WATCH: Leach Talks Creation of Air Raid, Return to Kentucky

STARKVILLE – Mississippi State's Mike Leach held his weekly press conference on Monday afternoon to preview his return to Kentucky, where he spent two seasons as offensive coordinator. The Bulldogs meet the Wildcats on Saturday at 6:30 p.m. CT with the game airing on SEC Network.

Below are the quotes from Leach's press conference.  

Head Coach Mike Leach - Oct. 5, 2020

Q: Are you expecting to have Kylin Hill or Will Rogers this week?
ML: "I think they'll both be available, yeah."

Q: You saw a lot more zone coverage this week. Is that something you're anticipating at least this week against Kentucky and down the stretch?
ML: "Well we've always anticipated. I mean over the years we've seen a lot more zone than we have man, but you know, obviously we need to be more precise in one, where we align and two, where we sit. I didn't see that so much as some magic to the game. I mean our execution was the difference. They executed. We didn't, but that's not some special thing. That's not something that was newly invented either. You've got to go out there and execute, you know. They did. We didn't, and we had a lot of chances that game too. We just have to get better. We have to be a steady, consistent team. We can't rest on any level of perceived success. We have to be the same team every snap, and I didn't think we were."

Q: How do you manage K.J. Costello where he stays aggressive but is more careful with the football?
ML: "Well, we clearly haven't had a problem with the aggressive part of it. I think we have to get a little realistic with it. The majority of the problems are forces. Not all of them are him. Sometimes he's getting hit or sometimes the ball bounces funny. But plenty of them are forced throws, trying to make too much happen. I do think there's quite a lot of that. We tried to score two touchdowns on one play. You can't do that. You have to go out there and put it in play and utilize all the positions out there. I didn't think we did a good job of that. We tried to make way too much happen, and not just him."

Q: How do you get Osirus Mitchell and Austin Williams more involved and how much of a factor do you want those guys to have every week?
ML: "You know we've got to protect. I think it all starts with protection. There's not one pinpoint item. I mean what it is is we didn't play very complete on offense in any position. I didn't think we did at quarterback. I didn't think we did at offensive line. I didn't think so at receiver. Receivers, if you throw out a combination of routes, everybody's got to be stretching the field because it sets up the other routes, and the quarterback's got to have his eyes in the right place. Your five have to be able to beat their three, and we didn't do either one of those three things consistently."

Q: What has Jaden Walley done in practice to earn opportunities?
ML: "I like the fact he's really explosive. I like the fact that he's always really excited to play. He's one of those guys that always plays with a smile on his face. I think that contributes to the others around him. We're trying to utilize all the talents that we have on the team. We want to get him out there and get him involved because he's going to take off here pretty quickly as a great player. I don't know exactly when that'll be. We may be pushing the envelope a little aggressively. I don't know, but you work with what you've got. We see him as a player that's really going to emerge and is on his way to doing it. The other thing is in our three scrimmages we had, he played extremely well in camp, which is quite a distinction for a freshman."

Q: What would you like to see K.J. Costello fix in practice this week?
ML: "Don't try to do too much. He's good with his job. He knows his job. The thing is as you compete and you're aggressive, he always tries to take it a step further. But if you do that then the whole thing gets tangled up. I want him to keep the simple things simple and have his eyes in the right place. Don't try to do too much. Just do his job because there's a lot of other weapons and receivers out there to help him. That's going to be easier as we protect better."

Q: Has missing spring practices been detrimental in the first few weeks?
ML: "Well it's affected the consistency, but we can't fall back on that. We have what we have, and the situation is what it is. Everybody else is in it too. It's definitely had an effect - a new staff, new package - but there are other people in that boat too. We just have to get better. I've never really had expectations. You just try to be as good as you can every day. Get your best. That's a challenge, but get your best every day and see where it takes you. Bill Walsh wrote a book called 'The Score Will Take Care of Itself.' That's an accurate statement, but you have to have the discipline to focus on your job one play at a time and allow the score to take care of itself. It's going to take care of itself in the best fashion possible if you're focused on one play at a time and what you're immediately doing rather than letting distractions put you on a roller coaster. Every team is fighting that. We are, and it was apparent last game."

Q: What have you seen out of Kentucky so far and what do you have to look out for on Saturday?
ML: "Tough gritty team. It'll be a good contrast of they want to run the ball and use the clock, and you know we're going to throw it. They're good on defense. Both defenses, I think, are starting to kind of take shape. I know they gave up some points. A lot of them were shots that hit for Ole Miss, but down in and down out they played better than the score suggests."

Q: Have you been back to Kentucky as a head coach and what are the feelings like returning to Kentucky?
ML: "Not as a head coach. I did a book signing there. I've been to Kentucky a couple times. It's a great place. I have a lot of friends there. It's just a gorgeous city, Lexington is, and a great setting for a football game. Now, I'm looking forward to going back to Kentucky. In football, you know, you get asked the memory lane question quite a bit. Not a lot of time to walk down memory lane, but it'll be good to see Lexington again."

Q: What's the best plan of attack when a team is dropping eight back constantly?
ML: "Just be patient, put it in place, stretch the field. But you have to do it aggressively. The guys away from the ball have to push and stretch the field also. Of course, you know, run the ball, be more consistently strong up front as far as moving the pile. But consistency, I think, would be the best way to put it. You've got to understand, we're out of business decades ago if dropping eight is some secret deal."

