Neal Brown Press Conference - Southern Miss Game

Troy Football Head Coach Neal Brown Press Conference:

Again, I appreciate you all being here. I said this after the game, I wanted to make sure, especially y'alls bosses understand too. I really appreciate the coverage that you all give us. I really appreciate you all coming on the road with us too, and giving our guys coverage, because we are deserving, I think our kids are deserving, University is deserving and I appreciate that. It is important that you all are here. I'm proud of our coaches, how they prepare, proud of our guys, how they competed on Saturday. It needs to be a game we gain confidence on, without question, and build on.

It is really important that we build on this game. It is never okay to lose, I said that after, I said it to the team, I'll say it again to them today, but we fought hard and we played really physical football. That is one thing you get out of this press conference, I want you to understand how physical of football we played.

That is something that we've really been stressing now for two years and it really showed up in a big way on Saturday on a big stage. I thought we put Troy on national map in college football. Number one trending, for most of the day ... or for most of the afternoon on Saturday I should say, I thought our fans that were at Death Valley, they were really vocal, so I appreciate them coming, and then we had a really good turnout of students.

That is one thing I'm probably as proud of as anything over the last two years, our student involvement has been at an all time high here and I want to see that continue. Hopefully when we come back home on September 24th we'll have those ... all the students that showed up on Saturday night and more in the stadium.

Hit some quick positive and negatives for you in each phase of the game. Real quick we'll start with defense. Negatives, not many of them to be honest with you. We've got to improve on first down, that is one down that we didn't play as well on. On Saturday it was on first down, and then we've got to do a better job not letting people get behind us. The good thing for us on Saturday is they had some drops and they had some overthrows, but they still got behind us, we've got to do a better in the secondary, limit it on the nose.

The positive, I thought first of all, we had a great game plan, much credit to Vic and his staff, those guys, I want you all to know this, they do the defensive game planning. Mine are just opinions, and they do the game planning. I thought they did a tremendous job, Vic and the whole staff. Really felt good for Vic, being able to come back to a place at Clemson that he had so much success as a coordinator and really prove to that fan base, once again, how good a football coach he is.

We played a really physical ... we stopped the run. That is two weeks in a row that we stopped the run. They had two all-ACC players up front, they had an all-ACC running back and an all-ACC tight end and we went in there and held them around three yards per carry with a Heisman Trophy candidate. Forced turnovers and we limited them to explosive plays.

Really only big, big play they had was the Renfrow catch on the scramble touchdown there in the first half. Offensively, the negatives were the turnovers. To be fair some of those turnovers were forced. They did a good job ... one of them was a freak play, you've got a tipped ball ... we had I think four tipped balls and they didn't land in our hands, they had one and it landed in their hands, so that is the way it goes sometimes.

Third downs were not really productive, that is real clear, that is the first thing that sticks out to you when you look at the stat sheet. Again, some of that is because Clemson is really good on defense, some of that is because we just made some mental mistakes and I got to do a better job calling the game on third down.

We had some missed opportunities, especially in that first quarter, that we didn't take advantage of, and we had four false start penalties, and not to make an excuse for our guys, but it was loud. Most of y'all were there, and it was loud. Positive is we had a hundred and seventy-five yards rushing. If you look at our total it was a little bit less, I think we had in the thirties negative, but two of those came on bad snaps. One of them was a field goal poor snap and I'd argue shouldn't count as rushing, and the other one came on a botched snap out of the wildcat.

Every time we got in the red zone we scored points and we only had one sack and two hits on the quarterback, and when you drop back and throw the ball as much as we did – now a lot of that credit needs to go to our line – and it also needs to be credited to Brandon Silvers, I thought he had a really good sense of urgency about getting the ball out of his hands.

Special teams wise, the field goals were negatives. We missed one. Ryan didn't hit it very well, and then we had the bad snap where we had the chance to take the lead there. Our punt snaps, and our punt coverage wasn't very good. Ray Ray McLeod is a big-time player, he is the one who ran the punt back and dropped the ball at the goal line. He is a big time player, but we've got to do a better job on our punt coverage. We'll get exposed again this week if we don't, and then we can't kick the ball out of bounds.

Bratcher kicked the ball out of bounds. Positives are is that I thought Ryan punted the ball well and our snaps were a little bit all over the place, but I thought he punted the ball well and our punt return unit was much better. I thought Cedarius Rookard did a great job catching the ball and getting north and south.

Overall it is how you want to look at this game. We played the number two team in the country, 30-24, had two fumble calls that could have gone either way. I thought they were ours, one of them on the goal line for sure that would have been a boomerang there, would have been seven for us rather than seven for them, and I thought when Weatherspoon got a hit on the ball there. I thought that was a catch then a fumble, they called it an incomplete pass. You can't control those things.

We had some missed opportunities, lose 30-24, played above average defensively, probably average on offense and special teams. It was a missed opportunity. Now, if you had told me we were going to have an opportunity to win the game in the fourth quarter, going into it I would have been pleased and would have liked our chances. We've got to learn from our mistakes and build on our positives.

We've got a big challenge this week with Southern Miss, Conference USA runner up last year, they are playing with a lot of confidence, beating Kentucky in the season opener, they are 2-0, a lot of returners coming back off that runner up team last year that went to a bowl.

Offensively, familiar with their offensive coordinator, similar styles to what we run, Shannon Dawson there, I'm impressed with the schemes they are doing, especially running the football, they are doing some creative things. This doesn't get talked about, but their offense really starts with their center. He is a dominant player up front. Really impressed with him.

