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RUTGERS UNIVERSITY FOOTBALL MEDIA CONFERENCE

September 3, 2018

Chris Ash

Piscataway, New Jersey

HEAD COACH CHRIS ASH: How's it going today, guys. Go ahead and get started. Appreciate you guys coming.

Since it's our first Monday, just kind of review what we'll do on Mondays. I'll go back through and give a recap of the game, since we've watched the game and evaluated as a staff. Talk about our Players of the Week from last week, and then just make a few comments about our opponent and then open up for questions.

Just quickly, the game itself from last Saturday against Texas State, obviously it's still good to be 1-0 and get that first victory.

Several good things that we took out of the game: Offensively and defensively, we want to be able to run the ball and stop the run. 218 yards rushing; held them to 69 yards rushing was outstanding.

Third down. Major emphasis on third down. We were 8-of-13 and they were 1-of-13 on third down. We were able to get three sacks, three take aways. We scored on defense.

Special teams-wise, we were 5-of-5 with our PATs. We had better net punt. We blocked field goals. So there were a lot of goods.

Some of the bads in the game: Obvious ones are interceptions. We had a penalty that took a touchdown off the board. We had some mental errors on defense. Fumbled a punt and couple foolish penalties on special teams that either extended drives or gave them other opportunities.

Players of the game from Saturday: Offensively, Raheem Blackshear, couple touchdowns. Did a really good job, I think 22 touches he had in the game, was all over the field.

Defensively, Elorm Lumor was our defensive player of the game. Elorm again, I think had an outstanding game. He played quite a bit last year, but this is a game that he started and played the majority of the snaps, and really showed that we hope he can be a great player for us.

Special teams: Larry Stevens did a great job of covering picks, punts and kickoffs for our special teams.

You know, after our first game, really feel like we have a really good idea where we're at as a football team. There were some things that came up, some issues that came up, that we think that we'll be able to get fixed fairly quickly. We understand our strengths and weaknesses a lot more after we played the game. We had a lot of young players play and we had pretty good idea of what they can and can't do and what we need to do to help them get better and improve.

Just looking ahead here to next week, obviously we are going to go play a very, very talented Ohio State football team. They jumped out of the gates quick last week against Oregon State and beat them pretty soundly. They have got speed at the skill positions. They have got size up front on both sides of the ball, a very good quarterback.

The team is built exactly like you would want to build a team. Four years in a row, Rutgers and Ohio State have played in four years and hasn't been much of a game. So it's our job to go over there and try to play the best we can play and play better than what we've played, especially in the last couple years. We're going to have to go over and protect the football, protect the quarterback and be able to move the ball offensively.

Defensively, we are going to have to stop the run. We are going to have to get some take aways and not beat ourselves. Those are things we have not done in the last couple years on both sides of the ball against this opponent.

Tremendous challenge. Tremendous opportunity. One we are definitely looking forward to. It's a measuring stick to again, measure improvement and go out and play as fast and as violent and as consistent as we can.

So with that, I'll go ahead and open up for questions.

Q. Do you have any updates on Blessuan Austin?
HEAD COACH CHRIS ASH: No updates. Like I said before, policy will be on injuries: I'm not going to talk about them unless it's a long-term deal, like Mason is a long-term deal. Guys that are potentially week-to-week or day-to-day, won't make any comments unless something is going to put them out for a while.

Q. Have you talked to Urban throughout the entire process, and knowing he's coaching in the week and not on the game day, how much of an influence do you think he's going to have on the game plan and what -- the Ohio State team that you're going to see on Saturday?
HEAD COACH CHRIS ASH: You know, just out of respect for people involved in that whole situation, I'm going to avoid any comments about Coach Meyer and the situation, and not being there, being there. I've got a lot of opinions and thoughts and people I care about involved in the whole deal and I'm going to avoid any questions about that.

