Press Conference: ODU football coach Bobby Wilder

ODU football coach Bobby Wilder talks with reporters on Monday.

Opening Statement: Good afternoon everyone. A very frustrating lost at Appalachian State. I said last week that I thought Appalachian State was the most complete team that we had played. I still feel that way coming out of the game, based on what they did the previous week to Tennessee. Then obviously Tennessee confirmed that they were a good football team by beating Virginia Tech by three scores. So you’re two games into the season and you’re trying to figure out your opponent and you’re still trying to figure out yourself. But I can see Appalachian State being one of the Top 5 group of five schools this year in the country, that’s a solid football team.

And with that being said, I felt like when we went in and competed with them, it was a much different game than last year. Quite frankly, this should’ve been a one possession, one score game in the fourth quarter if we play the way we need to play. In a couple of situations we got off to a poor start. Our safety had poor eye discipline on the first play and they ran an out and up on the sideline, a double move. And that got us off to a real bad start. They hit a 40 yarder and they ended up finishing the drive and scoring to go up 7-0. We take the next drive from the minus 25 and go all the way down the field to the 16-yard line and we end up in a 4^th and 5 situation. In that situation the reason we didn’t kick the 33 yard field goal is because Chris Kirtley was out for the game. Chris is going to have surgery, he’ll be out for the year. And that situation Brad Davis, who we were going to kick in the game, he just didn’t hit the ball well enough in pre-game to try anything outside of 30 yards. Our mark for him going into this game was 30 yards, that’s the max we were going to try to field goal. In that situation, we got a one on one with Zach Pascal, Washington throws a beautiful ball in the end zone and Zach goes up, he’s got the ball in his hands and it gets knocked away. You know the point I made to Zach and our team is that the previous week against Hampton, he was able to go up high and high point it and didn’t get the ball knocked away. But when you’re playing a team that’s as good as Appalachian State you got to get it in your hands and get it in the tuck right away and he didn’t do that. So it should’ve been 7-7, after that drive. The next drive they come back and again they hit us on a delayed double move play, they were on a shallow with a tight end into a wheel row, hit us for a big one now its 14-0. Next drive were 4^th and 2 on our own 44. We run an RPO (run pass option), they come up and blitz so the runs taken away. David goes to throw it, Melvin Vaughn is open and the ball gets tipped at the line. Luckily, our defense held them there so at the end of the first we’re down 17-0. We go three and out the next series and get a punt block and you’re thinking “oh boy this things going to get really big, in terms of the score. And at that point our defense stepped up, stopped them.

We stopped the fake field goal, and then we had, what I thought, was the best drive of the game by either team. We go 7 plays 92 yards, we’re blocking, we’re running, we’re throwing, we’re catching and now it’s a (17-7) game. And we’re right back into it at that point so that just illustrates, the way this game started is what put us in such a hole. Because I really feel like this should’ve been a one score game. We out played them in the second half, out of our 12 total drives in the game, we had five drives that ended up in Appalachian territory. It should have been at least a 17, maybe as much as 28 point total for us. In the second half, our defense played the best football we played defensively as a program in our eight years. In the first 25 minutes of the second half they had 50 yards total offense, no points. We were consistently stopping them. We took away the mid zone play to Cox, he had over 100 yards rushing in the first half. He had very few yards in the second half. They threw for 172 yards in the first half and 13 yards in the second half. We completely took away their pass game. Anthony Wilson had three sacks. We took them out of everything they were trying to do with our defense. Their alone touchdown came in the last 5 minutes. We should’ve pitched a shutout in the second half. But I really liked the way our defense played. This is something we can build on defensively, and as I told our offense when you play a team that’s that good defensively it’s going to come down to 4 or 5 plays. Where you got to catch the ball in traffic, where you got to stay on the block a little bit longer, the quarter back has got to stay in the pocket and trust what’s going on. And those are areas that we’ll learn from, we’ll improve from and we’ll move on to NC State.

NC State is 1-1, they beat William and Mary (48-14). They lost a really tough physical game this past weekend to East Carolina (33-30) on a controversial pass interference call against NC State late in the game. Bottom line this game could’ve gone either way. Both teams are good football teams and it was a good football game. Starting with their defense, I think they’ve got one of the top 5-10 defensive lines in the country. This isn’t just coming from me, this is talking to all of the NFL scouts that are coming through here. They’re very impressive in the defensive line so offensively we’re going to have to spread them out. We’re going to have to be in a lot of one back, no back formations. Really trying to spread the field on them. Try to give David the opportunity to do some things, athletically because we’re going to have a really hard time moving these guys.

Offensively it appears they’ve settled in on quarterback Ryan Finley who played a solid game against east Carolina. Matthew Dayes is a good running back. I think he’ll be one of the top guys in the ACC this year. He’s averaging 120 yards through two games. Steven Louis the wideout is really explosive, good football player. They’ll play number one, Jaylen Samuels, some at fullback but you’ll see him in the wildcat. They do some different things with him. They get Dayes and Samuels involved in the pass game, really good stuff they’re doing offensively.

