Scot Loeffler Monday Press Conference Transcript (Mississippi State Game)

Scot Loeffler Press Conference
Sept. 19, 2022
Bowling Green, Ohio

LOEFFLER: Good afternoon. Hope you guys are doing well. Thank you for coming. After watching the tape, felt that we started slow, obviously, didn't get a first down until the first drive of the second quarter. I thought our kids were resilient as heck during that time. We were adjusting to their speed and physicality. I thought that team was the fastest team, the most physical team that we've played in a long time. They hung in there, which is probably the biggest thing that I take from the game. A couple years ago, we would have cashed our chips and wouldn't have finished. My hat’s off to the guys, they came back, they hung in there. We won the turnover battle. We won the explosion battle. I thought Karl Brooks, on defense, was exceptional and congratulations to him with the MAC East [Player of the Week]. Matt McDonald, I thought, played as gritty as they come. Played really well, played like a senior quarterback and has the last two weeks, and congratulations to him winning the MAC East Player of the Week. I think our defense is playing well. I think the stat that sticks out is 10 guys on our team, 10 different guys on our team, have at least one half sack. So we're doing a good job pressuring the quarterback. We've got an absolute huge challenge. This is just an upgraded version of what we just played. Super athletic, super physical. They can run like no other and their offense is challenging. Obviously, their defense is the same way. Mind you, San Diego State’s defense, it's very difficult to identify, a lot of coverages in the back end, so we'll have a we'll have our hands full for sure. Any questions?

QUESTION: With two very strange games in back-to-back weeks, how do you focus on things that you might not game plan for?
LOEFFLER: We prep for as many scenarios as you could imagine. The seven overtime game, we were down to our last two-point play. We carry eight. Then last week, we're pretty accustomed to playing in overtime.

QUESTION: Was there a different sense of psyche with the team today coming off a big win as opposed to two losses?
LOEFFLER: I thought it was a tremendous team win and all three phases had a part in it, which was great. I'm just super excited that they played well and we need to keep improving. There's a lot on the bone that we can improve on and we will. We will have a great Tuesday practice, great Wednesday practice, and try to move the needle of our program like we've been doing the last three years, just trying to get better each day.

QUESTION: How beneficial is it to the team to have guys that can get to the quarterback?
LOEFFLER: We started this thing a long time ago, by building the defensive front and building a really good front seven. We've got depth. We got depth at d-line. We got depth at linebackers. They play really hard. We're able to rotate guys in and out and we're gonna need that defense in terms of this league that we're about ready to enter in after Mississippi State, gotta bring your defense. Especially in November, when it's windy and cold and it's hard to do a lot on offense. Philosophy is always been to build the defense.

QUESTION: How was it to see Ta’ron Keith and PaSean Wimberly step up like they did?
LOEFFLER: I think everyone's trying to do their job. PaSean's [Wimberly] a special teams player that had a major role in this game and we needed his speed on the perimeter. He did an unbelievable job on that last run. OJ took four defenders with him faking the reverse and we’re able to get down to the one. I thought the last play of the game, with McDonald, was as gutsy as it gets. Two hip pointers, beat to hell, we were gonna run a sprint-out pass, and he looked at me and goes, ‘That's not happening.’ We play-action pass. He found TK (Ta’ron Keith) in the flat and it was a heck of a play.

QUESTION: Speaking of Matt, Jeremiah Banks-Wall also had an injury in the fourth quarter. How are they doing?
LOEFFLER: They're good.

QUESTION: Between PaSean, Trent Simms, and Cavon Croom, that's three Northwest Ohio guys playing a big role. How big is that for visibility to be able to point to local guys thriving?
LOEFFLER: It's been our philosophy and I know the transfer portal has kind of changed the parameters of recruiting, but our philosophy when we walked in the door was the four-hour radius, try to take as many guys that we thought could play here at Bowling Green, guys that had character, guys that had talent, guys that wanted to be in BG and we're not gonna waver from that. We're gonna still recruit the local area. Now we just gotta deal with free agency a little bit with the transfer portal. It's gonna be interesting to see where this whole thing goes. It's just an interesting new deal that none of us are accustomed to, to be quite honest with you.