As impressed with him as any of the linemen that we've seen so far this season without question, that includes the Clemson guys. Their quarterback Nick Mullens from Birmingham has been a really accurate passer. He won in high school, he's won at Southern Miss, does a good job managing their team. Then Ito Smith, another Alabama guy, at running back. Played really well last year, followed that up, had a big game against Kentucky.

Then they had a wide receiver, Isiah Jones, who we had on official visit here, he's made some big plays for them over the top. We've got to do a good job limiting those big plays. Defensively they are multiple. They are really aggressive. Jay Hopson, their head coach, is a defensive guy, they play with a lot of team speed. They've got an edge about them defensively and you see that a lot from defensive minded head coaches.

Special teams wise they are aggressive. We've got to be ready for fakes. They ran multiple fakes last year, same special teams coordinator, they've already tried a surprise on-sides kick against Kentucky this year. Really good punter and place kicker, and their team speed shows up on special teams as much as it does on defense.

Overall I think this is a great game for us. This is a series that I would like to see continue. They come back here on the flip side, but it is a game that our fans really enjoy. I'm expecting a lot of Troy faithful to turn up in Hattiesburg, and for me this is a measuring stick to where we are at as a program. Southern Miss is in year four of a rebuild, and obviously they got over the hump in year three and got to the conference championship game, they just beat an SEC opponent in year four.

We are in year two, and coming off a game that we played the number two team in the country right down to the wire, and now we are going to go play a team that I think is going to be a really good measuring stick for our program and find out have we gotten over the hump, or do we still have a ways to go.

How do you gauge the amount of rest you need for this week? Since there was such a physical and hot game last week?
Physical, hot, lot of plays too. I think we had seventy-eight countable snaps, but eighty-eight snaps in the game and they had around ninety as well. A really long game. I think I saw it was the second or third longest game in Clemson history. I don't know ... I didn't looked at ours, but a lot of plays too, just a lot of snaps of the football.

We've got to be smart. We will be a little bit different today. Today is usually kind of a glorified walk through for us. Where you'll see the difference is tomorrow. We're going to really have to cut back the volume of work that we usually do on Tuesday. We take pride in really working hard on Tuesday and Wednesday, but we are going to have to reduce our workload on Tuesday and then make Wednesday our really heavy practice day.

How do you limit what they are going to be able to do on offense, they are averaging well over 550 yards a game so far in these first two games?
I've watched that first half of that game, and that would be the most that I watched of that football game. They overmatched their opponent in every phase, every individual battle last week.

They are talented, they played at a really high level last year, offensively, and they got a lot of those weapons back. We've got to figure out a way to get pressure on the quarterback, and then we've got to stop their running back. I think everything starts on their offense with Ito Smith at running back.

You talked about student involvement, could you talk about how it was ... what it felt like to come home Saturday night to 400-plus students.
It was huge. I thought the SGA here on campus did a great job organizing that. I appreciate the support. I think it is crucial for our guys to be active on campus, to have relationships. We talked about it last week, how do we build our fan base on campus, and I think that is where we've got to build it first and foremost, it is about relationship building and it is important for our staff to get on campus and be seen, to develop relationships with students.

It is really important for our players within their classes, within the cafeteria and the student center, wherever it is, to really build relationships. I know something our kids really took a lot of pride in, the coming back. For me they took pride in Troy. We have in the past, and I'll say this, I'm really proud on this campus, I carry a lot of Troy t-shirts around with me, and I've had to give very few out for people having other schools' colors and other schools' shirts on on campus right now, and I take a lot of pride in that.

Thoughts on Deondre Douglas
He was our best skill player. Our best receiver I should say. Our best receiver the whole fall camp. He was our best receiver during fall camp, he was our best receiver all spring. Our most productive guy, so I'm not surprised at his production at all.

How is the injury front looking?
We came out of the game surprisingly well. We had several cramps. We had to do some IV's during the game. There's some things we've got to evaluate from a nutrition, from a rest standpoint, how we are hydrating our players, but after that physical of a football game we came out of it relatively healthy.

What is it like having that three headed monster back there in the back field?
Yeah, like I said, if we didn't have some of the negative yardage plays last week, that is something we've really worked to limit, but we had a couple bad snaps that kind of added to that. I think Jordan Chunn we've known what he could do and he's come back with an entirely different mentality. Josh Anderson, who y'all just had a chance to visit with, he played his best football game that he's ever played here.

The reason I say that ... I knew that he could run the ball, we hadn't used him in that role in the past, we figured out who he was in the last two games last year. He is not a lead blocker, he is a guy that needs to get carries, he is really good late in the game. He's been that way the last two weeks, but he played the most physical game that he can, that he has since he's been here in three years or so, so we need him to continue to do that. Not only punishing people as he runs it, but also as a blocker, also as a pass protector. Then Jabir Frye is a great change up, we need to continue to be creative on how we get him the ball.

How much of that goes back to the offensive line?
I think a lot of it. Coach Moore has done a good job. They are our most improved unit on our football team. Now, do we still have a ways to go? Absolutely, but we just played Clemson and we gave up one sack. Gave up one sack and had a hundred and seventy-five yards rushing against Clemson. That unit has come a long, long way. Rowzee has been a really good addition, thought he played well, especially at the point of attack in this game against Clemson.

Our two tackles are playing at a high level. Deontae Crumitie is getting better every week. Xavier Fields is one of our most improved players. He needs to continue to get better. He got fatigued in the game on Saturday

Players Mentioned

Josh Anderson

Jordan Chunn

Deontae Crumitie

Jabir Daughtry-Frye

Deondre Douglas

Xavier Fields

Cedarius Rookard

Brandon Silvers