Jeff Monken Press Conference Quotes: Fordham

WEST POINT, N.Y. – Army West Point football head coach Jeff Monken met with members of the local media on Tuesday afternoon for his weekly press conference inside Nowak Auditorium.

The Black Knights are preparing to open the 2017 season vs. Fordham on Friday evening at Michie Stadium.

(Ref.: opening statement)
"Good afternoon everybody. I guess the season is finally here. We are excited that it finally is. It has been a long camp. With the change in the NCAA rules to no two-a-days, we backed it up about five days so it has been a lengthy camp. I think it's been a good camp though. We've been a little beat up particularly on the offensive line. We are starting to get a few of those guys healthy, hopefully they'll be ready for Friday night.

Our guys are excited to play and we are too. We have a challenge in Fordham because last time they came in here they beat us. We know it is going to take a great effort for us to beat a very talented Fordham team. When you look at their record and what they've accomplished over the last few years. It's really incredible that one of the most successful teams in the country both at the FBS and FCS level is Fordham. They have a lot of confidence coming in here.

Plenty of their players were involved in that trip two years ago. Their quarterback and running back are both really good players. They're saying Chase Edmonds may be the leading rusher in Division I football this year. I think we are going to get our hands full and we are going to have to play really well, but hopefully our guys are prepared.

We've certainly tried to get them prepared over the past five weeks of camp. We've got a lot of our guys back and the guys that played two years ago are still on our roster. They still feel the sting of that game and hopefully we'll be able to perform and play a little bit better than the last time out. They have an outstanding team and they beat us the last time and hopefully we will be able to play our very best.

(Ref.: on the excitement of the first game)
"I think it is a relief to play somebody besides each other. What happens in camp is through the first few weeks we compete against each other. It probably isn't a good representation of what we will see throughout the most of the year so we have turned our focus to Fordham and preparing for them. I am excited to get out there to see what our team looks like. We can look at the practice films and compare against each other, but the bottom line is what happens when we get out there against an opponent. I am always excited for a new season. It's the hope of what's to come. We have fresh faces and I'm anxious to see what they'll do. We are excited for Friday night.

(Ref.: on the current state of the program and team leading up to the season opener)
"I think we improved in a lot of areas and I think that's helped us win some more football games. I think we're more athletic and faster maybe collectively than we were a couple of years ago, but I don't know that we've gotten ourselves to a point where we feel like we're just going to out-athlete people or win because of talent alone. I don't know that we will ever be there. But, I do believe that we've got the right guys in the program and coming into the program.

I am excited about the efforts that our staff has put into recruiting. I think it's paying off and to see as many young kids playing the last couple of years and growing up through the program and now becoming veteran players, I think is a sign that we got the right guys and are managing to get the right kinds of players into our program. Hopefully as a program, we're growing and I think the temptation when you take over a program or a team that hasn't been winning is to just try to get a winning team fielded out there, do whatever you have to do to win football games and show progress. I think the challenge and goal for us has been to develop a solid winning program, one that can sustain success after we've had some wins and see if we can get better. That's what I admire so much about some of the teams that you see year in and year out that win over and over and over again. Teams like Alabama. They're very talented of course, but they are very well coached. See a team like North Dakota State, at the FCS level, they just keeping winning national championship after another and it's because they've built a great program, a solid program that's been able to sustain success and I hope that's what we can do here."

(Ref.: on leadership beyond team captains as identity of 2017 squad)
"I hope that we've got a number of guys on our team that can lead. I think that the culture in our program and what has been built here by our players in the locker room and on the practice field is an attitude that they take ownership in. The two captains, as well as the senior leaders and other guys on our team have stepped to the forefront of our leadership to create and demand those attitudes and efforts out of everybody else."

