Jeff Monken Press Conference Quotes: Connecticut

WEST POINT, N.Y. - Army West Point football head coach Jeff Monken met with members of the local media Tuesday afternoon for his weekly press conference inside Nowak Auditorium. The Black Knights are preparing for their first road game of the 2015 season on Saturday against Connecticut.

(Ref.: opening statement)
"Good afternoon everybody, we are just getting ready for Connecticut, coming off a difficult weekend. We have a lot to learn from the game against Fordham. Fortunately for us we are able to look at the film to analyze and evaluate what we have to do better and also see the things we did well and build off of those.

Now we are going to prepare for UConn, which is an outstanding football team, they are a big, talented football team. They have guys who can run and looking at their special teams I was very impressed with their athleticism and it will certainly be a great challenge for us.

We had a great game against them last year down at Yankee Stadium, it was a nip and tuck right to the end, a real battle and we were fortunate to win the game. I hope we can find a way to play well enough this week and muster enough plays to get on top and win. That has been our focus this week to get ready and play our best football and we know we didn't play our best football on Friday night. We played well at times, but we are going to have to play our very best to have a chance to win this game. Our guys have done a good job, they responded well at practice yesterday, we will get out there again today, tomorrow, and Thursday before we travel on Friday."

(Ref.: thoughts on Ahmad Bradshaw's performance against Fordham)
"I thought Ahmad played well. I thought he played hard and he really impressed us with how well he ran the football. He ran through some tackles and made some plays when there wasn't much there. He made a couple critical third down runs and I thought he did a nice job. He made some mistakes, and there were some plays where he could have made some different decisions and not got us in a pickle a couple of times, but for a guy who is a rookie for all intents and purposes, I thought he played really well. He is going to play well and improve the more he plays and that is one of the things that is encouraging going into this week is that I think he will get better."

(Ref.: Bradshaw's ability to throw the ball)
"He did a good job. I thought he put the ball on the money a couple of times, including the very first pass he threw to Joe Walker for a touchdown. There were some others where he let the ball sail a little bit. On the one before halftime, probably not a great decision to throw that in there when he had another guy he could have thrown it to. It's tough when you are standing out there and there are a bunch of bodies in front of you, some of them who are trying to come get you, there comes a point when you have to get rid of the football. Again, that's one of those things that comes with experience and time."

(Ref.: adding more passing plays to the offense)
"I don't know. As I said Friday night, when you see us throwing the ball as much over the years, it usually doesn't spell victory. We have to run the ball effectively in order to win. That is our offense and we want to run the ball. When we do that, it gives us opportunity to throw the ball."
(Ref.: did you see something in particular on defense that needs to be corrected)
"We had some missed assignments that really cost us. That was the disappointing thing, we just weren't in position several times on some big plays. The long pass play where the running back slipped out of the backfield, we had a defense called and we signaled in a different defense based on their formation alignment and we busted it. Half the secondary was playing one defense and the other was playing a different defense and we turned him loose. It doesn't always happen for 87 yards and that was disappointing. Other times we just missed a tackle. We have to tackle more aggressively, but we will get better and we found out a lot about our team."

(ref: on extra practice for special teams)
"We practice punt catching every day and we practice snapping every day. Two guys were trying to make a play, they were doing the best they can and they made an error. If you watch our practice and watch anyone else in the country, there's no one else in America that spends more time on special teams then we do, I can assure you of that."

(ref: on what you want to see improve from last week to this week)
"We need to improve our assignments. There were times when we weren't blocking the right guy or not playing the right coverage. Those are the things I'd like to see improve and see how we perform when we're playing our assignments exactly like we need to be. We grade our guys really hard on assignments. We feel like we have to be absolutely perfect on those things to give ourselves a chance."

(Ref. biggest challenge Connecticut presents)
"Number one, I think they're very talented. Certainly with coach (Bob) Diaco coming in there last year, it's much like our situation. You come in. You change schemes. You change terminology. There are different coaches, philosophies and expectations, and that takes some time. I'm sure those are starting to take hold in his program just as I know they are taking hold in ours. They're a big team. It's difficult when you've got a physically superior team to knock them around and push them around. You have to be very fundamentally sound and assignment-sound in order to give yourself a chance to win against a team like that. They had a really good victory last week. They came from behind to win the game, and I'm impressed with their football team. There are plenty of challenges. It was a challenge for us last year down at Yankee Stadium. What a football game that we were fortunate enough to win. I hope we can do enough this year to have a chance again."

(Ref. importance of Connecticut game)
"This game is important. It's the most important game of the year. Then, after this one's done the next game will be the most important one. Last time we started a season 0-2 we went to a bowl game and won nine games. Call it what you want, but, frankly, I'm not concerned about last week's game. I'm going to worry about the next one. That's the only one I'm worried about."

(Ref. defensive improvements to be made vs. Connecticut from tape)
"We had some missed assignments on defense. We weren't in position where we needed to be, and that's unfortunate. That is probably the most frustrating thing to me. I hate to see a missed tackle, and I hate to see a guy catch a ball when somebody is covering him. Besides that, not being in position doesn't give you a chance, and we had some plays where we gave up some big plays. We had other plays where they didn't gain a lot of yards, but still had guys out of position. We've got to get that corrected. It's not uncommon to go through a football game and have some missed assignments. I don't know if I've ever graded a game where we didn't have a single missed assignment. There's going to be some guys that just get out of position. To the point where we just weren't covering a receiver that was supposed to be covered; those are things that are really frustrating. It's not that the kids aren't trying or that they don't know, it's just happens. The game moves fast and there are some guys out there who are playing their positions for the very first time and some guys playing in a college football game for the very first time so we're going to get them corrected. That's our job, and we'll do that."

(ref.: on fluke two-point conversion by Fordham)
"We made enough mistakes as it was to lose the football game. You can't snap the ball over the punter's head for a safety and you can't throw an interception before halftime and let them hit a big play to kick a field goal. You can't turn guys loose for an 87-yard pass route down the middle and they get three points out of that drive. They had opportunities. The great remorse is looking at the opportunities that we have that we didn't capitalize on. We had chances and we didn't execute when we needed to. That's part of the game. You've got to make plays. It's a game of execution. That was a great play by that kid. When that snap got fumbled he picked it up and went around the end. We were trying like heck to block it and keep them from getting on the board. He found himself with the ball and ran around the end and beat us to the line."

Army West Point Athletics

Jeff Monken Press Conference Quotes: Connecticut

Players Mentioned

Ahmad Bradshaw

Joe Walker

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