Mike Leach Previews Home Opener Against Arkansas

STARKVILLE – Fresh off an upset victory against the defending National Champions No. 6 LSU in Week 1, Mississippi State's Mike Leach held his weekly press conference on Monday afternoon. The Bulldogs host Arkansas in their home opener at 6:30 p.m. CT on Saturday with the game airing on the SEC Network Alternate Channel.

Below are the quotes from Leach's press conference.  

Head Coach Mike Leach - Sept. 28, 2020

Q: What is your routine for bringing a team down after a first win, particularly a win of this magnitude?
ML: "The biggest thing is really just constant emphasis, and it starts in the weight room on Sunday. The other teams have talked about the 24 hour rule; 'let it go after 24 hours and we officially try to seal it up after our Sunday practice and then constantly reinforce it you know, and then also try to get some of your team leaders to reinforce it with the rest of the group but you know just focus on the next task at hand which is watching film for Arkansas and preparing our game plan for this week."

Q: What's Will Rogers status and where does he stand heading into this week? Will Garrett Shrader be back at quarterback?
ML: "Well he wasn't available last game, so we're really hoping for the best this week."

Q: What's your first impression of Arkansas' defense last week?
ML: "I thought they were a pretty tenacious group, they moved around well, and they were aggressive. They flat out took a half away from Georgia. I thought that was quite impressive. I thought that they played really hard. They've got some speed out there. It's worked in the past in this conference, so I think it'll be a good challenge."

Q: Where did you get an actual bandwagon for that video this morning?
ML: "You know, we actually made it not too long ago. Hang on, where did we get that wagon? Your answer is as satisfactory as mine is. They found it. I don't know. They wanted a wagon, so we went over there to the stadium and climbed in. That was fairly athletic if I do say so myself, getting on top of that wagon. They're pretty creative here, and did a good job putting it together. I pretty much just got a call, 'If you don't mind saying a few words.' We went in the tunnel of the stadium and they said alright, 'Here's a wagon. We want you to sit here.' It was kind of funny. So, I climbed in the wagon using the hub and the spokes like you see them do on westerns, but they didn't have the brake on, so that wheel starts turning and the wagon starts going backward. But it was an adventure and I heard it turned out pretty cool."

Q: How long does it usually take quarterbacks to grasp the Air Raid?
ML: "You are always working on something, you always keep progressing and you tell these guys, 'Make the corrections we give you.' We say, "Give us, give me something else to coach," because if you're coaching, if they don't make the corrections, you're coaching the same thing. So, we say, "Give us something else to coach." No matter what happens, we'll continue saying, "Give us something else to coach" and we'll keep looking for ways to refine it. I think as far as knowing the plays, there's a combination of knowing the plays, knowing the scheme, and then the other is becoming familiar with your personnel, which we're still working on that. We're still battling that because becoming familiar enough with your personnel, who is going to be where, when, and what's the timing of all that was tough for us. We had to kind of search for who could do what because it was kind of being revealed to us as we went because we weren't here. I think as far as the plays themselves, spring ball you can, maybe 12 practices at the basis but that doesn't mean that it's autowired as far as muscle memory. You go back, you go 'okay boom I've got to come into the dig right now,' and since you can thoroughly draw it up on the chalkboard and you know all the reads. You want to kind of get that so it's ingrained and repeated to the point where you can do it over and over without thinking about it so much. Let's say 12 practices."

Q: Was it an advantage to get the basics down?
ML: I think the experience [of the team] helped. I think KJ's experience, the fact that he'd been a starter for a little over two years at a major college, I think definitely helped and I think it helped create some stability for our offense and our team. For good or for bad, I've had some experience in coming in and installing things which I definitely drew on. I have to say, I'm glad this isn't the first time I've tried to do that because with the shortened timeframe. We tried to expedite what we did and how we did it to try and make it as clear as we possibly could. I had a number of coaches that I'd worked with in the past, so we're pretty familiar with how it was going to go and what we wanted to try and accomplish or what we continue to try to want to accomplish. Everything is exciting now, but you know Arkansas's a tough football team and they're a hungry football team. They looked really good against the University of Georgia and under the best of circumstances, they are going to be very difficult to beat. We just need to focus on that and all those things you're talking about – install, refine, get better, draw from experience. We've got to do that this week. We need a full week of that; we need a week from start to finish in order to go out there and play Arkansas."

Q: When you evaluate K.J.'s plays at LSU, what do you think he could do better heading into the rest of the season?
ML: "I think [K.J.] needs to communicate better when he moves to the pocket and keep two hands on the football. Some of the plays he can read and react better. I think he read the field pretty well and reacted pretty well, but then there's always the handful of plays where we didn't. We've got to refine that even more. We weren't perfect by any stretch. We didn't coach a perfect game; we didn't play a perfect game. We had a winning effort, but we weren't a polished group out there. We left an awful lot on the table out there and that's the thing you're constantly trying to chase and be your best and we need to make some progress on that this week."