Q. What about his influence on the game? We kind of saw it with Kyle back in 2015 where he was suspended but then he, you know, schemed and game planned and was here during the week. What type of impact do you think he'll have just on game planning the game?
HEAD COACH CHRIS ASH: I've never been in that situation before, so I can't comment on what that's even like to be honest with you from a staff standpoint.

He's the head coach. He's very involved in a lot of aspects of the program. So I would assume he'll be heavily involved in game planning.

But again, I'm not there. I've never been in that situation before, so it's hard for me to make any comments about it.

Q. Does it change anything in terms of maybe in-game kind of the analytics or such of what the tendencies that might be called on fourth downs or going for it, stuff like that?
HEAD COACH CHRIS ASH: Yeah, again, I'm going to refrain from making any comments about Ohio State. If you want to talk about our team, I'll talk about our team or what we see from their players.

But in terms of making comments about Coach Meyer and him being there or not there, I'm not going to do that, and hopefully you guys respect that.

Q. Will you look at film from last year's game, or are you focused on last week's?
HEAD COACH CHRIS ASH: Both. We will look back. We always look back at common opponents from last year and look at things that we did well, things we didn't do well, how did they attack us. We'll look at those things.

But there are a lot of new players on the field, for both sides, but especially for them, there are a lot of new players. So we'll look a lot at game one here, but we'll go back and look at a lot of games from last year, including ours.

Q. What have you seen from Ohio State in that first game?
HEAD COACH CHRIS ASH: Well, they are talented. That's the No. 1 thing that stands out. They have got size. They have got speed. They play really hard. They are physical. That's what stands out.

When you recruit really well, you develop really well, and you go to Bowl games and you get those extra practices, when one guy leaves and another guy steps in, there's really not a lot of drop-off, and that's been the case at Ohio State for a number of years, and that's the case still right now today based on what I've seen from last Saturday's game.

Q. John McNulty and Greg Schiano worked together here and in Tampa. That relationship, is it an advantage either way, knowing the offense? Is that an advantage either way?
HEAD COACH CHRIS ASH: I would say no, because it's a completely different situation. You know what Greg does defensively is what he does because of the players that he has today, not what he would have had, you know, whether it be in Tampa or here at Rutgers.

What John does offensively is based on the players that we have here at Rutgers today and not what would have been here year ago or what they had at Tampa or what he's had at other NFL stops.

No, I don't think that that is necessarily an advantage. It's still about the players that they have, that we have, that can go out and execute calls. You structure what you're going to do offensively and defensively. There are philosophical things that people believe in that you're going to carry with you wherever you go, but there are certain things X & O wise that you may be able to do one year and one place that you can't do at another.

I don't look at it that way.

Q. When you look at the offense, other than the obvious of scoring enough points and winning the game, and time possession and all that, is this kind of how you envisioned the offense and what you wanted for this offense when you got here, and now it seems like you had the pieces and you have the coordinator to finally do it.
HEAD COACH CHRIS ASH: You know, offensively, I look at it as we got to score points. It doesn't really matter what you do offensively schematically. It has to fit your players. They have got to be able to execute it. Your staff, especially your coordinator, has to be completely convicted in what you're doing. He needs to know inside out and be able to adjust and adapt it, based on the situation and that's really what I look at.

What we did Saturday, from a production standpoint, if we could do that every Saturday, score 35 points and be balanced with over 200 yards rushing and 200 yards passing, time of possession; eliminate the takeaways, or turnovers, I should say, then, yeah, that's a really good offensive game.

If we could do that consistently, that would be great. Schematically, doesn't really matter. Score points, take care of the football, be able to move the ball, be balanced; those are things that we want to do.

Q. You had an opportunity to play a lot of young guys. Can you talk about them now going on the road, special teams, and some of the special teams players this week that performed for you, the kickers, the punter?
HEAD COACH CHRIS ASH: Playing a home game for a lot of those young players, that was a great first opportunity. Helps them get their feet wet, so to speak here in, front of our home crowd.

