From UMN Athletic Communications:
COACH FLECK: Hi, everybody. Thank you very much for being here. I appreciate all of you. I'll say a quick opening statement. You know, obviously we didn't do enough to win the football game, didn't deserve to win the football game, but I'm proud of how disciplined we're playing. We're just not making enough plays, so that's kind of my evaluation as we got done, and in the broad perspective in terms of watching the film. So with that, I'm sure you've got a lot of questions but we're looking forward to this week. Good day of practice and now we've got to obviously get our eyes set on Purdue which they did Sunday night. They came out and had a really good practice Sunday night. So, with that, open it for questions.
Q. You guys played, at the line of scrimmage, how did you grade out, so to speak?
COACH FLECK: You know, I mean, we're very -- the offensive line hasn't played together very long, you know, with four guys going in the spring, and then also the amount of youth we have up front and maybe inexperience, you know, I thought we played okay. I think we'd have lower pad level, I think we have to be able to finish blocks, I think we have to be able to sustain on our man and finish and move people. And we didn't do that enough. And, you know, that goes back to me, so we've got to get them to do it.
Q. Is that mechanics or is that just want to or what is that?
COACH FLECK: It's a lot of things. In terms of fundamentals, technique, you know, every coach teaches things differently and if you're able to get the same staff for a long period of time, right, you can continue to get better at those same fundamentals and techniques and things that coaches teach. When you have your third head coach in three years, sometimes that's a little bit harder because you have new systems, you have new teachers, you have new coaches, you have new ways of doing things. Once again, it's hard to master something. You know, we talked about that in the spring, you know, if you're not in there in our system offensively, defensively and special teams, and you're not taking reps in the spring, you know, how can you develop, right, but also master that whole thing without time, right? It's a culmination. Being able to master something is a culmination of many reps over and over and over and over and over, and that's what we're getting at, that's just a day-by-day process.
Q. P.J., do you think you got away with something in the first three games, either you didn't or going backwards in the fourth game?
COACH FLECK: You go back to -- whether you win or lose -- what we do is you go back to how we played the game. It's a great question. And that's why we have that chart over to your right. And when we lose in the turnover battle, we lose the game, right? When you lose on third down, you have a higher percent to lose the game. When you lose on average plays on first and second down, you have a better chance of losing the football game. When you lose in the special teams compartment, you have an opportunity to lose football games. When you don't score in the red zone, when you're supposed to score, you lose a football game. So you go back to why the result was the result. Same thing as I said weeks ago, I said -- I didn't talk about winning in front of our team after we win. It was, what do we have to do to get better? How did we get to that result, okay? But as a coach, you find all the things your players aren't very good at and you constantly, constantly continue to develop them in those areas. And that's what we'll continue to do with the youth and inexperience that we have. We have to. There are a lot of guys out there playing for the first time. Those aren't excuses. Whoever is on that field has to play at an elite level, that's on me, 100%, period.
Q. P.J., when do you decide on Winfield's availability?
COACH FLECK: As soon as I know, to be honest with you. I'm leaning toward no. I have not made that decision yet, though. But, again, it's your best player on defense. The game plan’s designed around your best player on defense. Your best player on defense gets hurt, and No. 1 has a great game. But everything was designed with 11 to be on No. 1 the entire game, right, and -- but, again, that's -- we got to get more players that can play at that level and that skillful through recruiting in '18 and '19 and develop the players we have. That's just the facts of life of what we have and we'll continue to do that. And, you know, he'll be back at some point, and if he's not, he's not but we're going to make sure he's healthy when he comes back, I know that.
Q. In the last few weeks, I know it's just been practice, but what have you seen that maybe you can share a comment on a little bit with Tanner Morgan?
COACH FLECK: In terms of what way? I'm sorry.
Q. Just his progress or --
COACH FLECK: Yeah, I think he's getting a lot better.
