Pocatello, Idaho – Idaho State Football held its weekly football press conference with Defensive Coordinator
Grant Duff and Head Coach
Cody Hawkins fielding questions on the Bengals' upcoming road trip to Ogden to take on Weber State.
Grant Duff - Defensive Coordinator
On the defense's mindset heading into rivalry week
"I think the defense is excited. Obviously it's a rivalry-type game, one that means a lot to the community and a lot to the players, so the preparation's gonna be there. The guys know what's at stake, and a Big Sky win helps us take one more step towards our goals. They're excited, ready to play. You just wish you'd get to Saturday faster."
On returning to Ogden for the first time as a Bengal
"You have a lot of good memories. We did a lot of cool things, but I'm a big believer in people, and people make things special. None of the people that were special in my time down there are still there. So it's just faded memories of a day gone by."
On stopping the run being the defense's Achilles heel
"We know that right now one of our Achilles heels is stopping the run. We're not doing it consistently enough. In each of those games we gave up a bunch of easy yards on stupid stuff. Against Southern Utah, we're kicking the crap out of them in the run game, and then boom, you let a 75-yarder cruise in. We had one young man that just didn't play his technique correctly, and in 11-on-11 football, that's what happens when you mess that up."
On holding Cal Poly's explosive offense to 118 rushing yards
"We knew that running back was good — he was averaging a whole bunch of yards coming in, very explosive. If they ran all over us and took a bunch of time, it was gonna be bad. So it was just great focus by the players. Schematically, I don't know that we did anything radically different than our normal process. We had a couple wrinkles for Cal Poly, but they fit our personality. Great execution by the players, and we didn't have that one bonehead 'why did we do that?' type of play."
On facing a first-year head coach he's never seen
"You don't know him yet. It's definitely a possibility to be a little unorthodox — you'd like to get a feel for the coordinator and the play caller and what they've done in traditional situations, and you just won't have that information on hand. But at the end of the day, coaches don't win games, they only lose them. Players win games. Sometimes we coaches can screw things up by overthinking it. This is what they do best, this is who does it best, and we gotta stop those two things."
On what makes Weber State's offense so explosive
"They do a multiplicity of things, which is always good. They're throwing the ball successfully and they're running the ball very successfully — they're the second-leading rushing offense in the Big Sky, so you can't sleep on that. If you load the box, they're gonna try to sling it around and take advantage of one-on-one matchups. If you play a light box, they're gonna run it right down your throat. They understand who they are and who they are not, and they keep themselves out of bad situations."
On the keys to slowing Weber State down
"We gotta play disciplined football. One thing they have shown is a tendency to turn the ball over a little bit — you get turnovers, you win games. That's modern college football. We can't let them keep running it down our throat and chewing a bunch of clock, so we'll have to be creative in how we stop the run. It's a numbers game: how do we get plus-one in the run game without just sitting there and exploiting our coverage the entire time? We've gotta be multiple to their multiple a little bit."
Cody Hawkins
On the team's week of preparation and the Weber State tradition
"I think our guys have responded well. They're obviously excited about the matchup, and we've tried to emphasize how important the tradition against Weber State has been. We've got a couple of former Wildcats on the team, with the Childs boys and Coach Duff being here. We know it's gonna be tough — Weber's been playing really well, and it's been awesome what Coach Kjar has done down there. They're playing physical and kind of getting back to that old Weber State style of defense."
On jumpstarting the offense after slow starts
"We just have to find a way to execute. It's doing stuff that our guys are comfortable with, maybe eliminating some of the normal game plan wrinkles. We gotta run the ball, and we can't have as many mistargeted plays early in the game. I get that people are gonna play us different, but it's not stuff we don't prepare for. I don't think it's been a confidence thing, it's been an execution thing. We gotta do a better job running against light boxes early in the game, because that always helps us create better matchups on the outside."
On where the team stands at 4-2 after two straight losses
"If you would've told us we'd be 4-2 at this point, we'd be like, 'All right, sweet, we'll take it,' because we know the Big Sky's tough. To me, the record is what it is — the question is where are we right now as a team and are we getting better? What I've seen from our guys is they've been punched in the mouth a little bit, maybe a dose of reality, but it's not stuff we as a staff are unfamiliar with. They feel the urgency, but I don't think it's led to any tenseness. It's just dudes who are competitive and ready to roll."
On the defense's recent play
"Our defense has played awesome — they played lights out. Would've liked to be a little bit better situationally last game, but that's just because you're nitpicking, trying to find stuff to improve on. In the Big Sky, if you hold somebody to 25 points, it means you win the game."
On preparing for a first-year Weber State head coach
"At this point you're six games in, and a lot of times you don't do a 12-game breakdown on someone — I'm gonna look at the last four games. So even though he's new, I wouldn't say there's a ton of unknowns. They're gonna be multiple on offense, spread it out and throw it really well. On defense, they're gonna get after you and play a lot of man coverage and variable fronts. And on special teams, they've blocked a ton of kicks. It's pretty evident we know what we're gonna get out of that team, both schematically and in how talented they are and how hard they're gonna play."
On balancing rivalry emotion with execution
"I talk a lot about the rivalry because I want the guys to understand it, but I don't go in there and say, 'This is a different week.' If you care about this rivalry, you don't pour yourself into hating everything in purple. It's saying, 'Hey guys, we gotta be better — we need to run the freaking ball, we gotta make sure our kick location and coverage is right, and when you have open dudes, you gotta hit them.' The emphasis on the rivalry should come in the intensity of your preparation, not really disliking someone."
On the history of the Train Bell
"I was able to pull up in our team meeting pictures from the '60s of people playing with this — black and white photos. This is a really important game for a lot of people in this community. Would love to see us retain that Train Bell because it looks really good in the office, and I know we call it the Grant Duff Trophy because he's had it every year for the past 10 years. We gotta do everything we can to keep it here, but it doesn't start from hating the Wildcats. It starts from loving our preparation."
On Mason Lindberg's response after a five-for-five performance
"Having a good process doesn't mean you're gonna win every time. It just gives you the best chance to win. That's why I talk about chasing your best — it's not because his approach leads to making the next kick all the time, it means over time you're gonna be the best version of yourself. All the special teams guys have done a really good job honing in on the mental component. If you create a good process, you kind of have to trust it a little bit. It doesn't mean it's infallible, but we're confident it's gonna work, and it has worked for Mason."
On special teams adjustments after the highs and lows
"Kicking touchbacks is unacceptable, and we were lucky we got some deep pins by Rucker. He went fence punt and did a really good job — proud of him, because we'd had two of those and said, 'Hey, that cannot happen.' We emphasized that Rucker is our fence punt guy and he specialized in that, and we saw the fruits of it. On the other hand, the call at the end was clearly not the right call and it was poorly executed. I made bad calls last week, put us in a bad situation and we didn't execute — that's a double whammy. All you can do is learn from it."
