Trent Dilfer Meets with Media Ahead of Arkansas Game
By Steve Irvine
BIRMINGHAM, ALABAMA - September 9, 2024
Trent Dilfer met with the media on Monday to talk about what happened in a disappointing loss at Louisiana-Monroe and look ahead to this Saturday’s visit to Arkansas. UAB is not only looking to rebound from the loss but also trying to win on the road for the first time under Dilfer.
Opening statement: Obviously, of the many losses we've absorbed in my tenure, that was probably the most painful for lots of reasons. We played extremely poorly offensively, the worst we've played since I've been here. Defensively, they fought really hard. They played really well at times. And the special teams is something that we were really good at week one, we made some poor decisions on special teams. But, saying all that, this group has been fantastic to coach. The response to tough situations this year has been everything a coach could ask for. Yesterday, although painful, was the response by the coaches and players was what I thought was appropriate for moving on. So, you know, we flushed it. It's time to move on. And we have a great challenge ahead of us at Arkansas. We know the battle ahead and we're prepared to fight it.
On what it takes to flush a loss like that: Well, I think, I got asked, I had a lot of phone calls, people calling reaching out, as well as talking to people in the building. And I've been asked, like, ‘Where does this fit in your losses?’ I'm like, I mean, it's up there. It's one of the more painful ones. But I also look back at a lot of the most painful setbacks of my football career. And if handled the right way, there's good things that come out of the other end, I think, where they snowball is if you handle them in the wrong manner. My message to the team, message to the coaches, message to myself was let's not forget what matters most in life and that's relationships. Don't let something bad that happens to you affect the relationships in your life. And the relationships that are important right now are the relationships in this building. And we can't, we just won't, we won't be in a position where we're going to start jeopardizing the relationships that we work so hard on because of a tremendous setback like that, that just doesn't fit with how we're wired.
On the play of the UAB offensive line: Well, and this is, you know, this is a myth buster, I've dealt with this forever. Anytime you're struggling pass protection, people want to say it's the offensive line. They have their culpability, but so does Jacob (Zeno) and so did our backs and so do our receivers. Pass protection is an 11-person process. And when one of those pieces doesn't do their job, it exasperates what it looks like is only the offensive line's job. So did we get beat on some stunts? Yeah. Did we get beat on some bull rushes? Yeah. But we also didn't handle the pocket very well when there was a pocket. We also weren't fast by the receivers on some quick-look throws that could have gotten the ball out. Our running backs were not sound in protection. They're part of, a lot of our protection schemes are six-man protection schemes. So, it's five offensive linemen and a back or a tight end. And it takes the sixth guy to do his job. There were many plays with offensive line, they did their job. They did their five-man job, and the sixth person did not. We have five -man protection schemes where the wide receiver and the quarterback are responsible for the sixth guy. And the sixth guy got us, wasn't the five guys. So I would hope that when we're criticized, which we deserve all the criticism in the world, but let's be fair with the criticism, we all stunk. Trent stunk, Mort (Alex Mortensen) stunk, he backs stunk, the quarterback stunk and the offensive line stunk. So we are all equally culpable in that disaster offensively. And I think that is what's cool about this group, is that I didn't have to tell them that. That was obvious yesterday as we watched the film as, OK, we know what happened. We were all bad. So let's not say one group was worse than the other. Because now you start getting, that starts damaging relationships, because these kids aren't dumb. they know I did my job there, why am I getting criticized? And when it's like, we all own this, we all gotta sit in this, then you can move forward when you know you're all able to culpable.
