Scot Loeffler Friday Press Conference Transcript (Ohio Game)

Scot Loeffler Press Conference
Nov. 17, 2022
Bowling Green, Ohio

QUESTION: How much weight does the victory over Toledo carry?
LOEFFLER: It was a great evening. I told our kids, their phones are blowing up my phone is blowing up, and I told them this morning it's time to shut our phones off. All those great moments that we had; we can talk about them in the offseason. We can talk about them in the spring and the goals and everything that we need to improve on. I'm really happy for our kids, I'm really happy for our program. I'm happy for BG, the alums and former players. But it's time to turn the page and really focus on a really good opponent. It's going to take our very best efforts. I told our kids today; we've got to get all our plans for Thanksgiving handled. I gave them the schedule. We just can't have any distractions whatsoever, and it's all about our mindset this week. We need terrific prep. It's our last Tuesday, Wednesday practice in a regular season together and we expect to have our best practice. When I was at Temple, we went down there and lost the championship with a minute 30 left to go on the clock. I just know how hard it is whenever they're good to go down there and play. It's going to take 100% focus. It's going to take our best efforts in all three phases. We have to go out there and let it rip and see what happens. This is a very, very well coached football team. The defensive coordinator, we are familiar with because he was at Miami. He's excellent. The head coach has been around Frank [Solich] forever. He knows how to win. He knows how to build a program. It's going to take a tremendous effort of 71 guys or 70 guys, whatever we're allowed to travel, to go down there and be locked in on doing our jobs.

QUESTION: What blended the explosive plays for the offense?
LOEFFLER: We'll talk about all those cool explosion plays and all that others. There are times that you get defensive looks that you're able to make explosive plays and there are times that you don't and you have to settle to throw the ball underneath. I wish that we could throw bombs every single play, but there's times that you don't get the looks to throw bombs. Explosion plays are all built in there. There's a bunch of different ways to have explosion plays. Throwing the ball underneath and having a guy run a shallow cross and he breaks the tackle. You're always trying to do what the defense gives you to make a long story short.

QUESTION: How do you view the players bouncing back after Toledo?
LOEFFLER: When our kids come up here, they're not going to talk about Kent State. We're not talking about Toledo. We're locked in. I want to talk all about OU, to be honest with you. To sit here and say what should have, could have happened at Kent State; what happened right at Toledo; what didn't happen right. It doesn't matter. We need to refocus our kids, our coaches into one thing and that's 100% focus on OU because it's going to take that type of mentality and effort to go down and play a really good football. I love how they play. They're tough. They run to the football. They make plays. They got a great running back. They can throw the football. If you're not locked in and you're worried about all the other stuff that happened two weeks ago, 36 hours ago, it’s as Coach Saban says, extreme rat poison. We have to lock in on what we're doing right now. I'm not trying to be a jerk or anything like that. I said to our kids today, our staff is done talking about the past, our players are done talking about the past. So, for me to sit up here and talk about the past, I'm eating my own words. We're locked into our job right now.

QUESTION: How does the defensive line matchup against Ohio’s offense?
LOEFFLER: Our defensive line is the strength of our football team. As we all know, they're pretty good. They have to play great and it all starts up front. We have to play great with our offensive line, our defensive line, because I think they're both really, really good. They're well coached and tough. We're just really fired up for the opportunity to play. Not only are they good, you can see on tape they're a first-class organization. There's zero bickering back and forth. I've got great respect for Coach Solich and how he built that program and his counterpart is doing the same exact thing. They are first-class, they play hard and I'm really excited. I just want to go down there and play our best and see what happens.

QUESTION: How important is Odieu Hiliare’s success for Bowling Green to win at OU?
LOEFFLER: I've been a part of really good wide receiver rooms. There were opportunities for OJ this week. It could be opportunities for CJ [Lewis], [Tyrone] Broden. That's how the game goes. Not to talk about the past, but in the Western Michigan game, CJ Lewis could have had an even as explosive game as OJ did, and we just didn't execute. We didn't protect. We didn't do this. We didn't do that. Tyrone Broden and OJ, and Austin [Osborne] they're all really good players and we got really good tight ends. That's the cool thing about the game. You don't know who they're going to take away. You don't know who they're going to double. I'm glad that we have other wide receivers besides OJ. Now, to take away from what OJ did? Absolutely not. But how about if we go down to OU and they double him? Someone's got to step up. Tyrone Broden has to step up. CJ Lewis has to step up. Austin Osborne. That's why you can't get worried about the noise of what's out there and all that other stuff. You have to focus on your job, locked in. OJ would tell you the same thing. I mean, that's football. He had great opportunities a couple days ago. I just know that your minds has be right because you never know in this game when it's going to be your turn to have an explosive evening.

