Trent Dilfer meets with media ahead of tulane game
By Steve Irvine
BIRMINGHAM, ALABAMA - September 30, 2024
Trent Dilfer met with the media on Monday in his weekly Coffee with Coach press conference. He talked about Saturday’s loss to Navy and looked ahead to this week’s game against Tulane.
Opening statement: Disappointed, obviously, but excited about our future. The one thing that's not going to happen under my leadership is the sky's going to be gray and everything sucks in life because we lose the football game. I do believe we're making big strides. I thought the response from our players yesterday, watching film getting out to practice was phenomenal. The side conversations I had with them, we talked about how there's a journey to becoming a champion and you don't always get what you want right away. I think that's a life lesson too. Too many people stop in life because they've worked hard for something but didn't get what they thought. Think everybody trying to lose weight. The first month, six weeks, two months, you're killing yourself and you're not losing anything. And then all of a sudden, you stick with it, good things happen. I think winning (and) building champions is the same thing. We're not getting the results we want, but we're seeing the progress in the midst of the storm. And for that, I'm super excited about it. We have cool things going on in the building. We have baptisms tonight. Coaches and players being baptized. We have guys gathering outside of football to do service projects. We have guys coming and watching extra film and getting extra workouts. We're doing the things the champions do. We're just not getting the results on the field yet. And I'm not gonna be the one that sits up here every week and pouts and sulks and all these things I've seen coaches do for years. Instead, I'm gonna celebrate the people in our building and there's nobody else I'd rather be with. Like, I would take this group. Would not trade this group for anybody.
On offensive struggles: I think we should be criticized harshly for all the things. I’m not going to be defensive about anything. Offensively we've not met expectations in any area I talked to the coaches yesterday and I was like, hey, you know like, have you ever met a kid that woke up in the morning game day and said, you know what today, I'm gonna choose not to block that guy. Or you know what, I'm gonna get tackled by that guy. I'm gonna purposely not have my eyes in the right place, I'm gonna miss an open receiver or I'm gonna drop a ball. I've never been around a player that wants to not do his best. So we have to look ourselves as coaches every single week and keep looking for ways to put our players in more advantageous situations and to help them be the best they can be. I'm an offensive guy so like I blame me. This isn't Mort’s (Alex Mortensen) fault, this isn't Nick (Coleman’s) fault, this isn't Matt (McCants’) fault. This is my fault and I don't want these kids to feel as if ‘Man, we should be so much better on offense and we're not. Is that a me thing?’ It's a you thing if you've done something repeatedly in practice then game day you don't do it. But we gotta do a better job of making sure they're doing the things in practice and it carries over to the game. I need to do that. I'll just say I. I need to do a better job offensively of making sure we're doing the things that explosive offenses do on a daily basis. That's what my mind's been. My mind, since after the game until this moment and probably the rest of this day until we get to practice tomorrow's is on what can I do better? I think so often it's ‘He needs to do this, he needs to do that. Oh gosh, I thought that was going to happen.’ At the end of the day, it's a me thing. I gotta be better.
On welcoming hard days: Absolutely, thank you for teeing me up on my soapbox. Hard things equal great things if you do the hard things well. It's a math equation. I challenged a lot of hard things in life, football especially. I think I said it after the game, should have named the game hard instead of football. It's just hard, it's hard when you win, it's just, it's hard. But life's hard and you know when you do things well in the midst of hard, great things are on the other end. You don't know when, there's no guarantee you when, but they're coming. The problem is, and I've done this in my life so many times, when something is so hard, you just feel beaten and broken and I can't and exhausted so you stop doing the well That delays the great thing from coming and then we'll pick ourselves up, we'll dust ourselves off and we'll try to do it again. But you're just delaying the great things that are coming. When you say ‘Great, like it's hard, awesome, let's go, let's get after it.’ Now you're speeding up the great things coming, and I don't know the timeline. I'm waiting on the timing. I don't know the timeline, but I'm trying to get a group of people that just wake up every morning and want to chew glass for breakfast. It's hard. Let's go. We're getting there. I'm telling you, we're getting there.
I thought yesterday was going to be brutal. I thought today was going to be brutal. And guys, guys have a pep in their step. They get it. They know that part of the greatness of football is what we're in right now, which is the suck, which is the hard. I said this before, I’m excited about the people I hired and the people who we recruited because they're not sulking about not getting what they want right away. They know they got to keep working hard and what they want will come.
On his postgame press conference statement of ‘This is not freaking Alabama’: Were you there? (Reporter: I was not there.) There's my answer. (Reporter: Well, I'm here today.) There were, there were two people there. Okay. And my grandson wanted to come up and I heard like a little stirring. I said, there's two people here, this isn't freaking Alabama's press conference. My grandson could come up. (Reporter: But are you aware of this program’s history) I am very aware of this program’s history.
On matching up against Tulane’s run defense: They do everything well. They throw the ball well, they run the ball well. Man, they're explosive. It's like I said, last week, every challenge is a great challenge. When you're not playing very good football, it exasperates those challenges. You know, cause you're like, Oh gosh, this has been a problem for us, we got to stop this. Oh, that's a challenge too. You kind of feel like you're going backwards sometimes. I think the key is identifying what makes them do what they do so well and try to, at least, take away the things that have been most successful for them. If they if they beat you, if they’re successful, they find another way to do it in the way they’ve been doing that.
