Scot Loeffler Friday Press Conference Transcript (Ball State)

Scot Loeffler Press Conference 
Oct. 27, 2023 
Bowling Green, Ohio 

LOEFFLER: Alright, happy Monday your happy Friday, so it's already begun, and Lord knows our staff has already screwed it up and we have no idea what a day it is. So, I had to look, but it's Monday to us Friday to you, and we had a good practice today, a little bit different because of we had a bye week kind of you know you had three or four extra days, but we got a lot done in regards to Ball State. But my message to our team this week has been, when we came out of training camp, I thought we are playing extremely well on all three phases and at times during the season. You've seen the offense play very well at times. You’ve seen the defense play exceptional and our teams and what I've the message that I said is our goal is to try to play the best football that we've ever played here these next four weeks. And for that to occur, you know we've got to protect the ball. If you look at when we've won games, we've won the turnover battle, our defense is getting the ball back. And offensively, when we take care of it, we win. We've got to still concentrate on being great blockers and great tacklers. I think we're tackling really well right now. I think offensively, we're starting to figure out how to block the run game. We've got to protect the passer better because the fact of the matter is, Terion’s a huge weapon, but we've got to be balanced. I'm expecting that we'll see overloaded fronts and all that other stuff. So, we've got enough weapons on the perimeter beyond enough weapons, and we need to kind of look like we did coming out of training camp in terms of offensively. Made a huge emphasis with our players that you know it's our job to do our job to the very best ability day in and day out. And the biggest thing that we've been stressing is, you know, a lot of this inconsistency in our staff’s opinion, my opinion comes from all the noise that's around them. And what happens is, is they're worried about what they're going to be doing in December. Are they going to be playing in the NFL? Are they going to be doing this? Are they going to be doing that and they come become consumed with it and it's our job to really try to focus them on handling them. Now, if you handle them now, our teams going to have a great four weeks. If we handle them now, our players are going to benefit from it, but that's hard to do. And what we got to do is really focus on getting these guys focused on the now and taking care of today rather than worrying about what happened last week or what's going to happen two months from now. So, I think it's a problem across the country. Everyone's battling it and I think our team is going to do a great job with that and we're hoping to have four really good weeks and we've got some challenges ahead of us. This first challenge in MACtion is very similar to what I said last week about Akron. I think this is a very, very dangerous football team. I think Mike is not a good coach. I think he's a great coach. They've won a championship. They know how to win. Their toughest heck on defense. I think they found themselves and identity on offense with the quarterback situation. The running back can score every single time he touches the ball. The quarterback has the ability to score, and there's just a bunch of really good players around. We're back in the quarterback, so we've got a do a great job with our eyes. We know that there'll be a lot of eye violation plays because of the threat of the run game with the quarterback, so we've got to do a great job and all three phases against a really good team and just like I said, this is. This isn't a two-win team. This is a team that has found themselves and their extremely dangerous and a lot of respect towards them or staff feels that way.

QUESTION: On the challenge making the shift in the routine of the week, going from Saturday games to mid-week games.
LOEFFLER: I like it, actually I love it to the fact that we're practicing on the weekends. Today is a Monday, so Saturday's practice will be a Tuesday practice and Sunday will be a Wednesday’s practice. You know that sounds confusing, but that's our world right now, and I love that that we're able to keep our routine in the morning, we practice, be able to get our guys off our feet, be able to feed them properly and have get them ready to play a night game on national TV against a good Ball State team.

QUESTION: On the team turning a corner, with back-to-back wins after such a back and forth start to the season.
LOEFFLER: I don't know. I'm hoping. I mean, that's the whole goal is the consistency and that's all we've been harping on is being consistent, being consistent day in and day out. And it's fascinating to me.
The kids that have been able to battle and do a great job with the noise or playing really, really well right now and the guys that that are struggling with it, they're playing just OK and there's examples of it. Obviously, I'm not going to give those examples to you. I've given to our team and what we've got to do is focus on these next four weeks about doing our job, shutting out the noise, positive or negative, and find a way to concentrate on that game and play for each other and do the right things and focus. And if we do that, you know, we could have a really good four weeks here, but obviously just like I said, it starts with our preparation for our Ball State, which I was happy with today's practice coming off of a by normally that first day of really getting back into it stinks and it didn't today. So that was positive, but we gave a bunch of time off to the guys to get them from wow, their bodies, right. So I expected today to be a somewhat of a clown show and it wasn't, so that was positive.