(Ref.: on Fordham's quarterback posing a challenge to Army's defensive backs)
"He's a good player. The guy threw for a bunch of yards, and leads his team. You can watch how much poise he has and he never seems to be in a bad position. He's either getting them into the right play or right protection, gets rid of the ball, realizes when there's problems around him and dumps the thing off either to a side or a hot receiver. He's a very poised quarterback and a very talented guy. We've got some guys over in our secondary that are in some new positions that I hope will play well and maybe get some pressure on him to make him throw on time. If you give the guy some time, he's going to find an open receiver.

(Ref.: on discussing the 2015 Fordham game with the team)
"Sure, we've talked about it quite a bit. And it's not the responsibility of this team. That loss belongs to the 2015 team, but I want them to understand how important it is to play our best and to have ourselves focused on doing our job and knowing our assignments. We had some boneheaded mistakes in that game that really cost us, and it will cost us again if we make the same mistakes. We are going to find ourselves in a loser's bracket.

Special teams things like snapping the ball over the punter's head, and dropping a punt late in the game, and silly things like that. The had a long touchdown pass from their own end zone, where we had a miscommunication. We had the secondary playing two entirely different coverages, and they split us right down the middle. (Xavier) Moss ran him down, I think it was Chase (Edmonds), ran him down and they ended up scoring on the drive. Just some silly things that we can't allow to have happen. If we do, a good team is going to beat us, and Fordham is a good team.

They will beat us if we make those mistakes, so it's a warning to them that we've got to have ourselves prepared. And I don't mean excited and up. Everybody in their opening game is going to excited and ready to play, but it's just to not make those mistakes. We talked about the importance of playing at home and winning at home and it certainly is an opportunity for us to start the season off right in our own backyard."

(Ref.: on taking the film from the 2015 meeting and applying it to Friday night)
"Oh I think there are things we can gain from that. But that's two full years ago. They did a lot of things that year, as they continued through that season and had a lot of success. And Andrew (Breiner) has done a terrific job. He joined Joe (Moorhead) on the staff when he took the job there and has really done a terrific job. A lot of those guys that we mentioned he's coached them personally because he was their position coach. So they've just continued the success, which is not easy to do.

The offensive film from that night, I'm sure they're looking at it too. Saying 'Ok that's the same defensive coordinator, the same defense, and a lot of the same players,' just as we are. There are going to be some things that are different. And we're going to speculate only based on what they did last year and after they played us in 2015, and see if we can be prepared. You can't prepare for everything they're going to do. They've got a really good quarterback and they've got a heck of a running back and I'm sure they're probably going to use those guys to win the football game. If I were them I sure would.

And then defensively, there is a different defensive coordinator. I think you can look at the things they did against us, they had some success certainly against us that night. We had the good fortune of starting the game with a turnover, had a short field, and then scored on third down there in the opening drive. It wasn't like we were just a scoring juggernaut all night long. We had to work for our touchdowns.

You just base it off of what the coaches have done in the past, where they've coached, and the way they've defended this offense and you hope you're right. At the beginning of the game on Friday night, if they're in a completely different defense than we've anticipated, well then we make the adjustment. But our job is to coach our guys, and they've got to coach theirs and hopefully we'll do a good enough job that our guys will execute and give ourselves a chance.

(Ref.: on expectations for the defense)
"I tell all of our guys the same thing. I want them to get better defensively. We look at the overall defense, we ranked very high, but there are areas on the field and in situations where we didn't play as well as we probably are capable of. And maybe not, maybe that's the best we got. But we will find out, with all these guys that were part of our team a year ago; (John) Voit,(Scott) Washle, (Kenneth) Brinson, (Alex) Aukerman, (Rhayn) England, and (James) Gibson. There are a lot of names who have played a lot of football. So, hopefully they'll improve as players, they'll play their positions better, play their fundamentals better, be smarter. And these young guys who haven't will kind of figure out their place in the defense and their role, and be able to perform as well. We are going to have to play good defense. It's hard to win if you don't have a good defense."

Army West Point Athletics

Jeff Monken Press Conference Quotes: Fordham

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