On keeping the offense confident: Yeah, I think that's the challenge, it's a great question. It's exactly what my challenge is. Is how do you not let a massive setback derail a positive trajectory? And I think in life, our players do a really cool exercises some are called mountains and valleys. So we went through our lives, as a building, and talked about the mountaintop experiences we've had and the valley experiences we've had. And it was hard for some because some don't want to own the valleys because it's too painful, right? It's too painful. All of us have the scars in our lives from the valleys that we go through. And what we've learned is that by going through, by talking about those valleys, by being supported through those valleys, you end up, you have a better opportunity of not repeating those valleys. The reason I tell you that is football is the same way. You have mountains and valleys. You have mountains and valleys on each side of the wall. And offensively, I would even call week one a valley. You know, we have not played well offensively in two games. So we're in a valley, but that doesn't mean there's not a mountain coming. And we, through the offseason, we were trending for a lot of mountains. So let's not forget that we're going to be a mountain offense. That's how to see how quickly we can get to the top while we're in the valley. And I know we're going to play well offensively. I don't know when, right. But I know we're going to. And I trust these players and I trust our coaches. And there are some things that are alarming in our time here that we have to go work with fixing, but at least we're aware of them and we're not. Here's the easiest way of saying it. We're not turning a blind eye to our flaws. We're recognizing our flaws and we're going to work with fixing them.
On seeing offensive flaws coming in: I saw some ‘Danger Rangers’ is what I call them. Some things that if we didn't continue to work on that could get us in trouble. We still worked on them, maybe not with the urgency. You know, I think what happens when you're successful, when you've had some success, and I wouldn't call our success offensively like monumental. But we've been, for the most part, very successful offensively. That sense of urgency to fix your flaws isn't always there until they're fully exposed. I thought they were fully exposed Saturday night. Hopefully that will create more sense of urgency. I would hope it doesn't take something like that again moving forward. But in my experience in football, that's usually what it takes unfortunately. So, yeah, there are some things that we had gotten away with, I would say. We didn't get away with them Saturday night. I give (ULM defensive coordinator) Earnest Hill a tremendous amount of credit. He did some things that he knew. I told you guys this last week they know, right, they just knew They did. And they did exactly what we felt were the things that could get us in trouble.
On defense after two weeks: I think we're much improved. I'm going to spin this a little bit and then I'll get back to your question. I think every turnover in football has a story to it. I think every big play has a story to it. They're all not the same. Yards and points defensively have stories to it as well. And I thought the story the other night was the defense fought really hard for the most part, played very hard, much more sound, would put in some terrible situations, you know, back to the wall situations. Now, is it their their job to hold them to the field goals and not let them score touchdowns? Yes. And they did that for the most part. But when they don't, everybody goes, ‘Oh gosh, look at the score, look at (other things).’ I’m like, well, you know, they're, they've got their backs put against the wall multiple times. And at some point, when you're still growing as a defense, it's going to be very difficult to overcome those. This isn't the 2000 Baltimore Ravens. Contextually, I thought they played pretty darn well, built off their first week's performance and continue to get better.
On travel schedule: You know, I've tried everything at this point. I thought Cole (Peterson) and his team did a tremendous job. I thought we traveled better than we've ever traveled. The kids were locked in. I had zero reservations going into that game on how we traveled. But you know, I was reading something from Tony Dungy. I was texting Tony this morning about what I read and he talks about, you know, one thing I remember about him was just consistency. Even when it's going bad, stay consistent to the things you know are right. I know we traveled right, so I'm going to stay consistent to the way we traveled this week. I know it's the right way to travel. I'm not going to play the yo-yo game with this group. Last year I was fine playing the yo-yo game because I didn't think they responded to anything very well. So I was kind of looking for whatever processes we felt were best. This one, I really believe my heart was best The kids were very fantastic on a very difficult travel trip. So I don't think it had to do anything for the travel. So we're going to stay pretty consistent with that.
On Arkansas quarterback Taylen Green: Yeah, a tremendous player, tremendous athlete. It was the COVID year in Elite 11 (when Green was a high school senior). We only got to see him from a virtual standpoint. But as the Elite 11 staff, we thought the world of him as a person, as a player. He was successful at Boise. Totally understandable why he's with Bobby (Petrino). He's got everything. I didn't watch a lot of Sunday football, but I know the guys playing on Sunday. And he looks like one of them. He can throw it with the best of them. He can read defenses. He's athletic. He's got physical confidence because of his skill set. He's poised. He's got everything. I mean, we're going to play an SEC team that's loaded with one of the greatest offensive minds that's ever coached football at any level with a very talented quarterback. So you put all that together and the challenge is immense and the quarterback makes it that much more immense.
