Jeff Monken Press Conference Quotes: UTEP

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 return home to Michie Stadium for a 3:30 p.m. home test against Texas-El Paso. The contest will be carried live on CBS Sports Network with Ben Holden, Jay Feely and John Schriffen on the call.

(Ref.: opening statement)
"Good afternoon everybody. It is good to be coming back home this weekend after being on the road for the past couple of weeks. The road hasn't been good to us unfortunately. It was a heck of a game and credit to what their coaching staff did to defend us. It was a real battle. We got down early with a big play right out of the box before we got out there with a negative play and had to punt. I was really proud of our team battling back. Our guys didn't stand around and point the finger at each other, they realized there were things we needed to do in every phase that could help us win the football game.

"We kept them off the board in the third and fourth quarters and finally had a successful drive in the fourth quarter, but Tulane came back with a heck of a drive and scored the winning touchdown with less than a minute to go. It was awfully disappointing that we weren't able to come away with a victory, but it's something we have to understand that our opportunities to win those games are going to be there and if we don't grab the bull by the horns to go and win, we will be in a dogfight at the end.

"Hopefully we will find a way to play better, execute better, play better fundamentally, make more blocks and tackles, and do a better job this weekend against a team that is very talented.

"We played them last year and were in a very emotional state as we lost Brandon (Jackson) the week leading into this game. We benefited from that emotional high we were on. Wanting to compete and wanting to honor Brandon. The only way to control our emotion was to go out and play. Hopefully we can master our intensity from last year and hope that we will execute better than we have in the last couple of weeks and find a way to win the football game.

(Ref.: on the progress of the fullbacks against Tulane)
"I thought all three of those guys (Andy Davidson, Calen Holt and Connor Slomka) played an outstanding football game. I think we're capable of playing any one of those guys at any point in the game. Every time we put a guy in there, he was making good runs and falling forward. We were stopped a few times, but we were gaining yards most of the day with them. I thought that was definitely a positive turnout from the game, and hopefully we can keep those guys healthy so can keep that whole stable of backs ready to go."

(Ref.: on the level of concern for the offense)
"Not converting those fourth-and-shorts were big plays. To be down there on fourth down twice in their territory and come away with nothing is a big concern, as well as turning the ball over. Had we made a couple more fourth downs, we probably would've had the confidence to go ahead and hammer it down in there. That's a couple of opportunities for points that we didn't get. That's the concern."

(Ref.: on Tulane's last drive in the game from last week)
"Sure, well I mean we had them in 4th-and-8, or 4th-and-6, and we had a rush, and you have to pick what you're going to do. You can rush six or seven guys and play man-to-man coverage and hope that the guy can't get it off to one of those receivers quick enough, if he can, that's troublesome too. So, we rushed four, and our guys did a great job in the back end. They had them all covered, we dropped our 'mike' into the middle of the field for the routes bending in form the outside, and where he is going to have a throw, you have contained rushers and it's going to be hard for him when he's got to hold the ball for a while to throw it out to the perimeter. We had a guy drop pretty deep.

"On the run, we had guys pursuing it. We were probably a little late pulling the trigger, we might have been able to buddy tackle him there with a yard to go. But credit him, he had a good run and a lane opened up. We had four rushers so that's two open gaps, and you hope you can restrict them and close them down and we didn't. We forced him out of there. The second was 4th-and-3, they had a little slant route in there. We didn't execute well. We tried to put some pressure on that one, we rushed six, and he got rid of it quick. And that's exactly what happened. Everyone came, he threw the ball quick on a slant route, and we should have been there denying it a little bit better than we were. There were times where we had a chance to get them stopped, but a 19-play drive, is pretty impressive and they did a good job blocking us, executing and making plays right down to the last touchdown."

(Ref.: on progress of special teams.)
"We're making progress. We still got some things we got to do better. I've been really pleased with the specialists. Blake (Wilson) hitting that field goal was really positive, especially after missing the one at Ohio St. It's just great to see him step in there and knock that thing through. (Nick) Schrage's become very valuable both as a kickoff guy and as a punter. He's punting it better. He still can be a little more consistent and that's something he and I talked about yesterday, but that's been a positive.

"Our returns have been a little bit hit or miss. We returned the one Saturday off the goal line and got 17 yards. I'd much prefer to see that thing go into the end zone and come out to the 25. With the ball coming out to the 25-yard line, that becomes a pretty good return and if you look at the NCAA statistics, I think there's about 25 or 30 teams that average over 25 yards a kick return. Best bet is to let that thing go into the end zone and we got to make some better decisions about that. That's something we have to continue to practice, but we've had a couple of good returns and it's encouraging to see that. That's not something we did very consistently last year."

(Ref.: on how he is preparing his team for UTEP's offense)
"There's a lot of things they do from a formation standpoint they can give you headaches. They change personnel groups and they change formations. They play so many different quarterbacks, it's hard to try and figure out if it's the same game plan with each guy. Likely it's not. Because they would play the guy they felt was the best for the entire game plan. They are finding things that each of them do that add to their football team's success. Just the personnel groupings and formations kind of keep your head spinning.

"Then defensively, having played our offensive a year ago and being able to watch the game from a year ago. They have a lot of guys who played in the game a year ago and I think that makes a big difference when you defend this offense for a second time, especially in consecutive years because you've got the same players playing the same plays."

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Jeff Monken Press Conference Quotes: UTEP

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