn’t seem like a lot of them got executed. What happened?
JW: “It’s the winning the first down. We weren’t as physical in the run game as I thought we would be. I think the players, we all felt like that coming out of the game. Things just started to bleed a little bit. We had some critical mistakes on key plays, on key drives and then some of the one-on-ones, we were about a step away. And that’s where the reaction, the instinct to be a step early, whether it’s in the run game or the pass game to go make one of those plays. That’s really what it boiled down to after watching the tape.”
Was it surprising that USC wasn’t as physical as you expected?
JW: “I thought, we all thought, we would play better against the run. I thought we would have made a few more of those plays, overall. I think kind of the critical mistakes you look at on every drive, there was just a play that we didn’t execute well enough. And at the end of it, it’s going to come to the down in, down out execution. We didn’t do a good enough job of that. It all starts with the coaches and we have to go out and give the guys the best chance to succeed. That’s what you come back and work on. It’s unacceptable how we played and that’s why we come back and meet and go back to work. I know our guys are going to come back and fight and we all expect to play better than that, there’s no doubt. It’s just unacceptable.”
Was it harder getting after the quarterback than you thought it was going to be?
JW: “For us, we have to continue to improve in that area. You pick and choose your spots on pressuring. Sometimes you want to be able to rush with four guys, sometimes your going to bring five or more. We did both and we just weren’t effective enough in making him uncomfortable. We had a couple opportunities to make some plays back there and we didn’t quite finish them. So you have to take advantage of those opportunities when they present themselves and it all goes back to us working on it and getting better at it.”
Do you feel like you made the proper adjustments against Stanford?
JW: “Anytime they make a good play, you’re going to say, well we could have done that better, we could have played this coverage, would have helped us out. Then you get into, hey they’re going to run a lot of different plays, they’re going to give you a lot of different pictures, so you got to play some plays on on principle. Whether it’s man coverage or zone coverage. We thought we’d play base against their run game to stop it early on. We thought we’d have a better chance to do that than we did, so we started substituting and going bigger people. We just felt like there were certain downs that we thought we could probably do a better job against the run in base and we didn’t. And it goes back to us. And again, yeah we’re going to always, you can look back in hindsight and always do that and it’s the first thing we do on Sunday. I always do that the first thing coming in Sunday morning and then we, as a staff, do that.”
Do you feel the heat and pressure coming off a game like that?
JW: “Everyday I’ve ever coached college football there’s that. For us, it’s all we work on, it’s everything you do, 365-days a year. So it’s disappointing when you don’t go play as well as you think you can play. We need to take corrections. Coming out and screaming and yelling and not giving direction, you know, if its effort and toughness, then yeah, absolutely we’ll get after guys for that. But if it’s corrections, then we have to correct them and we have help them to perform better.”
Sark said yesterday that he felt Stanford mentally taxed you with their offense and all the formations and stuff. Why do you think that happened?
JW: “They give you a lot of different formations and personnel groups. So you can match them and then they’ll break the formation. So again, it goes back to what I said earlier. You have to play some plays on principle. You cannot practice every single formation and play Stanford gives you, you don’t have enough plays in practice. You can play one defense and then you’re at the mercy of Kevin Hogan and they all know what you’re in. So there’s always a fine line there. They did give us a ton of formations, motions and were we a little bit, could we have adjusted a little quicker at times, yeah, we could have. And so there’s certain things we can do to help settle that down. And that means being a little more vanilla so we can play maybe a little bit faster that way. Again there’s always give and take in that.”
What’s different in the way you prepare for Arizona State this weekend?
JW: “Well really your preparation shouldn’t change. We understand, nobody felt good coming out of that game about how we performed. So to say, well, we’re going to work harder this week, we need to work hard every single day getting better at out craft, every coach, every player. So that’s what we have to do and give direction to help fix the problem. And some of it, we have to do in terms of the intangible things. We have to play physical every single down, we have to tackle well, we have to have the mental toughness to execute the technique every single down for 80 plays if that’s what it takes. Those one play lapses can really cost you against a good team and it did.”
Takeaways were a problem too, is that just swarming around the ball?
JW: “Yeah and making plays on the football when it’s in the air. I think we had one PBU, I thought we have got our hands on more footballs than that. But again, we just have to perform better. It’s multilevel, if there’s one quick fix, it would be an easy answer. We just have to perform better. And it’s got to be really everything, we have to execute better, we have to play with better fundamentals, we have to finish plays when we have a chance to finish them and we have to have the metal intensity to execute down in, down out. On a critical third down if we’re containing the rusher or if we have a chance to sack the quarterback, or knock a ball down, we have to make those plays.”