So this will be a major challenge for us but the one thing I liked about our team coming out of this game Saturday is I felt like we developed an attitude, I felt like we developed some toughness. Particularly in the offensive and defensive line. I had the offensive line stand up yesterday in the team meeting because I wanted the guys to recognize the fact that they played every snap in the football game, those five guys battled. I had Rashaad Coward stand up because I thought he played as dominant a game as I’ve seen from a defensive lineman at Old Dominion. The number of tackles don’t reflect what he did in the football game, particularly against the number of double teams that he saw against App State in this game. I just sensed that we’re starting to develop an attitude. If we can handle ourselves on these double moves and these first play of the game two weeks in a row giving up big plays. The attitude this team’s starting to develop is going to take us a long way this year and I’ll take questions.”

Question: Bobby you talked about over the years those first 2-3 games really gives you a chance, you mentioned toughness. Is this team the mature team that can handle situations like this that maybe might not have 2 or 3 years ago?

Answer: Yeah it is. This team can handle going on the road, like they did against Appalachian State. Obviously the results got to be better but they can handle the atmosphere. They’ll handle the environment this weekend. The largest crowd we’ve ever played in front of was two years ago against NC State. So this will be either the new largest or the second largest. They love it, they’re up for the challenge. They know we’re going to be huge underdogs going into this game but they’re excited to play.

Question: Brad Davis, he’s shown some promise in practice. Can you talk a little bit about his development and how much you’ll use him in field goal attempts?

Answer: Well he’ll still be involved right now in kickoff, what we’re going to do here is Bailey Cate will start this week kicking off in certain situations. Brad’s still going to do some kickoffs but we’re going to use both of them and Bailey will be kicking extra points and field goals going into this week. Certainly not giving up on Brad, he’s still working to develop, he’s getting better. There are some things that he does well in kickoffs but his one deep kick we had him do Saturday was a low line drive that was caught on the 12. But Kesean Strong made an unbelievable play, split double team and tackled a guy on the 22.We either got to get the ball deeper or we got to have it in a better spot. So we’ll keep working with him to develop him but Bailey’s going to take over both kicking and punts.

Question: Has Bailey been kicking in practice?

Answer: Yeah he has, I don’t know if you noticed him he was warming up right before the second half started. He was warming up kicking off and he was kicking the ball down around the 5 yard line. We initially just wanted to keep him to one job, you know because he’s a true freshman. But he’s shown such good poise. I think a lot of it’s got to do with he’s played quarterback too and he’s a really poised kid. And we feel like he can handle the responsibility. Now we’ll gauge throughout the week what’s his range and what will we do with him. As the week goes on we’ll have better knowledge of that as we get closer to the game.

Question: Is that a difficult thing to do both? In your experiences, with it being two different motions?

Answer: Yeah it’s challenging. I’ve been in a couple of situations where guys do it. You really have to monitor how much they do during the week, how much they practice. So we’ll have a special practice plan set up for him. But a lot of it really comes down to what’s the mindset or mentality of the player and Baileys an ultra-competitive guy. He’s really smart and he really understand situations well. So we’re going to move forward with it and we’re going to give him the opportunity to do it and then just keep developing Brad. Brad’s not done, Brad may kick in the game Saturday. Brad’s kicking and punting too. Those two guys are both doing it, with Chris being out now. Those guys they both got to be ready to play.

Question: Are you getting in sense to, in terms of the balance you always talk about all three phases of the game, of the experience? Of the talent? You mentioned the results may not be there but are you getting what you need at least at this point and time of the year?

Answer: Yeah, its two games in, it’s an FCS opponent and then Appalachian State who’s the top team in their conference. As I mentioned I think they’re going to be Top 5 out of the group of 5 in the country. So two opposite ends of the spectrum on how to gauge our team. But the number one thing that came out of this game is the attitude we developed, playing with the level of toughness that we haven’t had consistently around here. That’s the number one thing I take out of this game, and we’re going to need that Saturday at NC State.

Question: Taking on NC State, I mean it seems daunting but you men should know if these guys are aware of where they need to be at this point in time?

Answer: Yeah, they want to compete, they want to play. I made them very aware yesterday that we’ve yet to beat a power 5 team. We’ve beaten a number of FBS teams and we’ve beaten some good FBS teams. But we’ve yet to beat a team from a Power 5 conference like NC State being from the ACC. So they’re excited about that challenge. And they basically know, we don’t have anything to lose, we’re not expected to win. But what I want our guys thinking mentally is “Let’s go make history, let’s go do something special.

Question: I remember, probably like two years ago these kids who are the experienced ones now. You were in the back of your mind going they had so much to think about and they’re not thinking now. Is that just a byproduct, it’s just the end result?

Answer: Yeah, it’s repetition, its practice. We got a lot of guys on this current team that were down there two years ago when we were up 21-10 in the second quarter and we were going in to score. So they’ve had that experience and they love the atmosphere. They absolutely love playing there, but now you’ve got to take that experience and you’ve got to turn it into an end result, not just giving a good performance. The goal is to go down there and compete and win.