Neal Brown Press Conference - Idaho Game - Troy University Athletics

Head coach Neal Brown
Opening Statement
Excited about ending our non-conference schedule, to say the least. I'm looking forward to conference play. We have Homecoming this week and our guys are excited about getting back in front of our home crowd.

Quick Mississippi State recap, quick because I'm trying to forget the first half; I'm extremely disappointed in the way we performed in the first half. I don't think we competed at a high enough level. We got overwhelmed in some aspects. We got overwhelmed with their defensive front and with their speed on special teams, reasonably so. They are high-end team. They are a team that I think will be extremely competitive in the SEC West. Dan Mullen and his staff have done a great job recruiting. We talked about it last week – their length. They are a long team and they're big and they run extremely well.

Now, I'm extremely proud of how our team competed in the second half. I know some of you probably didn't take note of that. I could tell by reading some of the stuff, but we did. We competed very hard in the second half. I thought we never quit. We got better. I challenged them at halftime. I told you this after the game. This wasn't something that, it wasn't a yelling match. It was something I was disappointed in. We challenged them at the half to come out and compete; to play the way we are supposed to play, the way they have been trained today. They stepped up. That gives me hope moving forward and I really hope looking back that is going to be a pivotal moment in our season and in our program.

Offensively, we struggled early in the game, give a lot of credit to them. They have some good players on defense. They did a good job. We did some good things in the second half, made some plays. The guys we need to make plays made plays: Teddy Ruben, Bryan Holmes, and Brandon Burks. Those guys made plays in the second half. I'm proud of Dontreal Pruitt. I talked about that after the game. I thought he came in and really was a catalyst for us. I was happy for him, especially in his home state.

I'll tell you a couple of guys I'd like to recognize that don't get a whole lot of love on the stat sheet, or don't get a lot of notoriety: K.D. Edenfield and Clark Quisenberry. They played super, super physical football. Their coaches noted that and they played the game the right way.

Defensively, we gave up too many plays in the pass game. I'm disappointed in that first play that went for a touchdown. We had guys in positions to make tackles we just didn't do it. We have to be more competitive on balls in the air that are down the field. We are going to get challenged in that this week. I thought we did a nice job against the run. We played really physical. We had some outstanding individual efforts by Tyler Roberts and a couple other guys.

Special teams - that was our worst outing. That is something we take a lot of pride in here. That is something I know we are really well coached in. We made too many mental mistakes. We will get that cleaned up this week.

Moving forward to Idaho, I think they are the most improved team this year from last year to this year. A lot of credit, they've done a great job recruiting. If you look at coach Petrino, he has always done a good job offensively; it goes back to his brother as well, one of the best play callers in the country. They are balanced. I think their running back Elijhaa Penny is a big physical kid that is difficult to tackle. He will present a challenge for us. I think their offensive line is long. I think that is their most improved aspect of the football team. They have some wide receivers that can really run. Obviously, (Dezmon) Epps is one of the top-ranked receivers in the country. I remember watching him as a junior college kid coming out. He is a guy that had potential to big-time player then, and he has proved that there. Their quarterbacks have been really good players. (Matt) Linehan didn't play last week, but the redshirt freshman that came in to play against Arkansas State (Jake Luton) did a really nice job.

So, I think they are going to present some problems. They are probably as balanced of a team as we have played offensively. South Alabama challenged us in the pass game; hit some plays down the field. Mississippi State hit some plays down the field. So, I look for them to do that. We have to improve in that area.

Defensively they have a new coordinator, a guy that has had a lot of success, won some national championships while at Montana in FCS. Their down linemen are potential issues. I think the kid that sat out last week (Ryan) Edwards is a guy that has a lot of size. He is 320-plus pounds and does a really good job of pushing the line forward. Then, number 44 (Tueni Lupeamanu) that is a good player. They are playing with more confidence. Their run numbers are little bit skewed just because of who they have played (Wofford, Georgia Southern). They have played some teams that run the football. I think they have improved. They are coming in here off a bye week, which is important. We need to do a good job of getting our guys back. We talked about our non-conference – it has been tough. Our guys are a little beat up. We need to get fresh and be ready to go on Saturday afternoon at 2:30 p.m.