QUESTION: You mentioned the slow start on Saturday and Mississippi State maybe being a level above what you saw with Marshall. How do you avoid that this week?
LOEFFLER: I don't know. They're really good. Now what we gotta do is do what we did last week. We gotta hang in there on offense, just like we did. We hung in there, we gave our guys opportunities to make plays versus the right looks. They’re good on offense. They're good on defense. They're fast.
LSU didn't really do much until the very end of the game, and they found a way to beat them. They’re exceptional, they're well-coached, they’re unique on defense. Mike Leach's offense is always great, so we gotta bring our A-game and we gotta just be able to hang in there and be able to deal, for the first time, with crowd noise. It is loud as all get out down there, as loud as it gets. Played there a couple times and so it's gonna be a big challenge for our kids, for sure. But to answer your question, it took our kids about one quarter to figure out the type of speed we were playing, and that they were fast and physical, and they'll just be an upgraded version of what we just saw on Saturday.

QUESTION: You mentioned out at UCLA, weather and heat playing a little bit of a factor. It’s like that down in Mississippi, ife not worse. For the humidity, have you guys done any preparation?
LOEFFLER: I think it'll be worse. We've been having a complete hydration plan, in terms of dealing with it. I’ve coached at Florida, it's a different type of heat. When you walked out in California, you didn't think it was that hot. Eventually you felt it, but whenever you walk out on the field, you're gonna feel the heat immediately. The humidity is through the roof and those guys get accustomed to playing in it. At the time, I was young and ran all the time and I could run all day in that heat. I was used to it, but not anymore, that's for sure.

QUESTION: How beneficial is it for the offensive production to get different guys involved?
LOEFFLER: When this offense clicks, when we were clicking at Michigan, when we were clicking at Virginia Tech, even Boston College, the ability to spread the ball around is huge. We don't want guys just to focus on OJ (Hiliare). We want guys to focus on (Tyrone) Broden, CJ (Lewis), (Christian) Sims. We got a lot of guys that can touch the football and score right now. We have to continue to game plan the right way to get the ball in the hands of our players. There's going to be times that OJ won't touch the ball because they're doubling him, and they'll be times that CJ and Broden have eight or nine catches. That’s just how it works and then the next week, it flips. It takes unselfish skill guys to play the way that we do, and we have unselfish skill guys. When their number’s called, they make their plays and they're all extremely happy when the other one makes the play. That's really key. That's really important. They get the team aspect of it and I'm really proud of that whole skill group.

QUESTION: Are you trying to implement Camden Orth more?
LOEFFLER: Yes, we were trying to do a change-up, very similar to what they did when they substituted their quarterback in the fourth quarter and they ran some Q-draw, some zone read. I thought it was a good change of pace. We knew going into this game, it was gonna be a struggle to run the football, and it was. That last play was the longest rushing play we had all day, minus one quarterback scramble. They were good. They were really good. I think our kids really did a great job hanging in there and really playing as a team, and that's what we got to continue to do and continue to improve and just keep getting better each day.

QUESTION: It appeared during that little skirmish at the end that one of the Marshall players attempted to throw a punch at one of your guys. Has anything been said about any consequences?
LOEFFLER: I haven't heard anything about it. It was a huge lesson learned. I don't know what happened, but the fact of the matter is, we can't put ourselves in that type of position. Winning's more important than pushing each other in a football fight. No one’s gonna win a football fight. No one has ever won a football fight. We're in pads. We're in helmets. You can punch people all day long, it doesn't matter. We've got to be mature enough, regardless of what's being said, what's being done, to walk away from those things, not get penalties, and do things the Bowling Green way.

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