Sept. 7, 2010
DEKALB, Ill.- Northern Illinois head football coach Jerry Kill spoke at NIU's weekly press conference at the Jeffrey and Kimberly Yordon Center to review the Iowa State game preview the home opener against North Dakota. Joining Kill were safety Tommy Davis (East St. Louis, Ill./Althoff Catholic), safety Mike Sobol (Pevely, Mo./Herculaneum) and center Scott Wedige (Elkhorn, Wis./Elkhorn Area). Below are excerpts from the press conference.
NIU Head Coach Jerry Kill
Thoughts on the Iowa State game
"What I've seen from the video is that I see a football team that certainly got better from the first half to the second half. I just got off the phone with Coach [Paul] Rhodes at Iowa State and we were visiting a little bit about our game. I think we were a little bit starry-eyed when we started. I think we played like a team in their first game, so to speak. When we first started out, I think we were kind of nervous. I think once the game and the speed of the game slowed down, we played much better. I think the statistics of the second half showed that we got better, but we certainly have a lot of room to improve. I think we know that. We've got to go back to work and get that done."
On what he was pleased with after the Iowa State game
"I thought the offensive line played pretty well. I think that was a bright spot. I thought they played well. We had three guys make their first start, which a lot of people don't realize, and I thought all three of those youngsters played well and did a good job up front. I really felt that we protected well. Rashaan Melvin at corner came in and I thought, not having Patrick George at full speed, came in and gave us some valuable minutes and things of that nature. Probably, what surprised me the most in the evening was how well the offensive line played."
On how the team has responded to the game
"All I can tell you is what I'd seen yesterday, as far as how practice went yesterday. I had thought that the kids had done a good job of paying attention. I think our team knows where they're at. A lot of people talk about a lot of different things, but I think our kids know where they're at and our schedule with the way it is, it's not easy road. If we had kept playing bad, it would have been not so easy. After our halftime talk, I lit into them pretty good at Ames, and we came out and responded a little bit better and we got things going. I thought we got into a rhythm. Our biggest fault in that football game is that we have to be able to make some plays. If you guys can see it, certainly we can. You've got to be able to make a play on third down and five, you have to make a play on third down and six, you can't be running for eight yards and not get the first down and be a half a yard short. You can't have two guys wide open and not put it on them. That's the differences when you look at the game with Boise State last night. When they had their shots, they made them. We didn't make those shots in that game and that's kind of been our Achilles' heel since I've been here and we've got to make those plays, and that gets frustrating. That's a frustrating area that we've got to get corrected. We've got to make those plays.
"Once you make them, I think it's like anything, once you make a play or two, then you breed off success. If we hit that post down the pipe right there at the beginning of that game, it would've made it 17 all and it might've been a whole different game, but we didn't. So, you go back and visit with your offensive coaches, and I just spent some time with them here in the last hour, that it's one of those things, that is the frustrating thing. We left too many plays out on the field. A lot plays we left out there on the field and it's frustrating. We've got to get them corrected. Defensively, most of our mistakes, we had some young linebackers that we're playing, really getting their true, what I call truly first indoctrination of college football. Devon Butler would tell you, `boy coach, I got played.' He played okay, but he knows he can play better. I think again, that the game slowed down in the second half and I think we gave up 28 rushing yards in the second half. So, there was a whole lot of difference between the first half and the second half, but we just got to get better. We can't lose our focus, can't get frustrated, and can't worry about what everybody thinks. We've got to get better."
On DeMarcus Grady's play
"Well, I think we still have to continue to improve in that area. We left some plays on the field. Just as I recently mentioned, that you've got to make at that position. What makes the guy at Boise State so special is that he makes those plays. If you're going to have a good football team, your quarterback has to make those plays. So we have to continue to improve in that position whether it's DeMarcus or whoever that may be."
On the importance of the North Dakota game
"I think that they're all important and you take them one at a time. We need to get our football team playing with a sense of rhythm and sense of urgency that they played with in the second half and continue to build toward what we did in the second half and take it right into this game. I think our football team will react on how we react and I think we've reacted pretty good. I think we came back and talked to our coaches and let them know exactly what we wanted and what we needed to do. I think the kids have responded well. It's yet to be determined until we play, but they're all important, certainly when you play at home. You can't have any hiccups at home when we've only got five so need to take care of all five of those games at home."
On North Dakota
"I know a lot about North Dakota, of course that's where the guy that took my place at Southern Illinois, Dale Lennon had left and won a national championship with. North Dakota State beat KU, 6-3. I came from I-AA football and I know what it's about. We went to Indiana and beat Indiana. I know what kind of football team we're playing. We're not playing somebody who doesn't know how to play. A good football team will come in here and we'll have to play very well to win. We don't have anybody on our schedule where you say, `well, this one we got or whatever,' there just isn't any of those. We've got to be ready to play each week.
"They line up on the defensive side of the ball and they're more 50 team that plays zero nose guard. We haven't seen a lot of it. We've seen some from our defense in camp, but we haven't seen a lot of zero nose guard and a lot of 50 slant. They've been doing it a long time. They did it when I was at Pittsburg State University so they've been running that scheme. Dale's still running it at Southern [Illinois] and he's got the people that have been involved with that background and philosophy for a long time. So, they've always played very, very good defense there, and I expect nothing different."
