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RUTGERS UNIVERSITY FOOTBALL MEDIA CONFERENCE

October 6, 2018

Chris Ash

Piscataway, New Jersey

Illinois - 38, Rutgers - 17

HEAD COACH CHRIS ASH: All right, obviously we're not going to win a game until we stop doing the things that we continue to do that get us beat. We got penalties on punt returns, penalties on offense. We got drops on offense, you know, turnovers. Defense we lose contain on the quarterback. Jump out of gaps. Come inside on calls when we're not supposed to. Go outside when we're supposed to go inside. Just a lot of things. It's all on me. I'm the head coach. It's my responsibility and got to get it fixed.

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

Q. Where does the team go from here?
HEAD COACH CHRIS ASH: Same place that we've talked about before. We keep working, and you know, we've got a lot of would, to do. We've got a lot of things to clean up.

Q. What's the message in the locker room after?
HEAD COACH CHRIS ASH: That's between me and the guys.

Q. How would you assess Art's performance?
HEAD COACH CHRIS ASH: Had three interceptions. That's not good enough. Threw some good balls, obviously. Had a lot of yards but we got three interceptions. We had some issues in the red zone with that.

Q. Warming up were you close to pulling him after playing the second quarter?
HEAD COACH CHRIS ASH: No. No.

Q. Will Lewis at tight end be a permanent thing?
HEAD COACH CHRIS ASH: Still experimenting. Obviously Jerome Washington was unable to play today due to injury, so it was something that we thought we would try to do because of numbers.

Q. Justin?
HEAD COACH CHRIS ASH: Justin hurt himself during the week. I shouldn't say he hurt himself during the week. He was feeling some pain last week in the game and did not practice this week. Tried to go out in pregame and couldn't do it.

Q. You mentioned the run fits earlier in the week. You played several teams now with these big, open, long touchdown runs. How do you fix that midseason?
HEAD COACH CHRIS ASH: You're right, we've got to figure it out. I've been doing this a long time and to play team defense, you've got to be disciplined. One of the things I know our players are doing, is they say they want to make plays. Plays will come to you when you play the call and are in the right spot. You can't just go outside of the framework of the defensive call and expect to make plays. You've got to play disciplined football. You've got to be gap-sound. You've got to do what the call is called to do, and you've got to do it consistently.

Q. Why do you think those things are not translating from the week into the game?
HEAD COACH CHRIS ASH: I don't know.

Q. I know you talk about being young, but most of your older guys are on defense. So why do you think that's not --
HEAD COACH CHRIS ASH: Well, it's a good question. Depth is a concern on defense. One of the things I do know that cures a lot of problems is competition, and we're missing a lot of defensive scholarship players and that's not an excuse, but that's reality. Been saying that for a while. You know, the issues where we lost some guys in the summer has hurt us more than I thought because we've had some injuries. We've got some guys playing out of position. We don't have a lot of depth. That's reality.

You know, competition is something that fixes a lot of problems, you know, and right now we don't have it, and I've got to get it fixed.

Q. You came into this season optimistic that this program would take a step forward. How concerned or surprised are you what's happened the last four?
HEAD COACH CHRIS ASH: You know, I'm disappointed obviously. There are a lot of things that have changed since then, and like I said, when you're talking about some games, 16 defensive scholarship players out; that hurts.

We have got a young team on offense, but still, we have drops, we have penalties and we have things you cannot do on offense and have a chance to win football games, and that continue to happen.

It's lack of focus, a lack of attention to detail. Something has to be coached differently. We've got to figure it out. But you know, obviously was a lot more optimistic about our chances to win these games that we've been playing, and it hasn't happened.

Q. Late in the game you had two first and goals. What was that process of throwing the ball?
HEAD COACH CHRIS ASH: If you look at how we were running the ball, we weren't running the ball very good. Simple as that.

Q. You kick a field goal down there, fans booed, and understandably so. What was going on?
HEAD COACH CHRIS ASH: What do you mean understandably so? We're down 17. You needed a field goal no matter what. Our starting kicker is unavailable. We're in a position where we can get three points that we're going to need no matter what.

So if we don't -- if we go for it and we don't make it, the game's probably over at that point. So we needed points no matter what. So we were in position for our kicker to make the kick and put the points on the board.

Q. When you kicked the long field goal with Haggerty, I think it was a screen play on third down. Were you planning on going for it for fourth down?
HEAD COACH CHRIS ASH: It's all based on the result of the play. We didn't get anything. If we would have gotten some positive yardage, there would have been conversation about what we would do. You know, it is what it is. Justin could not go today, and when you don't have that guy, you've got to make different decisions.

We called a play that we thought would get some positive yards, and then you have an opportunity to make a decision, you know, if you don't get the first down on fourth down. Didn't happen. We're in a situation we could either try to go for it, try to punt it or try to kick it. Tried to kick it.

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