Q. -- what you see with him...
COACH FLECK: I think he's getting a lot better. I tell you what, from when he came in in January to now, just exponential growth in every area. Not only just football but in his life. Football and his life are incredibly important to Tanner Morgan. The thing about Tanner is I don't want to have to pull his red shirt. I'm pulling enough red shirts and I think that tells you where we are depth-wise, right, and the issues we talked about in the spring, this is the same issues we're talking about now in the season, that everybody said, yeah, you're going to be this, yeah, you're going to be that, yeah, these guys haven't played, yeah, you don't have this, yeah, you don't have this, yeah, you don't have that. Well, that's what we have until we get to another year and then another year when you can start developing that depth. But with Tanner, you don't want to pull it, and we're doing everything we can not to be able to run Tanner -- not Tanner but Conor as much as I want to be able to -- you got to keep him healthy, you know. You saw what Maryland's third string quarterback did. He wasn't a third string quarterback, he was the third number one guy, basically their issue they have. That's a good problem to have. And we don't have that right now, and so what we have to do is make sure we keep Conor upright, keep him healthy, continue to get him to distribute the ball and continue to develop the other quarterbacks behind him but not do something that's going to -- this is tough in year zero, right? This is what I've been through before. Don't sacrifice what you really want down the road for what you want right now, all right. This is a completely new culture, completely new, nothing's connected from years past, in terms of depth and culture and all those other things. Same thing when you're making decisions as head football coach. I'm making decisions based on years in the past. I'm making decisions now that affect our future and our future that affect now. So for Tanner, that's the tough part because he's progressing really well but I don't want to -- I want to keep him as a red shirt.
Q. Coach, I know we talked about Demry yesterday and then I saw him as the number three on the depth chart. Is there a change in his status?
COACH FLECK: He's back on the team. But just because -- again, it's -- when -- this program, we are going to hold people accountable for their actions, period? And so when you don't make the right decisions, this is a -- this is a privilege, not a right, and so just because you come back doesn't mean -- now, from injury, you can have your spot back. I'm big on that. You get hurt and you had a spot, you walk in, you should never lose your starting spot to injury. You should at least have an opportunity to keep it based on a circumstance that you cannot control. When you can control the circumstance, right, and you control the choice and you make that choice and when you come back, well, now you've got to show why you should be where you were because other people that were here that are doing the right things have elevated their play while you were gone. So that's the easiest way to describe it. But, I was very impressed the last few days with him.
Q. P.J., are teams throwing at Shenault?
COACH FLECK: I think teams are throwing at everybody, to be honest with you, Chip, but -- what's that?
Q. Seems like teams are going at him.
COACH FLECK: One of our best players at this point, right, one of our best players so it's the biggest thing, okay. Well, if you help them, you take another person out of the box. When you lack depth at the defensive line, we're already playing freshmen and then, you know -- so now suddenly the secondary, right, if you put them in man cover, there's two freshmen now in the secondary. So that's just the issues that are there and they're my issues, right, that's my challenge. That's why I took the job, that's why I love it. It's a challenge, you know, and that's why I came here because of a challenge, and that's the fun part. And they're going to develop. And one thing about freshmen that's kind of cool is they're freshmen one year, most of the time. And then they move on to sophomores and then one day they become upperclassmen, right? And then finally seniors. So it's -- it's that progression of talent and the patience you have to have with development. You can't just say, okay, well, you're going to play but I have to develop you as a senior now, but if you don't get there, I'll be so frustrated and so mad at you. Every player has their own natural progression they're going to have to do. You can't teach 500 level courses in college before you've taught the 100 level, you can't do that, and this is part of natural progression and natural process and that's why I'm here.