On Tulane redshirt freshman quarterback Darian Mensah: We saw him warming up last year and said man, that’s a talented kid. I did not (have previous knowledge of him). He’s from San Luis Obispo, that’s near where I grew up and played - a couple hours. Diamond in the rough. I'm impressed with this journey. I'm impressed how he won the job, you know, the kid they brought in from Oregon (Ty Thompson) is super talented, a great kid. I coached him in the Elite 11 opening. I thought we all were like ‘Tulane just got a great one. Then the one they already had (Mensah) was so good in practice and has the qualities both on off the field. He was just too good not to play. I appreciate his competitive traits as much as his physical traits. But, yeah, he can he can get it to all areas of the field, he's tough, he's athletic he sees it well. He's a really impressive player.
On Jacob Zeno: I think Jacob has played solid football. I think he'd be the first to tell you, as all of us, I don’t want to single out him. He’d be the first to tell you that he probably hasn't played to the standard. I haven’t coached to my standard. It's an ongoing thing. He is battling a little bit of a shoulder, too. I don't want to say that's too much but he's battling an injury. So, you know, we'll see how that progresses and continue to give him the answers to the test so he can play his best.
On taking deep shots in the passing game without Tejhaun Palmer: I mean, listen you lose a sixth round draft pick, it obviously makes and impact, right. I think Tejhaun really developed as the season went on and if you look at our passing game last year it evolved as well. I do feel like our receivers are getting better, they're getting more confident. I think Strap (Iverson Hooks), getting healthy has really helped. You can see his explosive qualities in the game. He played really good football on Saturday. He's played really well. He played really well against Arkansas too. The ball didn't find him, but he played very well against Arkansas. We have some younger players that continue to get better in practice, that we see as being people that can create some explosive plays for us. Yeah, listen, we know our faults. And one of our faults is that we have not been as explosive offensively as we'd like to be.
On gauging players’ emotions during tough times: Actions over words. You know, it's been just a huge thing I've learned over my course of football, is we can get really easily fooled by words. You know, words are pretty empty, whether they're positive or negative. What you really test a team's character by is how it responds with its actions. Same thing with coaches, same thing with everybody. Like, show me, don't tell me. It starts with the leaders, right. You know, as leaders, we have to show up and do the things that we said we were gonna do. Then as players, they learn that. They're like, okay, the people that I look to lead me, are actually doing it. Maybe I should try doing this, I instead of just saying in it.
I'll give you an example. Yesterday in the weight room, Sundays aren't like heavy metal, getting after it yelling and screaming. But they're pretty good workouts, man. Like, you're throwing some weight around and your body hurts. I cruise down there just to kind of see the temperament. And I can understand if it was kind of somber and okay, I gotta go through the motions. I'm watching groups like get fired up and try to put more weight on bars than they did last week and push themselves to the limits and focus on that day, not what happened the day before, not what's gonna happen today, but focus on that day. I saw guys that were banged up, we're banged up that game. We were pretty healthy going in, but you know, we got beat up a little bit. Guys that are beat up and bruised, dealing with an ankle or a knee or a shoulder or a wrist or a hand, toes. They're in there and they're getting after it. They're lifting with boots on, and finding supplemental lifts that they can do because one part of their body will let them do another lift. Then we go out to a practice. Guys are bought in, and guys that played in the game are working on flexibility and speed and some route running. You're like, ‘Okay, this is not just going through the motions. They're actually trying to get back.’ It's not everybody. Definitely, I think there's some guys that are trying to decide if they wanna go to this lonely island with us or not. But we got enough that are on the island and that's why I'm excited.”
On Tulane coach Jon Sumrall: Fantastic coach. I've gotten to know him a little bit. I really enjoyed getting to know him through our meetings. I actually called him last week on a random thing that I needed advice on. He was awesome. We actually studied Troy this offseason for other reasons. And we're extremely impressed with not just their schemes, but just the temperament of their players, the organization, the detail aspect of it. He definitely knows how to do this thing. I think one of the things you're always trying to do is you're trying to beat your opponent but you’re also trying to learn. I've been watching, studying him at Troy, and now getting ready to study him at Tulane I think there’s things we can learn from him and how he runs his program as well.
On Trey Bedosky: He's been such a pro. He has. He’s dealt with different things. This year especially, he's dealt with some stuff. He really hasn't flinched. He's been a guy that shows up every day. When he couldn't practice, when he was coming off the injury, he earned so much respect because he approached every day as if he was getting ready to play a game, even though he knew he was in a rehab situation. He wasn't gonna go through spring ball. So he didn't have the carrot dangling out there, something cool is about to happen that I'm working towards. He just worked. He has really good leadership qualities. He was a coach on the field when he wasn't playing, really helping our new guys out and our younger guys out. We've sat and talked. We came up with a plan for his practice routines that would help him maintain his weight and help him stay fresher. I think he appreciated that I let him kind of come up with it. You know it was not a hey you're gonna do this is. It’s like hey what's best for you? Let's find the best solution for the things you're struggling with. We really feel like we found the best solution for that. And, then he played pretty darn well Saturday. He jumped into a tough situation (when DJ Jones was hurt) and graded out pretty darn well. We have confidence in him. We don't know what the status of DJ is going to be yet, but we feel confident if Trey gets the start.