On UAB injuries: We'll find out more late in the week. It's still early in the week. From an injury and a health standpoint, there's still a lot of uncertainty. I think there's some players that have not played that are close to being ready to play. I don't want to say that on a Monday morning because I don't know yet. I know we're hopeful, I'd say that's the best way. We're hopeful, some guys that guy banged up Saturday night can recover quickly.
On Bobby Petrino: Puppet master. He's consistently been a public master, offensively, for years. One, he gets the right pieces. He knows what his offense needs from a skill set standpoint. He gets them. Why wouldn't you go play for Bobby. He's got a track record of of putting up massive numbers and getting guys to the NFL. It's hard not to go play for him, if you're a skill player. Then, once you get there, he demands so much of your skillset, including your mind, because he wants to be the puppet master. He is the puppet. He'll sit there and he knows the weakness of every defense. And he's gonna call play because he's got an arsenal to call, he's gonna call a play that attacks your weakness. He does a lot like what we would like to do. We haven't been able to do it yet, but he makes you play eating your soup left-handed. He's constantly putting you in positional weakness where you're uncomfortable. And if you're trying to play one high defense, he's got every one high beater. If you're trying to play a certain front, he's got every front beater. If you're trying to take away surface players, he’ll add a surface player. If you're trying to play a two-high shell, he's gonna attack you every which way. He's got an answer for everything you got. So he's Mike Martz-ish in my list of innovative, creative, aggressive, attacking play callers that I've ever seen. I don't think it's an exaggeration to say he's on the Mount Rushmore of college offensive coaches.
On difficulties of winning on the road: I don't know if I can answer that question because it's different. I'm only 14 games into this as a college coach. And the NFL it has a lot to do with crowd noise, has a lot to do with not being able to do the things you want to do because of communication. I think a lot of times you go on the road too, and you try to control things you can't control. You get caught with things you can't control. I think that disarms you. I think in high school, you're dealing with young people and just the uncomfortableness of not being at home, the lack of emotion, you know, sometimes the emotion is different at home than on the road. This is still a passion, emotion-driven game. But in college, you know, I'm still trying to figure that out. That's why I've been a failure, to this point, to be quite honest with you. I obviously have not figured it out. So, I think, you know, as I'm looking, and I'm still in process. Like, this is a Monday, I'm still trying to figure out a lot of the tactics for approaching this week on the road. But I think we gotta get to a point where, coaches as well, we only focus on the things that we have control over. I think it really fits into that. Like, when you go on the road and you get caught up in things you can't control, then it's taking you away from your ability to be the best and things you can control. If we can just get to a place where we are completely committed to both mentally and physically being invested into those things that we have control over, I think we want better results on the road. But listen, it's the elephant in the room, man. It's the thing I don't sleep about. I'm trying everything I can, and at this point I haven't been able to find the secret sauce, but I won't rest until I do.
On both teams coming off tough losses: I think all this is important, but I don't know if it's paramount. I think this is one of the things that I want our building to understand, is that all what you just ask is, it's an important category. Are they going to have a more intense week of practice? Probably. Is their messaging going to be, we got to get back on track? Probably. Are they going to find things that they need to address to get better at? Most likely. Are they going to feed off their crowd because they're at home coming off a loss on the road? Most likely. At the end of the day, does that matter more than your ability to go execute? Does that matter more than your ability to find something inside of you that's going to allow you to think clearly in the midst of chaos? I don't think it does. I think you have to, again, you have to recognize the challenges. You have to recognize the things that they are going to need to bounce back from and be motivated to bounce back from. But it can’t take away from your ability to maximize this week. It's amazing how much young people can change. So the challenge for us is our young people, and our old people too, me, need to change better in one week. And we gotta make sure that we're using this time to become a better football team and not worry about what's going on their end. I think that's the biggest thing I've recognized in college football is so much talk is about them, whoever them is, and it distracts you from us. In my football life, the best iterations of teams are the ones that are completely invested in us. Like, let's control us, we can't control them. Let's become a better us, and let's see where that takes place.