On Dontreal Pruitt being ready to go…
(Brandon) Silvers is probably going to be a game-time decision. He's improving; we won't know anything for sure until Saturday. I have confidence in Dontreal Pruitt. I was pleased with how he came in and performed, and I think in a tough situation because our backup quarterbacks don't get a ton of reps in practice, limited reps in the game plan. We adjusted some things at halftime to give him a better opportunity, so I was pleased with that. Our kids have a lot of respect for him, he was a captain in that game, so that tells you what kind of respect our kids have for him, for the backup quarterback to be a captain in that game. I think that tells you what he's about. He'll play better with more practice. He'll get some more practice reps this week and I think we'll be fine.

Will there be more options for Dontreal Pruitt to play …
Yeah, I think he gives us an option to make plays. Coming out of the spring our plan was to play him and have packages for him and he struggled in fall camp a little bit and we got away from it and Brandon (Silvers) played at a high level. So what his performance in the second half did is earn him and opportunity to play. Even when Brandon's healthy, we will figure out ways to get him the ball.

Does Dontreal Pruitt trump Dallas Tidwell on depth chart …
He moved ahead of Dallas (Tidwell), but Dallas did some good things. Sometimes its unfair to judge quarterbacks based on when they have to go finish games because they get so limited reps. Dallas is a kid that I still have confidence in, the pick that he threw was one that the ball shouldn't have been thrown, he should've scrambled. I thought he came in in the middle of a series and moved the ball a bit, got a couple of first downs. But Dontreal played at a little higher level on the game on Saturday.

On the depth change at receiver …
We're going to reward people that do what we ask them to do. We're going to reward people that make good decisions off the field, that do what we ask them to do, that play the game disciplined, that play the game hard and that's a reflection of that. Offensive line wise, Luke (Lawrence) is back and healthy now and he played better at that position in the game on Saturday so we rewarded him by moving him up in the depth chart.

The turnaround in the second half …
I think it's big, I think time will tell. If we come out and we kind of go backwards in this game early, I don't know if there is much to be said about it. If we react the way I expect us to react, which is build off those positive things that happened in that game and how we reacted really from within, that can be a point that we look back and say, 'He, we had some guys grow up, put their foot in the sand and say that's not what we're going to be about. We're not going to stand for this, this is not who we are as a program,' and that's what I expect. That's how I expect our guys to come out.

About the run game against Idaho …
Here's the thing, things always work hand in hand. We have to be able to challenge people down the field, because what happens is we're not challenging people down field, because were not getting open or making plays. Either the ball's not being delivered where it needs to be or we're not winning on one-on-one opportunities. People are playing us in man coverage and when they do that there's an extra hat in the run game. Now it's a little bit of an equalizer when Dontreal plays because they have to have a hat for him as well because of his ability to run. We have to be able to make plays down the field to get teams to back up a little bit to give (Brandon) Burks and (Andre) Flakes and some of those other guys an opportunity to run the ball because they have been outnumbering us. Burks made a tremendous play on the long run against Mississippi State and really we didn't block a whole lot of people. He made a tremendous individual effort, but I think it's important and we're definitely going to establish that early running the football.

Is this a must win game for bowl chances …
I don't know, I think it's probably too early. I think we need to win our home games. I think if that's going to be a possibility we need to win our home games, we've already given up one. In a game that we had an opportunity to win, we didn't get it done. My message to our football team this week is we have to play better at home. We need to win our games at home. Y'all have heard me talk about it a bunch of times, for us to get where we want to go, postseason, conference championships, we got to hold serve at home.

Troy University Athletics

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Players Mentioned

Brandon Burks

K.D. Edenfield

Bryan Holmes

Dontreal Pruitt

Clark Quisenberry

Tyler Roberts

Teddy Ruben

Dallas Tidwell

Neal Brown Press Conference - Idaho Game

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