QUESTION: How does OJ continue this success moving forward?
LOEFFLER: It all depends on how the defense plays him. I wish I could those black balls that you shake when you were a kid and it says maybe, I think so. I don't know how they're going to play him. That's why we've recruited a lot of playmakers and that's why we have a comprehensive offense that can adapt and adjust to whatever a defense gives us. Do we always execute it the right way? No, we don't. We're in a position that if they do this to OJ, we've got other guys that can make a lot of plays and we’re extremely confident and Matt's confident. To be quite honest with you, why Matt struggled here at the beginning of this, we didn't have a very good offensive line. We had one guy, maybe, that can make a play and you force the ball to him. Now, he's got guys that can all make plays. We’re just going to go from one to two to three and hit our first open guy in the progression. If it's OJ, great. If it's CJ Lewis, great. If it's Broden, great. If it's Sims, great. If it's Harold, great. If it's the backside of the backfield, great. But we're not going to get all wrapped up into one guy’s success. That's not who we are. We’ll never be that way. We're not going to go down that path. We’re a team.

QUESTION: How does that selflessness help in those successful moments?
LOEFFLER: You know, it's a hard world. I think I talk about unselfishness every single day. We're living in a world that wants instant gratification. We’re living in a world that there's so much outside noise to these kids. I thank God every single day that I grew up without a cell phone. I think every single day that the only criticism that I ever had to hear was one newspaper. When we're in college, there might have been two. Now, they're instantly being told how bad they are or how great they are constantly. It's a different era in parenting. The way that I grew up is totally different than the way that they grew up. I'm thankful for that, I really am. I'm glad that I had some really hardcore awesome parents. They’re living in a world that's just different. Selfishness is really hard to deflect and I think our team has done a great job. Have we been perfect with it? No. That's why we hired the staff that we hired. I mean, it happens in staffs. You have a great defense, the defensive coordinator is worried about the next job rather than winning. We’re smart enough and we've been around each other enough to understand that it's all about what you're doing on a daily basis and it's all about the team. When you win, good things happen to everyone. That's been the message from day one with our kids. It’s been the message since day one with our staff. If there's one thing that I can say that I brought to Bowling Green is, that's who I am. I could care less about notoriety. I could care less about the next job. Do you want fire me? Great. If you want hire me, great. I could care less. I mean, it's all about the team. It's all about the kids. It's all about the players and that'll never change. Ever.

QUESTION: What’s it like for you to see this team come together at this moment?
LOEFFLER: It was cool. Walt Haire. I can just sit and I'm looking at all of them right now. Brock [Horne]. Darren [Anders]. Jeremiah [Banks-Wall]. I mean, all those kids that came in. Jake Rogers, I mean, my goodness gracious. You want to talk about an unselfish guy? How about that? Jake Rogers started every single game his freshman year at wide receiver and the Good Lord didn't bless him at 6-foot-5, 6-foot-4, 4.4, like we have some of these guys. He got beat out. He never complained, he never hurt the team. He stood up before a game and said “I'm only going to get the opportunity to play three plays in this game.” He even lost the job of returning punts and then Jhaylin [Embry] gets hurt and he steps in and does an unbelievable job and he never complained. He worried about the team. Those are the guys we want at the end of the day. That's who we want. We want unselfish people that are all invested in the players, the coaches and their school. I'm jacked up to watch guys like Walt who was the worst practice player in the history of football. Bad attitude, bad this, bad that. If you would have told me that Walt and Karl [Brooks] were our captains four years ago, I would have laughed. Now they're awesome and they've changed and they've adapted into our way. It's not my way. It's our way. It's what our staff believes and how we're going to try to keep doing business.

QUESTION: How does having players with bowl experience help against OU and in a bowl game?
LOEFFLER: I'm really glad we have these players for OU this week. I'm glad that we have some really good dudes that I know will prepare really hard. We're worried about OU and we just want to have the best Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, that's MAC week. We want to have a really good Tuesday practice tomorrow. I'm trying to be my best here, but it's all about OU. They're too good to be distracted. They're way too good, too well coached. They're locking their team in right now. I know how they do business and we're against the clock right now. We have to make sure that we're doing every single thing, every single minute, to give us a chance to compete against OU.

QUESTION: To go into a place like Athens, how do you prepare through the week?
LOEFFLER: We kind of finally get back to a little bit of normalcy. What I mean by that is, today we treated it exactly like Monday and we actually got to be on our time frame. Tomorrow is a Tuesday practice and we'll be on our time frame, back to regular season practice where we started. The meetings in the morning, practice from 9:30 to 11:30. They go to school, they rehab, they come back and watch extra film on their own. Saturday, we're kind of back into MACtion again where it's a Wednesday practice. We’ll let them sleep in, they'll come in and they'll practice in the afternoon. Then, Sunday is their off day, which would be a Thursday. We have a leadership meeting. We have long staff meetings, offense, defense wise. We have a huge staff meeting about anything that happens with our kids in terms of medical, academics, health and wellness, you name it. We talk about it for each guy. Our staff gets a little bit of break. Sunday afternoon I'm making sure that they all get out of here. On Monday it’s Friday and off we go. To be honest with you, it’s a little bit relieving that we're getting back into a human normal week, which is cool.

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