Q: What are some of the reasons why the Air Raid worked so well in week one, beyond K.J. doing what he did?
ML: "[K.J.] was experienced and was able to pick it up quickly. I think our coaching staff had more experience together with regard to the transition. Texas Tech was my first head coaching job and there were some people that I knew but out of the blocks, first time being a head coach, it's a little bit like when you first get married. You can describe it to someone but that's not it. That first year you'll learn quite a bit about yourself and your spouse and all of the above, which is why some aren't the marrying type. It's like W. C. Field says, "But if at first you don't succeed, try again." But then if you don't succeed, don't be a damn fool, stop. I think we had some highly motivated players. I don't know if all of our group came back really motivated, even for things like running and lifting, the grind stuff. We did our best to motivate and stimulate that spirit and that mindset. I have wondered a little bit whether or not a portion of it didn't have to do with the fact that they were away from each other and that they missed it. It felt like they nearly missed getting football taken away from them. I think that the threat of football being taken away might have unified the focus and effort once they got it back to really play together. It certainly hasn't been perfect, and I haven't loved everything I've seen. Yes, I've yelled at people, 'Do up downs.' I've also gone back to my office and wondered if I could actually coach another first down, but I felt like we have played hard. I wonder if the threat of football being taken away wasn't part of that. It has been a strange year, but we really have been sent to work for the most part, and compared to other teams, I've had to."

Q: What did you think of the offensive line in the first game?
ML: "I thought we had to play better. You're not going to be able to select a position I thought we played great at. I thought we competed, I thought we played hard in all positions. I thought we did some good things, I thought we played before the five a lot. I thought that sometimes we'd get frustrated and just resort to street ball. In other words, just swinging and flailing really hard instead of using fundamentals and technique. We've got to get where we stay within ourselves and keep that focus where it doesn't just become a slug fest; where it's synchronized and we have the good fundamentals and technique. What's good about it is we had some really good plays we can draw from and say, 'See? We like this one. Do it like this.' And then we have the other ones where we say, 'Nothing like this. Go back to the one we first showed you.'"

Q: How much of a known commodity was K.J. Costello when you recruited him given his injury?
ML: "I think he was pretty known. He started against the whole conference for a little over two years. We faced him twice. He was pretty well known and pretty well thought of. Coming out of high school, USC was chasing him around out of high school. I think he had plenty of exposure. There was a lot of film on him.

Q: Was K.J. pretty much healthy when you guys were going after him?
ML: "I would say K.J. was healthy, but he wasn't back in shape yet. It was the type of injury that they felt there'd be no problem coming back from, but it's like anything. You've got to work through it. When I was his age, if I got injured, I'd heal fast. Now? Shoot, it'll never be right again."

Q: How do your expectations for KJ change after watching what he was able to do last weekend?
ML: "They really don't, you just kind of keep trying to polish it and get it better. The biggest thing is just do the same things over and over again, but do them better. I wish I really had a better answer for you, but I'll be the first to tell you, our team and K.J. combined probably aren't nearly as good as your impression. I feel like we have a long way to go. I think there's a lot of work we can do. What's fulfilling about it is we played hard and we had a winning effort, but I see a lot of things we can do better and so do our coaches and our players. They're committed to getting better, and I hope we can take a big step that direction this week."

Q: How much did limited capacity help a road team and what are some of the benefits from that and some of the downsides as the home team?
ML: "That's kind of a tough question. I kind of wondered. First of all, it was loud there. It wasn't as loud. I've been to LSU before, and it wasn't as loud as when it's full capacity and they're letting it rip. But it was loud. You had to have silent count. Before we went in, I sort of wondered was it going to be sort of like a spring game where I can just shout out, 'Throw the post,' and he'll dramatically jerk his head to the right and throw the post. There's none of that. The receivers on your near sideline could barely hear you. You definitely needed silent count. The PA kind of pumped in. Those announcements were inordinately loud and there was some sound effect crowd noise there. It was louder than you think. If I shouted as loud as I could and K.J. [Costello]'s out on the field, he's not going to hear me. I have to get out there to the hash to have a chance, and I don't know whether they hear my voice or see me walking out there and just the movement catches someone's attention. So, you did need silent count. You did need to communicate non-verbally.

"I have to be honest, I haven't quite gotten the hang of the cutout people in the stands. I mean that's an episode of Twilight Zone. You guys are all probably too young for Twilight Zone. I mean the black and white Twilight Zone where Rod Serling would get on there with the really creepy voice and the suit. All of a sudden, is this real? Is it outer space? It was almost like haunted houses met science fiction, that show. Now all of a sudden, we have these people frozen in time sitting there in the stadium enthusiastic expressions on their face, but they can't move. And then you have the noise. I don't know. I for one, it's cool. If people enjoyed it, great. But that is a little surreal, the fake people in the stands. I don't even know how they decide the seating. Do the fake people have a lottery for where they sit? Because I know this, some of those fake people have way better seats than the others. I want to be one of those fake people on the 50-yard line about row 12, but some of them are still up in the rafters. In this day in age, in these funny times, even a fake person can get screwed. Live clean, live smart, and maybe when you become a fake person, you'll get good seats at the LSU game."

Mississippi State University Athletics

Mike Leach Previews Home Opener Against Arkansas

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