ARMY BLACK KNIGHTS FOOTBALL

November 18, 2023

Jeff Monken

Press Conference

Army 28, Coastal Carolina 21

JEFF MONKEN: Well, good afternoon, everybody. Certainly proud of the team and the effort they put forth today was -- just felt like Army football today, being able to run the ball and control the game on offense, control the clock. We finished some drives. We unfortunately had a couple that we left out there, but our defense responded. I thought our defense did a really nice job. Put them in a bad spot fumbling that ball there late in the fourth quarter, and credit to Coastal Carolina. They're a good football team, very talented football team. Went down and scored and had a chance to kick an onside kick. That makes you a little squeamish when the game gets to that point and it's only one score.

But fortunately we came through and found a way.

It was a great win for our guys. Certainly a much-needed win after the way things have done this year. It's just great to see our guys line up and play really tough football and find a way to win.

It's a great way to go into the next one.

Q. 365 yards rushing today, zero yards passing. --

JEFF MONKEN: A couple of snaps in the game prior, and we felt like -- we just felt like we needed to go at them. They're a very athletic football team. You watch them on film, and they're running sideline to sideline and really athletic and fast. We just didn't feel like making it a perimeter game and trying to keep up with their speed was going to be the best way for us to win the game.

We felt like we needed to run the football, and so we've been kind of working on some of the under-center stuff and having it ready and having it prepared, and felt like this was going to be the best approach to start the game.

I don't know that I anticipated we were going to stay in it the entire game, but we were moving the football and controlling the clock and scoring, and so we stuck with it.

The guys did a really good job of executing it, and credit goes to Cody Worley. He called the under-center plays for us, and he's got a lot of experience doing it.

It's amazing how the guys that have played, our veteran players, almost like riding a bike. They were able to kind of go back to the fundamentals, and Tyson Riley who hasn't really played running back the entire season, and he steps in there and goes through the mesh and did a great job, and Jakobi, and really happy for those two guys. It was a great effort on their part, both of them.

Q. Tyson Riley, 112 yards, the opening touchdown, 43-yard run in the third quarter, and Jakobi Buchanan, 60 yards today. How is it just seeing the production you got from that position?

JEFF MONKEN: It was just a combination of both of those guys really doing a nice job of running the football, finding the seams. They had to slide some of those runs where it was -- they take the handoff and there's an aiming point for them, and they had to slide out or slide to the side of a block a couple of times and got extra yards, and they did a really nice job with that.

But I thought our offensive line played really well. I thought they did a nice job of moving people at tight ends, and we were in a condensed formation for most of the game, and I called on a whole lot of guys to kind of be contributing in there to those runs inside.

It was a good mix. Some stuff inside, we got the ball pitched to the perimeter, got the ball tossed out there a couple of times. It was just fun to be back out there and kind of seeing that stuff going again.

Q. At the end of the second quarter you gave up a 31-yard touchdown pass, so it was 21-14 at the half. How important was it for the defense to make a stop on the first drive in the third quarter?

JEFF MONKEN: That was big. I had hoped we could get them off the field and not have them score before halftime. Having a 14-point lead would have been a little bit of a nice buffer there.

But like I said, they're a really good football team and very talented, and they scored, and we like to kick off. We normally defer, and as it was, they do the same, so they won the toss. We knew going out there it was going to be important we get a stop. For those guys to get the stop and for us to go and get another touchdown and make it 28, that gave us some breathing room that we really needed.

Q. When you have the production that you had today running the under-center stuff, is there any part of you that wishes you would have gone to it a little bit earlier this year?

JEFF MONKEN: Yeah, there is. I think I probably entered the season thinking we could do a little bit of both. It's not easy to do. Hard to serve two masters. What we've got to figure out is how we can make both of them work. You can't have the same playbook that you had in the past with all the plays that we did under center, and then all the stuff we've done from the gun. You've kind of got to pick what you think you can be good at and what fits our team.

I really thought the blocking rules were prohibitive for us, executing the offense as we had done it for so many years as effectively. Their plays today when we pitched the ball out there, I would love for our slotbacks to go out there and cut those guys because lots of yards left out there when you've got to stay up and kind of dance with those guys out there and the ball gets strung out.

But also the linebackers in the box, every time those motions, their linebackers are just screaming. In the past we've been able to go up and cut those guys with a fullback or tackle or tight end or whoever.

So it does change our ability to be able to run it the way we always have. But there's probably a mix in there somewhere, and certainly when we installed the offense, the gun option offense, we had invested so much through the spring and preseason camp, I just really felt like we're going to continue to get better, we're going to grow in this offense, our guys will improve, and we have in a lot of ways. But we haven't had the production. We haven't scored points.

