Rick Minter transcript (Oct. 16)
There was nothing pretty about UK's 49-7, weather-shortened loss to Arkansas Saturday, especially for a young defense that started three true freshmen in the secondary. Defensive coordinator Rick Minter met with the media Tuesday to break down what happened in Arkansas and where his unit can go from here.
You can see the full transcript of his comments below:
How valuable would it be to have Martavius Neloms and Ashely Lowery back, especially if you're going to be without Cartier Rice and have two freshmen start at corner?
Priceless. It's always good to have veterans, kids that have been around the program for a long time. The guys that are out there are all we can coach. They've been battling their tails off and playing extremely hard. We've been proud of their efforts.
They've probably forgotten all about what happened at Arkansas. That's been what, three or four days ago now? Coaches linger, players move on probably faster. You just try to teach lessons. We buzzed through the film on Sunday and tried to point out the bad, try to point out the bad and try to learn from it, particularly at this stage of the career of all the back-end kids. Every day, every minute is a learning experience. Good or bad, you have to learn from it. Some of them were on the scout team two weeks ago, so every precious piece of film that you can show them is a lesson to be learned. Obviously, the x-plays we don't tolerate, but we had to show it to them to see what happened, how we prevent it from happening again and go from there.
You weren't able to get a lot of pressure on the quarterback. Was that a matter of technique, not being able to blitz how you wanted or something else?
It's a combination of everything. We didn't call a lot of them, but we also didn't want to put some of our guys in harm's way in that situation. We backed off. We've not been overly pressure oriented, particularly on third downs, so you have to play coverage. If you play coverage, you've just got to play a lot better coverage. We had an eight-man drop and gave up a touchdown. We might as well have rushed 10 and had one back there. We've got to correct what we're doing. Obviously he's going to have more time to throw, but the adage is if you've got more droppers you ought to play better coverage. If you've got more rushers, you ought to have less time to throw. It all works that way. We haven't been bringing a whole lot of guys, and yet they've been finding the holes or the missed assignment or whatever. We've got to get all those things corrected.
You've been hurt a lot by the wheel route in the last two years. How fixable is that?
We'd like to say it's fixable. We work on it every day. We ended up stumbling a little bit. What happens is those two wheel routes got off because they're going to get off in those coverages, in those fronts. What you can't allow them to do is go 80 yards or 70 yards, whatever they went. That's a 15-yard gain, little trick play. Wrap it up, and that's no different than a dig route. It's not so much that it was the wheel so to speak, this is like a new phenomenon. It's just that we can't let the darn thing go for the distance. Just go over there and corral the guy, get him down for 15, 20, rack it up and let's play again.
When you looked at the film, how many of the big plays had something to do with communication in the young secondary?
Miscommunication probably didn't have anything to do with anything. Technique, fundamentals, youth, inexperience, baptism under fire. You name it, it's happening to us right now. We've just got to get older and faster. We've got to get older every day. They're no longer just baby steps. We've got to get gigantic steps accomplished on a Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday to try to get ready for the next game as long as we don't have the reinforcements.
So for the young guys it was more about what happened after the snap than before it?
Absolutely. You've got a post safety, you've got other cover players, you've got everybody hustling their tails off. Both those long runs looked like New York Life commercials. He goes, cuts all the way across the game. Fundamentals. Everybody is trying so hard that when the guy on the first play of the game gets caught, we've got about six guys hustling their tails off on the sideline. The next thing I did is fast forward the tape and I put the guy in the middle of the field now because he'd already done this. All our white shirts are over here (motions left), and he's over here (motions right). I said, 'How did this happen?' It's fundamentals. Everybody let the ball cut back across them. That's the fundamental techniques of being over-exuberant, happening maybe for the first time for some of those guys. They're trying so hard, they try to hard many times. Once a guy is across the line of scrimmage he's made positive yards, so let him get his yards and just gather up, break down, make a good tackle, lets rack it up and play another play.
What kind of growth have you seen from Cody Quinn?
Cody is growing fast. He's not getting any taller, but he's really becoming a real good football player. He came here prepared in the sense of mental toughness, physical skills, mental ability to absorb and retain. Since he's been given the opportunity to jump on that field -- knock on wood -- I don't really think he's hurt us much at all in terms of what he's doing. He's playing extremely well right now. He may have played as well as any of the 11 players last week when you add it all up with the grades out there.
Despite the results, are there one or two guys -- maybe Cody is one of them -- that are playing well that you feel good about?
Yeah. I feel real good about Cody Quinn. Some of the front four guys go so unnoticed because of all the things bad happening around them, but we're getting great leadership out of (Collins) Ukwu. Taylor Wyndham is playing pretty darn good. The guys inside…Tristain Johnson has played, battled hard being a little bit undersized. (Donte) Rumph has always played consistent. PC (Cobble) is battling back from his little nicks, bumps and bruises. Avery (Williamson) has always been solid. Bud (Dupree) is a work in progress. Miles Simpson is very solid for us, replacing some big shoes out there. We're fairly steady with those who have played ball before, lined up before.
We've got to continue to show growth and development in those players also. You know, Ukwu is not going to get a ton better his next five or six games of his career. He's at the end of his career, where Avery is just now getting to be a starting MIKE linebacker. Cody Quinn just got here. We've got all ranges of guys playing for us. We've just got to keep growing and keep getting better every day.
(Questions have been edited for clarity)