On the offensive line
"I thought those kids, with three of them getting their first start, that made us all nervous, but I thought they handled themselves pretty good. I thought that group as a whole played pretty solid."
On the importance of this game being at home
"I'm not going to downsize anything, I think we need to win every one we play at home. I think it's that critical when you only play five at home, you better take advantage of all of them that you can. That's important to us."
On his knowledge of I-AA opponents
"You figure that they think, `we don't have anything to hold back or anything to lose, we're going to go and let everything rip.' That's the same way we looked at it when we went to Purdue and same way with Iowa [State]. You seem to play a little looser and you seem to not worry about that call, so to speak, and you play with a little bit of chip on your shoulder. I think every coach who has ever coached in I-AA will use that to his advantage if he can.
"They played at Idaho last week and I think, certainly with my background being at Southern and Dale having friends at North Dakota, there's a natural tie and a lot things. The big thing I know is that I have a rich, deep history with North Dakota State and North Dakota through growing up all the way back in Division II. So I know how good those programs are. I'm not one of those that are dying to play them."
On if the players might overlook North Dakota
"Not at all. Not from where we're at right now. I can tell you this, the last two years, coming off a loss, there's been some talk on the way home. There wasn't anybody who said anything on the way home [from Iowa State]. Those kids were disappointed. They were hurt. They wanted to do well. That shows me something. That showed me something that we hadn't had the last two years. I think there's definitely a group of kids in there that want to do well and perform well. I feel good about that part of it. If they had been giggling and ding-donging around like some of them do these days. There wasn't a word, I mean not a word said. So, I think they were pretty disappointed. When I was out there at practice yesterday, there was a workman's approach. I felt good about the way that they handled things."
On the running back situation
"We'll see again, and I don't think, it's Cameron Bell's first game in a year. So you don't put too much on this play and our big deal is we have to get [Chad] Spann and Jas [Hopkins] more touches in the football game. They're two good players that need to have more touches, that's the bottom line. You have to get good players the football and those two both did great things on Thursday, but they didn't happen enough in a lot of different areas; throwing it, catching it, or running it, both those kids make plays."
On the decision to go with Grady
"I think I've given the past history of this for a long time now, it's that Chandler [Harnish] was not supposed to play a year ago and had no plans to play, but this whole spectrum's changed, but also he's missed all of spring ball, a lot of reps, a lot of things and so he's playing catch up right now and as soon as we feel like he's caught up, then we're going to put what we feel is the best player out there that's going to make us the best. It may take us awhile to figure that out, I don't know, we'll just have to wait and see."
On Grady's play
"In our particular situation, whoever the quarterback is, is that we've got to make those third down and seven throws. We've got to be able to run play action. When we've got somebody eight or nine yards wide open, we've got to be able to put it on them. That's what the kid from Boise State does so well. We have not been able to do that since I've been here and that's what we've got to get to, whoever that is. We've got to get better play in that particular area."
Scott Wedige, Center
On the performance of the offensive line
"It was a good learning experience. It was the first [game] for a lot of the guys on the O-line. We got a lot of our first starts under our belt and hopefully we can move forward progress and get some wins.
"I thought we played pretty well, but we gave up a sack and they had a few batted balls, it's not always the quarterback's fault, sometimes the D-line will get too much pressure so that wasn't good, but other than that, we did pretty well for the first game."
On North Dakota's defensive alignment
"They run a 50 front with a head-up nose and they only play with three guys with their hand in the dirt so they're will be a little bit of an adjustment cause our defense has played it a little bit in camp so it's nothing too foreign to us. It's just a lot of different calls. They blitz a lot out of it so they have a lot of different blitzes. It's just getting the communication across the offensive line, but I think we should be alright."
Mike Sobol, Safety
On the response in practice
"I thought we responded well, but obviously the loss was a tough one for us. We all go out there expecting good things this year and losing the first game this year is kind of a tough thing for us. We have a really good, close knit group guys on our football team and we'll be ready to come back this weekend."
On the defense's performance in the second half
"We went out there in the first half, just kind of looking to see how good Iowa State was instead of just playing our game. We think of ourselves as a good defense and we didn't go out there in the first half and play like a good defense. We were taking what Iowa State was giving and trying to figure out how good they were instead of doing our thing and I think in the second half, we got more comfortable and realized that it's just another game and with what we do defensively, we could've matched Iowa State with everything we did in the second half. It was kind of disappointing with the mindset that we came out with in the second half. We just can't do that. We have to go out and play our game."
Tommy Davis, Safety
On the quick huddles and throws during the Iowa State game
"We practiced it. Our communication has to get better. We got lined up, but during the game, we thought it was a little worse than it was, but when we watched the film, we've got to get better lined up quicker, but the speed affected us, but I don't think it affected us to the point where we couldn't operate our defense."
On North Dakota
"This team can be dangerous. They do a lot of things on offense that are difficult to coach against for defensive coaches. We've got to be ready to be play. We can't right these guys off. They're a good football team, they're well coached."