We haven't controlled football games, just like I felt like we did today. I don't know what the time of possession was, but it had to be pretty big in our favor. That's the Army football of old, and it's really what I thought we could do with the gun option is control the game the same way, just do it a different way.

Maybe we can. This is year one, and it certainly hasn't gone like I hoped it would. There's certainly times throughout the season where I wish we would have had some of the things we had today. But as we recognized the need for it, we started to do some of it in practice, and it's hard to just draw it up on a board at halftime and just say go run this. You've got to go practice it. But that's my -- I bear that responsibility. It's my responsibility to make those decisions and recognize what needs to be done and perhaps have recognized it earlier.

But I'm glad we did enough today to win.

Q. You said Coach Worley was calling plays today. Was he the co-offensive coordinator today?

JEFF MONKEN: He called the under-center plays. He's the coach on our staff with the most experience running under-center option. I'm not going to call the plays. I've been around this offense a long time, but I've got a job to do, and I tried to do that my first year at Georgia Southern. It's hard. It's hard to be the coordinator and be the head coach.

You want to talk about losing some sleep, you're laying there at night thinking, okay, if we got this play called and then line up in this front or we get in this formation and they don't take a guy over, what's our check going to be. You show up to go through the offensive staff meetings and there's five new things on your desk that weren't there before. It's recruiting, and you've still got the defense.

I went through the first eight games at Georgia Southern, I had no idea what we were doing on defense, I'm over there drawing up plays on the sideline, I'm over there at the bench. But I watched Paul Johnson do that for a long time. I thought that's how you were supposed to do it. He was masterful at it.

But that wasn't what was best for our team.

Q. He called the bowl game, right?

JEFF MONKEN: West Virginia. Brandt Davis was the coordinator, was out with COVID, and he called it. Cody is really smart, a really good football coach. Give drew Thatcher credit, the humility of that, and he's feeding information to him and he's on the headset, and it was certainly a team effort.

But like I said, we didn't anticipate doing that the entire day, but it just worked out that way.

Q. Bryson said that the game went fast and the offense got to the play faster. Do you think that played a role in the fact that there weren't that many penalties today? In addition there weren't really many turnovers. Do you think that played a role?

JEFF MONKEN: I don't understand what was faster?

Q. He said that the plays were faster, plays were very quick today under center?

JEFF MONKEN: Well, they hit differently. It hits a lot faster. When the tailback is running downhill and going full speed, it gets into the line of scrimmage faster. That's certainly a fact. I think that's one of the things that is valuable about this offense.

It's different. Coastal Carolina hadn't seen anybody run that this year, and they saw us run three plays of it last week, so I'm certain they spent most of their time with all the stuff we've been doing all this year.

So they started out in one front, they moved to a different front, kind of settled into that front, and being able to adjust and I'm sure they were over there with chalkboard every time their offense had the ball and trying to draw things up, and we just had enough answers, answer today, to be able to keep the ball moving.

It was probably a little bit of a surprise for me.

Q. You've beat three teams so far that are near the top of their divisions, Air Force, Coastal, and UTSA. Do you think the team rises to certain occasions?

JEFF MONKEN: Yeah, I do. Certainly speaking of for Senior Day, I think our guys take a lot of pride in that. They know this is the last opportunity for those guys to play in this stadium, and it means a lot to them.

But at this point in our season, as many disappointments as we've had and the way I've continued to see this team fight and the resilience, and we've had some disappointing moments, we've had some really down, disappointing moments this year, but our players have continued to practice. I've not seen a poor attitude out of them. I've not seen any quit. There's a lot of teams that fold the tents after a five-game losing streak.

But our guys, they're just fighters. They're tough. That doesn't get you a victory every time, but they've continued to battle.

They approached this week with a really great attitude. They were prepared. I thought our coaches did a good job of simplifying the game plan and allowing our guys to play really fast, and then they made some plays today. They made some plays. Made some good stops and some good tackles and some good blocks and runs, had a blocked punt for a touchdown, which was a different in the football game.

Our guys were just excited to play. They know what a good team looks like. I think everybody that's a competitor enjoys a good challenge. That doesn't mean that throughout the year that all the other games weren't important or our guys weren't trying. Our guys were. We didn't perform very well. I didn't do a very good coaching them at times. I was really glad those guys got a win today, and to put together a three-game win streak going into the biggest game of the year, hopefully it'll give some confidence and some excitement about finishing the season. It's going to take our very best effort. I know that other team is going to be fighting like crazy to win the game, too.

Q. What gave you the confidence that Tyson Riley was going to be able to play a major role in today's offense, especially since he had gone two plus months without a carry?