Q: Do you think you may be seeing that a lot more, considering what's on film now?
ML: "Yeah, we sure might. All those years we played Oregon, I mean we got them four times, should have got them six. That was their thing was drop eight. They did a lot of drop eight."

Q: What do you recall about the development of the Air Raid at Kentucky and your name being attached to it in some way?
ML: "You know, you're just in the trenches trying to improve every day. You're most-involved in practice. Go to practice, watch film, try to improve, try to improve. From that standpoint, in the thick of it you're not very conscious of it. I'm credited with the title Air Raid. When we were at Iowa Wesleyan College some guy brought in an air raid siren. That was fun at that time to name offenses. There were all the different names they had for a variety of offenses. You know West Coast Offense, Fun and Gun, Run and Shoot. Anyway, this guy, Bob Lamb, comes in with an air raid siren. Our offices were in a basement of a gym that was built in about 1890. Iowa Wesleyan College is the oldest college west of the Mississippi, and it was actually a site for the Lincoln-Douglas debates. You see the gym on 'Hoosiers'? Our gym was more Hoosiers than that gym on 'Hoosiers'. We're downstairs in the bowels of the basement. I was next to the boiler room. Come to find out Davey Lopes, the famous baseball player for the Dodgers, that had been his apartment way back when he played baseball at Iowa Wesleyan for a period of time. So he comes in there with this siren and says 'Look what I've got.' He turns that thing on and it's loud as can be because it's echoing off all the walls. [Mimics siren sound] Just letting it rip right.

"So we take it out there and our games would have 1,000 people, maybe 3,000 on a really big crowd, out there playing on a high school field. Bob would stand out there in the end zone. He would turn that thing on when we would score. Then after a while, he and his friends had so much fun with it, they'd just blast it for anything, randomly, whenever they felt like it. Even when the other quarterback was trying to call plays because we didn't have a lot of crowd noise there. He'd get kicked out of games and stuff and have to go stand on the edge of the fence in the back. It was greatness. From there, they started calling it the Air Raid. I'm kind of credited with the idea of calling it the Air Raid because I said, 'Well hey, we could call it the Air Raid,' and it stuck."

Q: How impressed are you with your defense?
ML: "I think we've done some good things. We play aggressive. We're not perfect or precise. Explosive plays, there have been some explosive plays that have haunted us a little bit. Work in progress but getting better."

Q: How was yesterday's practice and how did the team respond with a chance to clean it up?
ML: "i think that coming in, everyone's disappointed and upset. We did the post-evaluation things, where we fell short and what needs to be different. The biggest thing is it's one of those things as a coach where you fear all week that there might be a let down. You try to deliver the message. We failed to do that, so that's our fault. Any time you're trying to reach a group, you're going to try as many ways as you can. Obviously, we needed to figure out a better one. As far as the lift and the practice, it was very enthusiastic. Guys ran around. I do think we have a group that is quite committed, but we have a lot of guys that haven't played a great deal. They haven't really played. It's not just how hard you have to work all week to win a game. It's also the timing and situationally when to really let it go. We're improving on that. It looked like we were yesterday."

Q: How has K.J. responded in practice and coming off of the game, and what has been his process to responding to Saturday?
ML: "Analytical like good quarterbacks are. You know because the only way you really get to be any good is to have honest evaluation. A lot of that's going to be painful. So, I think that'd be the best way to describe it."

Q: Do you still keep in touch with Hal Mumme from your days at Kentucky?
ML: "I do keep in touch with Hal. We have met up in Key West. It's been a long time. We talk back and forth, really on all kinds of things. Football is never far from being one of the topics. He's doing a lot of clinics and things nowadays. He's still definitely involved. He'll always be involved in football. I can promise you that. Whether he's got a team or not, he's always in the thick of it with coaches drawing things up. Drawing things up on napkins, sometimes cloth napkins, which yeah we've had some funny expressions on waiters' faces over the years when he can't find paper. He grabs a cloth napkin and starts drawing stuff. He's still in it, front and center."

[Leach plays air raid siren recording on phone]

"Okay, here we go. I'm going to get my grandkids one of these things. My daughter and her husband, they need to hear this, because I went through years of random noises and rambunctiousness and broken toys and broken glass. I'm going to buy each of my grandkids one of those."

Q: With the oddness of crowds, did you notice any stark differences at home or has home field advantage been wiped out?
ML: "I thought our fans did a tremendous job. I really regret that we let them down. I think it's different in two ways that people don't realize. I've already talked about the cutouts in the stands and how there's a certain pretend aspect to the crowd. The one thing that's false is that it's quiet out there. It's not as loud as it usually is. That's definitely the case, but it's louder than some stadiums - not in the SEC per se. But it's louder than some stadiums from the standpoint that you don't just go in there and yell out to the receiver, 'Widen out. It's the post,' or tell the quarterback his read or yell at the guard. No, it's loud enough between the PA system and the rest that it's still non-verbal communication unless someone's right next to each other."

Mississippi State University Athletics

WATCH: Leach Talks Creation of Air Raid, Return to Kentucky

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Players Mentioned

K.J. Costello

Kylin Hill

Osirus Mitchell

Will Rogers

Jaden Walley

Austin Williams

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