Q. Coach, what improvements do the run game need to make for the Big 10 --
COACH FLECK: We got to run the ball better. But let's -- let me paint a picture for you. It's obvious -- ready? -- for everybody that's watching that's gaining tips from our interview, we're going to run the ball but we're not going to just run the ball and say, "Well, that didn't work, we've got to come up with this completely new scheme." We're going to do what our offensive linemen can do. I would not be a very good coach if I'm going to ask them and demand them to do things they can't do. Remember, the first time we found out what they can do was when? Training camp, right? Two months ago, we found out what we could really do as a team, right, in our system. So what we had to do was invest in what we had to do with the type of talent we have, we had to invest in them. Then what do our running backs do, what do our tight ends do? What are their strengths? What's our quarterback's strengths? Promote people's strengths, eliminate their weaknesses, and in practice, make their weaknesses become strengths and strengths become instincts. That's what a coach does. And for our run game, we've got to run it better, but for us to run the ball better, guys on the outside have to make more plays, okay, but we don't have the fifth-year senior that's caught 120 balls that you can just say, "I'm going to rely on that bell cow." Don't have that. So you've got Phillip Howard who had a really nice game, right, red-shirt freshman. Mark Williams is going to be in the rotation who is a red-shirt freshman. And you've got Ty who's a sophomore who's playing and being a starter for the first time, and Ty reminds me -- that game reminded me of Corey Davis back in year one and two. Corey Davis wasn't Corey Davis in year four, he was Corey Davis in year one and two. Corey dropped a lot of balls in year one and two. He had to fail a lot to gain the experience that he knew he could do it in any situation. I'm sure Ty would want that ball coming back to him, right? We're going in to score to make it 14-7. It gets tipped through his hands, interception, now it's 14-7 Terrapins, but on that drive, as a drive, a ball goes through our hands on an interception. Maybe it's 14-7, maybe it's 7-7 after all that. But we have to take advantage of the opportunities that come. We're not deep enough and experienced enough to miss on very opportunistic times and expect to beat teams in the Big 10. We got to play our style of football and we got to play it really well. Ball control, hold on to the ball, get takeaways, create short fields, win on special teams, win on field position, that's the team we have.
Q. For an experienced guy like Rodney Smith, then, what are his strengths and what is he really [indiscernible] lead the offense like?
COACH FLECK: He's got great vision. I think he's got great balance. And I think he does really well in pass protection. He's very smart. He's just got to continue to get better, right, but, again, going into another new system, all right, this is a new system and sometimes when you come into -- no matter what team you're coming into, sometimes that's very difficult to do to teach everybody new systems, and then you get a different team than it was last year, completely different with a lot of decisions that have to be made, and, you know, I don't like to compare year-one coaches to year-one coaches but that's why it's year one or year zero for a reason. It's tough, and we have a different way of coaching, maybe, than he was coached in the past or maybe this guy was coached in the past. But this is how we coach and this is our system. And like -- that goes back to players not picking me, me picking them, right, but he's a phenomenal running back, and so is Shannon, and they're working better collectively, right? But we have to do a better job of sustaining blocks. It comes down to this. When you're doing things for people, you'll never quit. When you're doing things for yourself, you'll quit. And our team has to -- our team, not our group of people, but our team has to understand that. That it's not about you, it's about everybody else. And they have to, at some point, when it gets really hard, they have to be doing it for somebody or you'll quit. And that was the same thing I said in year one, in the past place, and we got to a point where everybody did it for each other. Never for themselves. Everybody on the team. Every person in the organization. Very difficult to get to but that's how you win championships, and if that's what championship cultures look like, and if we haven't had it for a long time, it's hard to be able to say, well, what is it missing? Right? We know what it's missing and we have to be able to continue to apply it and get it better every day, and everything starts with me. Getting everybody to do that. Every day.
Q. P.J., did your path ever cross with Joe Tiller and, obviously, there will be a lot of emotion -- have you explained -- I assume a lot of your players have no idea his impact --
COACH FLECK: It's amazing who players know and don't know, names that you throw out, Chip, like, do you know this person? It's like, who? Wait a minute. When I was talking to Big O yesterday and I threw out a name and he had no idea who it was. Anyway, I don't know why I couldn't believe he didn't know a name. But Joe Tiller, he's one of the best coaches in Big 10 history but not only one of the best coaches, one of the best people. You know, he changed Purdue football forever and set up one of the best tenures of any coach that ever coached at Purdue and ever in the Big 10. And what a gracious man. I got a chance to meet him once or twice but I didn't know him very well but that's not for me to judge or not judge. What we need to do as a Big 10 institution is to support him and his family, support the Purdue family, know that we're going to be there for them, and that, you know, we support everything they're about in terms of the Joe Tiller era and what he stood for, and so we will wear a logo that we've designed. It's really neat in terms of what the logo has, and we'll wear that on Saturday to support Purdue football.