JEFF MONKEN: So we anticipated we were going to use the under-center stuff a good bit, not necessarily the entire day. So I guess you evaluate who are the best guys that we've got running the football for under center, and we're going to be running our traditional triple option plays. Jakobi Buchanan and then Tyson Riley, those are the two best players to run that stuff. The most experienced, guys that you can look and say they made a play in a game, yes, they've done that and made plays in games playing that position. So we repped those two guys. Some of the other guys we gave repetitions to, as well. As I said, in practice, we didn't do that the entire game. We didn't practice that all day long. In fact, I think yesterday in practice we probably had -- I'm trying to think. We probably had 60 plays that we had scripted in the practice yesterday. Maybe not that many. Maybe 50 plays. I think 14 of them were under center.

Wednesday, which we have big days on Tuesday and Wednesday, I think we had three team periods. There were 27 plays in each team period scripted. If I do the math on that, that's 81 plays. That's pretty good for a PE major. We had, I think, 12 plays that were scripted under center. It really wasn't something we thought we were going to do the whole game. It's just a change up.

But as it turned out, I wanted to start the game under center, and I said, we'll stick with it as long as it's going good. It was going good, so we stayed with it. Those two guys have run those plays and that mesh a thousand times, maybe more, in their career. I just think of all the reps that they've had in individual, in group work, in mesh, in team, in games. Those guys have done that over and over.

I felt like they'd be able to do that. There's other guys, too. Jarel Dickson and Markel Johnson, those guys have all taken reps and meshed. Kanye Udoh did it for a year at the prep school last year. They're all very capable. But those two guys have made plays, and I just felt like going with the guys that had done it, that we believe in would be the best one-two punch. They both did a great job.

Q. If you could describe this senior class in one word, what would it be?

JEFF MONKEN: Resilient. They are. Their leadership this year I think is reflective of that, that description. They're resilient.

Q. The offense and to some degree the defense were relatively consistent today, especially the offensive running game. Can you talk about how you called Bryson the option today and the running of the offense overall?

JEFF MONKEN: I can't say enough for the job he did reading the option. That's not something we do every day over and over like we did in the past. He still has to read the option. He still has to -- in the gun, there are triple option plays where he puts the ball in the back's stomach and has to read a defender. It may be a pitch, it may be an RPO. It's not like he doesn't do that, but the fast-hitting under center where that tailback is right on him and he's got to make a split-second decision based on the defender, he really did a great job.

We repped it this week. We gave him some individual and some group work snaps at it. Like I said, we ran some plays in practice, but it wasn't like we were running the triple option plays where he was reading it every single play. There's a toss play and there's a trap play and things like that that were called runs. So it's just a matter of him getting the ball exchanged to the correct guy.

So he did a great job. That's a guy that doesn't have a lot of game reps doing it. Just practice reps. He did a terrific job, took care of the ball. Like I said, we left some drives out -- the fumble at the end, that probably was the most frustrating play of the entire day for me, and I'm trying not to get it sour the victory for me. But it could have cost us the football game. We've got to take care of the ball. But that's not on him. That's not on him. He did a really good job of distributing the ball and reading those guys.

There was one hand-off to Tyson. Their lineman did a little up-stunt like he looked like he was going to take the fullback and then went up the field and he handed the ball off. It was a really good job, not an easy read to make, and he did it.

He's just continued to impress me how tough he is and how much of a competitor he is, and he did a great job leading the team today.

The penalties are -- the ones where we false started and Jakobi a couple times -- we ran a quick motion in front of his face, and the second time he said I just jumped on the motion. Those are foolish penalties that we'd like to try to avoid. The penalties on defense, the hands to the face, those are aggressive penalties. Those guys are just trying to rush the passer and make a play and they get their hand up underneath the guy's facemask. They've got to get their hand out of there and replace it, but those are aggressive penalties. We had some others.

The aggressive penalties, they hurt. 15-yard penalty, that hurts. But the guys are trying to play hard. I get more upset with the ones that are the five-yard penalties for false starting and being offsides, things like that. Those we have much more control over.

Q. Let's talk defense. The fact that McCall had the concussion, I think people thought he wasn't going to play, but Vasko had been playing and of course went with Jarrett Guest. How did your team react to them and what kind of job do you think they did on them?

JEFF MONKEN: I thought they did a good job. I was surprised that -- Nate Woody said something to me pregame. He came up and he said he thought it was going to be Guest, which they're a little bit different. But they really tried to go at us with the passing game. I thought our guys did a good job in the first half of stopping the run. I think they had eight yards at halftime running the football. Just when you think you're doing a good job stopping the run, they run a triple option play down their sideline for about 60. I don't know what it was. That was tough to watch. We had done such a good job of stopping the run. They're a good football team, and they're a very well-coached football team. Just very, very pleased with our defense and how hard they played and how rugged and tough they played today, and we gave up that play in the fourth quarter, the touchdown. It's a little hairy there, but Casey Larkin, he's trying to make a great play over the top of us and got it.