Going on the road, especially going on the road to Columbus, is a completely different environment, completely different situation. Still going to be a lot of unknowns on how our young players handle that situation.

Our older players have been in those environments. They know what to expect. They know what they are getting into. The younger players that haven't played, don't.

So there's going to be a lot of unknowns still from that standpoint. I do feel like some of the guys that played Saturday, really have a lot of confidence in themselves and that helps when you go into these types of environments. But they really don't know what they are getting into yet.

I'll be able to answer that question better, you know, after the game on Saturday, how they handled it, and how they performed. But I know some of them, I think are going to be fine.

Q. And special teams?
HEAD COACH CHRIS ASH: Yeah, we got a lot of players that played for us on special teams. They did some really good things.

Special teams, there were some really goods and bads on Saturday. The bads were some of the foolish penalties. We had a false start. We ran into the punter. We had a roughing the snapper. Those three things really negated what I would say was a pretty good special teams day. We got some pin-'ems on our kickoff coverage team, a pin-'em on our punt team. We had a better net punt than our opponent, which is huge. We blocked a field goal. There were a lot of things to take out of Saturday's game that were positive about special teams.

Unfortunately those three penalties were critical ones and we've got to get those eliminated. But a lot of young players participated and did an outstanding job on special teams.

Q. How pleased are you the success you had getting pressure on the quarterback with the opportunities and blitzes in the second and third level, you had two holds, a sack, intentional grounding, a throwaway.
HEAD COACH CHRIS ASH: I thought we did a pretty good job in game one getting after the quarterback. We had done some different things defensively to try to help us. It's no secret that's an area that we have to improve on.

We talk about takeaways and being able to get more takeaways. We have to get after the quarterback and get him in third-and-long situations more for that to happen and we have done some things differently schematically to try to take advantage of our personnel today that would allow us to do that, and I think it showed up more on Saturday. We were more multiple than what we've been. Really, more multiple than what I've been for quite a while as a defensive coach, which is what we need to be.

Now, there's a fine line there; how to be multiple and not have too much and have a lot of mental errors, because we had some on Saturday, more than I would like.

But it did help us put pressure on the quarterback, get sacks, hit the guy, and also, you know, we did get some holding calls because of our ability to beat some guys.

Q. Regarding Greg's Brown's $4 million gift, the locker room, can you talk about that, time line on it? Do you expect it to get started after the year and how important is it in the grand scheme of things? And also, Greg's commitment, how important is that in the grand scheme of things to what you're building?
HEAD COACH CHRIS ASH: I'll start with just the last part there. Greg and Anna have been unbelievable since I've been here. They are diehard Rutgers people. They are unbelievable. Their support, unwavering support, for not only athletics, but just this university. They have given a lot back to this program, the athletic department, the university.

That means a lot when a guy like that steps up and continues to step up to support you, shows that he has faith and belief in what we're doing, and the direction that we're going.

To be able to put that type of money into a locker room, that's a much, much needed part of our facility master plan. We needed the weight room. We needed the practice fields. We've been pushing to get the locker room and really, the training room done. They have to get redone.

It helps not only the experience that our current student athletes have, but our ability to recruit talented players here in this region for the future. It shows commitment from our supporters. Shows commitment from our university that football is important, and that we'll continue to try to be the best at what we're doing.

I can't thank Greg and Anna enough for their contributions in the past and what they just did the other night.

Q. Timeline on it?
HEAD COACH CHRIS ASH: Timeline, there's a lot that goes into a facility renovation. We hope to have the plans all done. We've kind of been working on this for a while, so we have a pretty good idea of what we are doing to do with the project. There's a lot of things that you've got to take care of with red tape to get the project started.

We hope to have that all done here in the fall and sometime right after the season's over, construction can begin. It should be all completed by the summer or, you know, training camp, at least before 2019.

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