Q. What sticks out about Purdue on film?
COACH FLECK: There's a lot of things. I mean, obviously it's just another -- another first-year head coach, everything is new but Coach Brohm is one of the best coaches in the country, always has been, one of the best offensive minds in the game. He's really captivated Purdue, you can see it already. They've had two losses and they both have been the top 25 teams where they've been extremely tight with Louisville, had the lead in Michigan, and then the other two teams they've blown out, so what they've done is they've got a quarterback there, number 11 and number 2. Number 11's failed so much he's been successful. If any of you listen to the Big 10 Media Days and you go back to listen to number 11's speech, that guy's a champion, he's a champion for life. Okay, David's a champion for life. So he's going to carry that over to the field. He's only a junior and he failed so much as a youngster, that's what it takes, right? Go back to a quarterback when I had him at Western Michigan, he failed -- he threw so many interceptions and no touchdowns. Well, same kid that threw 34 with three picks, 34 touchdowns with three -- you failed enough where you have enough scars that you have the courage to continue to play really well. That's what they have. And he's a really good -- really good quarterback. And another quarterback that has a huge arm, maybe one of the biggest arms we'll play against all year, number 2. So they have quarterbacks who can distribute. They spread you out. They'll run -- I think every play in football, they'll run at least once throughout the game. It's amazing, it's awesome, right? From reverses to screens to flea-flickers. The flea-flicker is not going to be a surprise to any of you. It's just part of, like, here comes the inside zone, oh, here comes the flea-flicker. Like, they're going to run those types of plays. And they put their players in the best position to be successful. They know their strengths, they know their weaknesses and they apply the system to that. And their defense is very stingy. They got a really good front four. They got an experienced linebacker corps and a secondary that's had a lot of success this year, and special teams -- maybe the best punter we've played against up to date. So again, they have a lot of depth. If you look at the roster, you can tell Coach Hazell did a really nice job of recruiting and setting it up, with a lot of depth. They have a lot of seniors on the team, plus behind them are a lot of juniors and sophomores, and that's where they're at, so a really good football team and going to be a great match-up.
Q. You mentioned how many young wide receivers you guys have. What kind of job has Coach Simon done in developing them?
COACH FLECK: Yeah, in the future, we're only going to get younger. There will be three wideouts that come in that all are going to play next year and so we'll be young again. Like I said, getting younger before we get better and more experienced. But Coach Simon, this is what he does. You know, Luke Getsy, prior to him, when we were at Western Michigan, now the wide receivers coach for the Green Bay Packers, it's just kind of the system that Jerry Sullivan, my former wide receiver coach when I played for the Niners, he developed. This is his system. This is his development of an NFL wide receiver that's done at the collegiate level and, you know, Matt played for me, got that coaching. I'm very involved with the wideouts but Coach Simon teaches them and coaches them. He's at a point - - maybe a few years ago I was a little more involved. I've kind of let myself become less involved with them because he's so good. He's a great teacher, he's very patient. Every day you're going to get Matt Simon's best, every day, and those wide-outs know that. You're looking at some guys that have never played that are producing. Now, we're not perfect but they're producing and that's a credit to him. They're blocking well, they're running routes at a high level. They're becoming better in their technique. They're not perfect. We're not where we're going to be in the future but you can see the process of growth, and those wide-outs come out to practice ready to practice and want to practice. Today they were the group that actually led the whole team. They had the best practice out of anybody today.
Q. How do you see Steven Richardson's play? He had a couple tackles, a tackle for a loss, one of your best players, doesn't have the stats but how do you assess how he's playing so far?