I thought the defense did a terrific job, and they were charged up and played really physical and played really fast. I'll see on the film. I obviously haven't had a chance to look at that yet, but I think we tackled pretty well. We missed some, but I thought we did a good job of tackling and getting to the ground.

Q. Had you pondered this move to under center, especially the nature of how you did it today, did you ponder that earlier this season, and how tough was it for you to make that switch because some people would say, oh, maybe they're second-guessing themselves?

JEFF MONKEN: I've been pondering that since last spring. Like I said, my intention was to be able to do both. It's just really hard to do both. You can be a hybrid -- we played a team when I was at Georgia Southern, there was a couple option team in the league, Wofford, and they were an under center team but they'd run some gun. They always had a gun package and they were good at it and they were able to figure out their niche to do both. They didn't win every single game, but they won a lot of football games and were able to control the clock and did a really good job with the offense.

Perhaps I thought maybe we could be a little bit like that, be able to have -- in the past, we've been an under center team and had some gun, be a gun team and have some under center. But you try to do what's best for your team, and to give our guys the best chance to win.

When you put so much time and so much investment into the gun option stuff, as soon as you start practicing placing them under center, you have to take away from the fundamentals and the timing and everything that goes with those other plays.

It's determining what's best, how much do we want to limit ourselves, and so many of the plays that any offense has, their answers to what the defense is doing. You run a certain play or in a certain formation, and they either defend that play a certain way or line up in a particular defensive structure. You've got another call then to counter that, and the under center option was like that, the gun option stuff is like that. The people that run the air-raid offense, they've all got answers. It's just football.

So to be able to have the answers for everything, both under center and gun, is a challenge. As I said just a little bit ago, I thought we would continue to get better and continue to improve at the gun stuff, and I thought we would start to become like we had been and be able to control the game on offense, which is what we need to do here. We have to do to be able to be successful.

I thought running a little more under-center stuff today may help us do that, and as it turns out, we went all under center, with the exception of the last play of the first half where we threw the interception.

Q. How much of an adjustment did Bryson Daily have to make this week? He's been doing the shotgun all year and then you call on him to do the under center that he did in past years but he never really played? How about his adjustment this week?

JEFF MONKEN: There's an adjustment with everything, taking the snap, our centers -- the center-quarterback exchange, just snapping the ball and being able to make that exchange is a huge difference from the shotgun. So it wasn't just Bryson, it was those guys, too. But they all did a really good job with it. It was an adjustment. It is an adjustment. When you're catching the ball five yards deep in the backfield and meshing with a back that's right next to you or standing under center, and the guy is running full speed at the line of scrimmage, there's an adjustment.

He did a really good job -- this week we added a little bit more. We had been doing some stuff the last couple of weeks, didn't run much of it a week ago but put in a little more this week, so he got a few more reps, and he did a really good job.

Q. How about Brady Small, your freshman center?

JEFF MONKEN: Brady has played really well all year. I'm really proud of that guy. He started in the opener. We thought Bill Katsigiannis was probably going to be the starting center. Billy got hurt in preseason camp. Small got the first start. He didn't play great in the first game, but held up pretty good. He's just improved so much. He's such a tough kid. He played injured today, which makes me even more proud of the job he did. Just a tough, tough kid.

Q. What do you think Army has improved on since last game, and what do you need to focus on against Navy?

JEFF MONKEN: That's a good question. We definitely got better at running the football. We ran the ball today for more yards than we've run the ball more all year long. So that was a definite improvement. I thought the confidence of our offense really fed off of our ability to be able to run the football today. I know the next game is the biggest game, and what we're going to have to do to improve for that game is not turn the ball over because a turnover in the Army-Navy game can cost you the football game. We've got to do that, and we've got to eliminate the big plays by the other team. We gave up a couple of big plays today on defense, and if we could eliminate those big plays on defense, we probably could have kept them from scoring as many points. We certainly want to do those two things. There's other things, too, but those will help us win the Army-Navy game.

Q. How does this team feel going into Navy?

JEFF MONKEN: Well, I'm glad we won the game. It's tough when you're disappointed and you lose a game or something happens that gets you down in the dumps to kind of get your spirits back up. Certainly after you win like we did today and really I thought a good tough hard battle against a good team, everybody's spirits are up. Everybody is going to be excited to come into work tomorrow, come to the meetings, come to lift, come to practice, and I think there's going to be a great energy and spirit with our guys tomorrow. That's what today did for us.