QUESTION: Where would you rank consistency that you see in the last few weeks right now?
LOEFFLER: Just like I said, there's times on offense that we run the ball well. There are times we throw it well. There's times like you go back to the Akron game we threw it like awful in the first half and then threw it fairly well in the second half and that had a lot to do with the weather there's no question, but we wanted to get it just like I said, you've seen it at Georgia Tech. We want to be able to play that type of football all the time and we have the potential to do it. That's really hard to do in today's world right now. But I think I think our guys are going to focus and we're going to really make an emphasis on worrying about now rather than worrying about our futures and worrying about what happened last week. Last month the get our guys just to focus on what we're trying to do day in and day out, I think we got a chance to have a good team.

QUESTION: On when the passing game is struggling and how nice it is to have the running game.
LOEFFLER: It's just like I said. Last year and the year prior on 1st and 2nd down we would get drop 8 and drop 9 cause the whole world knew that we were going to throw it every single down and that's a that's not who I want to be. That's not who our team wants to be. It's not who our coaches want us to be. We want to be balanced and efficient in both and the inconsistencies are sometimes the run game has been really well. Sometimes the past game and we want to get it together, similar to like Georgia Tech and how we played in training camp. I walked out of training camp and said, this is the best I've seen us offensively in a long time and I was actually worried about the defense and so was our team and so was our coaches. We were worried just because of how well the offense was playing. We didn't know how good our defense really was, and it turned out our defense is really good, and they need to continue to be good and offensively we need to get consistent.

QUESTION: How are you seeing Camden and Connor develop together and how does that link to who you decide to put in?
LOEFFLER: Yeah, that is, that's been shaky ever since the injuries, to be honest with you. How we wanted to play it, it was very similar how we did it in the Georgia Tech game. We wanted to have a package for Cam that he just does not running the ball. He is throwing the ball to keep the defense honest. That's the formula that we wanted. And then Connor gets hurt. Cam gets hurt with a concussion. I mean, it was completely threw us off in terms of how we wanted to do it and now both guys are in better shape in terms of health, we’ll be able to rotate those guys, kind of how we we planned on doing it and obviously things change during the game, and we just adapt and adjust.

QUESTION: This will be your first meeting against Ball State, what are you looking forward to in that match up.
LOEFFLER: It was in 2020 when they won it (MAC West Championship) and I just got a lot of respect for Mike I think he is a really, really good football coach. He runs a good program, just like I said. We've got good guys in this conference, good coaches, they do things the right way and yeah, so I just got a lot of respect for Mike, a lot of stuff what they do, we do in terms of offense. He was at the Saints for a long time, and we've done a lot of stuff over the years and stole from Sean Payton left and right. So, I just got a lot of respect form. I think they do things the right way. Their kids conduct themselves well. You never see them in the paper with uh problems and good program.

QUESTION: On the news of Michigan this past week.
LOEFFLER: Not really you know the signals have stolen from the beginning of time. And that's all I can really say on it. You got to protect it. I've made a statement 1000 times. I'm hopeful that we go to a helmet system similar to the NFL. I don't know in college football if it's in Pro Football, it's just quarterback. Linebacker. Whoever's calling the defense. But you know the XFL has done it where the skill guys can hear it. So, you can go fast and do all those things, so you know at the end of the day, I hope that that's where we move. Technology is used in Pro Football. Technology is used in high school football, and I don't understand why we don't use technology. I would love to have the I don't know if I would like to have what the high school has in terms of where you can actually watch the drive that you just ran, but being able to have pictures of the and show the quarterbacks and show the offensive line, the pictures similar to the NFL, I think we should have that and I know we should have some type of communication system between the play caller and the and the quarterback. I really believe that and then we won't be talking about signals and all this other stuff, because at the end of the day I've been a part of games where I think they knew every single play that we were coming, and they never stopped us. And there's times that I know that that we watch the TV copies and figured out their signals, and we could say all right here. Best example ever was Boston College Miami. Greg Nosal was on our staff, and he knew every single play that we called, and it didn't matter. We beat Miami to death that night, so there's a lot of nonsense to all this discussion. In my opinion, there really is. You got to tackle, and you got to block still.

QUESTION: On the agreement from coaches that technology could help, where would you see this conversation taking changes in the future for college football?
LOEFFLER: I would love to have the pictures. Being able to have a picture book soon as you get off the field I think is beyond reasonable and then the headset, I think the headsets need to be used. Rather than sitting and watching a TV copy and trying to figure out signals, you could be working on teaching a kid to get a little bit better technique wise. And all this other stuff and be creative. Get the headsets life becomes much better, but just like I said, I get it. Run, past all this rigamarole, and but at the end of the day, its players making plays and players blocking and tackling and executing. And so that's just my opinion on it. I'm it's probably way, way above my pay grade, but you know, everyone asked and everyone's talking about it. So that's just my opinion in terms of, let's use some technology and at the end of the day coach football and worry about technique and worry about scheme rather than trying to figure out does this mean pass or run or whatever. So just my opinion.

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