COACH FLECK: Yeah, I'm not into stats at all. He's playing his role really well. I think in the past game, a lot of people are -- in the first four games, a lot of quick game. There's not a lot of -- there's not a ton of five-step, seven-step drop, lots of timing passes, I mean, we're getting pressure. Our pass break-ups and our quarterback pressures are up, right, from what we thought we'd possibly have. Now, our sacks are not but people are getting rid of the ball a lot quicker and they know that. We're getting a lot of pressure. They know we're going to blitz a lot, but Steven is providing, doing his role really well, and, you know, he's going to burn and continue to do things to get him free but he's doing a really nice job. He's just got to keep getting better, and that's the one thing -- same type of guy, three head coaches in three years, different systems, different coaches, different -- you know, different philosophies, it's hard to adapt, especially for a senior.
Q. Coach, why do you have the geese decoys in here, is that something --
COACH FLECK: Those are hunting season. We're in Minnesota, right? I don't know if it's geese -- I'm kidding, geese season or not. I'm not a big hunter, I think it's buck season or deer season now.
Q. It's goose season.
COACH FLECK: It is goose season? All right, Mike, thanks a lot. I shot a pigeon one time in my life off a barn and I got in trouble for it and I never shot anything else again. So -- but the geese are this. Geese fly in a V and we're talking about developing leadership. There is a lot of people here that don't have experience that are expected to lead and they've never done that, let alone lead a Division I football program in the Big 10. So the goose at the front of the V, that's the one that has to work the hardest, you know. The geese to the sides are the ones that draft them. The loudest geese are the ones in the back because they're encouraging everybody else to continue to fly. If one goose happens to leave the flock, there is another goose that leaves with them. There's no man or no goose left behind, and so we talk about we're going to take turns at the front leading this football team. And so that's what the geese are for. They're around everywhere. Sometimes they're the only person I get -- not person, sometimes they're the only thing I get to talk to so there are some in my office, too.
Q. P.J., how much emphasis have you and the staff put on avoiding targeting penalties?
COACH FLECK: The one thing I'll say is this, I said that -- I think I opened up the statement with this, I think we're -- I think we're a very disciplined football team. We're playing disciplined football, we're just not making enough plays yet and that's how I can measure coaches, players, program, movement, going in the right direction, culture being set, identity, all those things. So I'm very proud of how disciplined we're playing. We just got to play better but, you know, in terms of the penalties, that's how I can be able to tell is it a really disciplined team or is it not a disciplined team. So with our penalties down -- you know, I never want to be the most penalized team and I don't want to be the team that's the least penalized. You want to be somewhere right in the middle but, again, it's not a stat that necessarily goes to winning and losing but I think it shows the progression of a culture, that guys are really figuring it out, that if I do do that, right? There were three instances we showed them this morning of people doing things after the game, after a win, beating a big team for the first time ever and doing something to the crowd. There's another instance of at a bottom of a pile somebody sticking their fingers in somebody's eyes and eye-gouging somebody, right? There's other instances -- and we show our players that to make sure they understand how bad that could hurt a football team, right, and I think that's really important, to be able to make sure they understand how that can affect a football team moving forward, so it's my job to be able to continue to show that because that's the identity of a football program and that falls on me, as well. So, again, we're not where we're going to be. We are where we are. We're zero and zero in the Purdue week and we have a lot to get better at and we have a lot of people that have to continue to grow and play that maybe haven't but, like I said, there are no excuses. This is 100% on me and that loss is 100% on me but we've moved on, and zero and zero in the Purdue season and looking forward to playing well.
Q. Would you talk a bit about your tight ends, how they're proceeding, how they're progressing, and how the last game was for them?
COACH FLECK: Yeah, we got to continue to get them involved. I thought Lingen had his best game. Maybe -- I haven't been here to talk about his career or not, what he's done in his career, but I thought he played like he should be playing. Did well in the passing game, did well in the running game. We have to continue to move the pocket for Conor as we continue to go, but do what our team does well. Just because you say, "move the pocket," there's 15 ways of moving the pocket. We have to do the three things that we're really good at moving the pocket with and part of that is what you saw in the game. We have to continue to evolve for that and continue to build on that, and we will. But I'm really proud of the tight ends, the way they played. There's a lot of positive to take from the game. There's always a lot of positive to take from the game, and we have to continue to make those even stronger, but then the weaknesses that we showed, we've got to fix.
