Jeff Monken Press Conference Quotes: #8 Ohio State

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 for their first road trip of the 2017 campaign and their opponent will be no pushover in No. 8-ranked Ohio State. The contest is slated for 4:30 p.m. and will be carried live on Fox.

(Ref.: opening statement)
"Thanks for being here today everybody. We are getting ready for an unbelievable opponent. As I told our team, they perhaps may be the most talented football team Army has ever faced in school history. They're big, athletic fast and have multiple weapons on offense. Their defensive coordinator said that his defensive line now was better than the one he coached with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. I don't know if there can be any higher praise since they're NFL quality guys still in college. The way they run and pursue the ball. They are so well coached.

"Coach (Urban) Meyer has done an unbelievable job throughout his career and specifically at Ohio State. We know we are in for a real battle and test and it is going to take our very best effort out of every one of our guys and coaches to stay in the ballgame with these guys. We are going to give it everything we've got this week and then go to Columbus and represent this institution, play very hard and hopefully do well."

(Ref.: on what type of opportunity does playing at Ohio State present?)
"That's one of the things about playing here at West Point that I think makes this experience really special as opposed to some other places similar to us. We play a lot of these games. We've played Stanford, Penn State, Rutgers, Duke, and Wake Forest. I can just go on and on with the Power 5 teams that we've had an opportunity to play against. It's a real privilege to play Notre Dame in the Alamodome, to play in front of 107,000 at Penn State. It's an unbelievable opportunity for our players and I think, like everybody who probably plays football and has aspirations of playing college football, they dream of playing college football at the highest levels, in front of the biggest crowds, against the country's best teams. This is one of those opportunities. It's really a great privilege and honor for us as a program and it gives our players a unique experience, which I think is really special."

(Ref.: on what the players will take away from playing in bigger stadiums against competitive teams)
"We learn that those types of teams are pretty good, pretty talented and very physical. Although the Penn State game a couple of years ago was a disappointing loss, there are a lot of things you can point to in a game like that to give our team confidence. We were able to play a close football game with them, and we saw places where we need to execute better.

"We have to give our guys some hope. Nobody outside of this room is running around saying 'Man, Army is going to beat the heck out of Ohio State.' We're 30.5-point underdogs. Everyone is saying we're going to get our butts whipped. I'm not walking in here telling the guys to start preparing for Tulane because we're going to get our butts whipped. That's not the way we're wired, and I don't know a team or a coach in the country that would prepare that way. We've got to look at their team and find the things we can do to be successful on offense, defense and special teams, practice them and try to go execute."

(Ref.: on fixing smaller problems [ex: turnovers, missed passes, etc.] going forward)
"The turnover issue is something we talk about a lot. We want to eliminate those altogether. Just last season and then on Saturday, we did turn the ball over against Fordham, but in the last seven games where we haven't had a turnover we're 7-0. That's a huge statistic. We've got to hang onto the ball. We did that last week. And I really think that was the stat of the game. We had no turnovers and they had two. As poorly as we've played at times, we just made some mistakes fundamentally. We didn't do a great job sustaining blocks, we missed some assignments, we had some foolish penalties and missed opportunities with pass plays. Those things stalled us out. But we didn't give them short fields with a turnover. We were able to punt to them. And then we were able to take advantage of the opportunities we got from them in the second half in getting some turnovers and getting some points and putting ourselves in a position in the fourth quarter to win the game.

"There's just some times where you are going to face people who are going to do a good job defending you. We're going to play a team this weekend that is going to be really good at playing blocks and at running people down. Not that there aren't others like that on our schedule. I mean I thought Buffalo had a really good front seven. Those guys were physical, that inside linebacker is a really good player, and they gave us some trouble. They're not just going to line up and let you block them. Sometimes they're going to win and sometimes we're going to win those one-on-one battles. Hopefully we can find a way to win a few more on Saturday.

(Ref.: on what the future of Army's passing game is)
"Eliminating as any passes as we possibly can, to be quite frank about it. We've got to run the ball if we're going to be successful. We're not going to win a bunch of games if we chunk it all over the place. We've got to pick our spots. We tried to pick them on Saturday but we had a couple of opportunities that we missed. No one feels worse about it than Ahmad (Bradshaw) does. But we're going to hit some of those too sometimes. We'll keep taking our shots every once in a while.

(Ref.: on potentially mixing things up offensively due to Associate Head Coach Greg Schiano's experience defending the triple option)
"Well we didn't hold anything back. We certainly felt like we needed to have everything that we got in our offense prepared for the first two games to have a chance to win. I have a great respect for Fordham and for Buffalo and it took an unbelievable effort to get that thing done on Saturday. I don't know that there's a whole lot more that we're just going to pull out of the hat, but we're going to search for some things that we might be able to do that we think might give us an opportunity to move the ball, get first downs and that's really the goal.

"We know how dangerous they are on offense, but that's the challenge cause as I said, I don't know if I would say that they are more talented on offense or defense. I think all the way across the board they are really good. Coach Schiano has seen this offense several times and we have stood on opposite sidelines. He's got experience doing it [defending the triple option] and I am sure that they will do a great job getting their young men prepared to execute it. There are challenges with their talent and their players, but also the great coaching staff that they have."

(Ref: on preparing Rhyan England defensively for Ohio State)
"Rhyan means a lot to our defense. He's a really smart player, and he is the guy that makes sure everybody is where they need to be on the back end. We have to get him where he's supposed to be, and then he can help everybody else. He's a smart player, and I know that Coach (Jay) Bateman relies on him a lot for communication, and getting our defense set.

"I think our players on defense do a good job. They take a lot of pride in their job, and hopefully we're not out of position. Rhyan is a lot like Andrew King a year ago; he is one of those players that watches everyone else to make sure they're on the same page."

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Jeff Monken Press Conference Quotes: #8 Ohio State

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