Watch Conor Riley’s Press Conference | Watch Joe Klanderman’s Press Conference | Listen on Wildcats Uncut | Media Download
MANHATTAN, Kan. – Kansas State offensive coordinator Conor Riley and defensive coordinator Joe Klanderman met with members of the media on Thursday at the Vanier Family Football Complex prior to the Wildcats’ Saturday-night contest at BYU. Links to video and audio of both press conferences are above, and a transcript of select quotes are below.
CONOR RILEY, OFFENSIVE COORDINATOR
On the tight end usage in the red zone…
“Anytime that you’re in the red zone and you have the ability to do some of the things off play action, certainly you’re going to utilize some of the tight ends in the red zone. It just kind of worked out this past week and previous weeks that they’ve been the ones getting the ball. So, it’s utilizing the abilities of everybody on our football team that’s kind of creating those opportunities for the tight ends.”
On what BYU does well defensively…
“Number one, I think they’re extremely physical, and they’re extremely well coached. You look at the amount of guys that they rotate throughout their defense. They play fast. I’m not going to quote the head coach from Wyoming of what he said about them, but you can see how big and how physical they are, how well they get off blocks. They don’t misfit things. They’re very sound in coverage in the back end. I think some of the things that they do in their third-down package, from pressures and from simulated pressures, they certainly can cause you some issues. Then, they rotate guys, and good on them. You see it on film that they have about 20 guys who have pretty significant reps throughout their entire defense. With the exception of maybe one guy, No. 0, they’re going to rotate the guys through. What I’ve seen is they want to keep No. 92 on the field, but they also want him fresh because he’s an extremely good, disruptive football player.”
On the challenges of BYU’s blitz packages…
“The one thing that they do a good job of is they do a good job of disguising where that pressure is coming from. There’s some teams that you can look at and you can get some really good tells on, ‘Hey, the pressure’s going to be coming here. The pressure is going to be coming here.’ We look at all those things throughout the week, and as soon as you feel like you’ve got a pretty good idea of what their tell might be, then there’s two other clips that say, ‘No, that’s not it.’ So credit them and their defensive game planners for how they mix it up, and then ultimately what they do in the back end with a lot of their pressures as well. The multitude of having both zone and man answers, and the multitude of doing some things where they’re playing middle of field open, middle field closed, with some of those blitz patterns that it’s going to create a big issue.
On the development of Avery Johnson’s pre-snap reads…
“Growing. Continuing to grow. I think he’d be the first to admit that he’s still a 19-year old kid, but he is seeing things so much better and progressing through things so much better. He’s seeing, to that same point, some things that he has to do with protections. Then knowing if protections aren’t turned a particular way, where that free hitter is coming from. He’s getting such a better, better feel for it. What it does is it comes down to, in my estimation, getting those repetitions in what I like to call an uncontrolled environment. An uncontrolled environment is you’re not wearing a green practice jersey. You can get hit. You don’t have a script. You don’t know exactly, maybe, what that defense is running that particular. So, with each rep that he is getting, I see him continue to grow and continue to improve throughout the week. I still will admit on it, too – and he would say the same thing – that there’s still a lot of growth out there, and that’s exciting.
On simulating crowd noise in practice…
“We did a real good job on Tuesday. Yesterday there was a little bit of some breakdowns. We’re really trying to crank it up on those guys to control, or to at least get a feel for what that noise is going to be. You know as well as I do, we played in some loud environments over the course of the year, and there’s really no way that you can truly simulate it, and we have some fresh faces out there. So, we know that there may be a mistake. We talked this morning as an offensive staff, when that mistake is made, we can’t allow it to compound. Coach (Brian) Anderson went and found some clips, I believe it was 2022 when BYU was playing Arizona State in a night game, same atmosphere. I believe Arizona State may have even been ranked at that particular time – don’t quote me on that – but Arizona State had six or eight procedure calls, and they had, I think, three or four of them in a row. So, it’s okay if a mistake does happen, and we’re doing everything in our power to make sure it doesn’t, but we still have 11 humans in there. Just making sure that we’re able to move on, we’re able to learn from it and move past it.”
JOE KLANDERMAN, DEFENSIVE COORDINATOR
On BYU’s usage of the pistol formation…
“Similar to what we talked about last week with Arizona running stuff under center. They don’t give you a lot of pre snap tells. There’s probably some things that they can do out of pistol that can give you problems, and there’s probably a few ways that pistol might limit some of the things that they do. So, it’s just another layer of things that people have to read. So, the more multiplicity you get with backfield sets, with formations of motions and stuff, the more complicated defense gets. So, that’s just one more thing guys have to think about.”
On Keenan Garber’s interception against Arizona…
“He was like a streak of lightning, wasn’t he? I saw – we call him an overlap player – I saw our player come from the backside, VJ (Payne), he was very close to that play, also. It would have been interesting, if Keenan would have made it, how close he would have been to it? I saw Keenan. He is a visual player, so he should have been able to see that whole thing unfold, but just to cover the ground that he does. That’s one of his best attributes is his speed and his ball skills when he gets to the point of attack. So, that was a big deal. Him making that play probably turned the tide of that game.”
On the defensive line against Arizona…
“It was awesome, and when you look at the stat sheet, you say we had one sack. I think that’s what it was. It wasn’t numbers that were going to blow you away, but I pull five or six examples where (Arizona quarterback Noah) Fifita in weeks past would have gotten out of the pocket on people that we did a great job of keeping them in. Brendan Mott, (Cody) Stufflebean – everybody, I shouldn’t single people out, but they did a phenomenal job of what we were talking about with rush lanes, because that was one of the ways that I thought Arizona could get some explosive plays was by getting that kid out of the pocket and getting into the scramble mode. We’ve had some issues with that this year already, and they just never let him out.”
On BYU quarterback Jake Retzlaff…
“Yeah, it’s the same philosophy. Blitzers are going to have to know where they’re going, rushers are going to have to understand where they belong in rushes, and guys in the back end are going to have to do a good job with their scramble rules. That’s something that we’ve worked on to try to improve. Sometimes scenarios come up that are difficult. We’ve run into a couple of those, but people have to understand what the issues are and work collectively to fix them.”
On the momentum the defense is playing with…
“It’s an interesting question, because I still don’t know what this group is. I can tell you this – we’ve got, and I’m not going to name names, but we’ve got a good core group of guys that I know are going to compete every week. I know they’re going to understand every detail. I have no fear about them in any one-on-one situations. They’re as good as there is in the country. Then we’ve got a group of guys – about a half a dozen of them – that are developing that we’re going to go as they go. If they’re really good, we’re going to be really good on defense, and if they make mistakes, we’re going to have some of what happened at Tulane. Some of it’s just youth, some of it’s inexperience. We’re working through all that stuff. The better that group is, the better we’re going to be as a unit.”
On turnovers over the last two games…
“To be able to finish on a ball like Keenan (Garber) did, that’s just an individual being a really good player. Being able to scoop and score like Jack (Fabris) did (at Tulane), that’s a guy that’s got guts to go make a play. We work on turnovers, and I’m sure everybody in the country works on turnovers. We do turnover circuits. We talk about it all the time. We talk about it daily. We’re hammering it. We’re trying to finish with strips on ball carriers, all that stuff. Sometimes they come and sometimes they don’t. I wish I could say we’re getting turnovers because I’m such a great coach, or we’ve got some secret recipe, but we don’t. Sometimes you could go two weeks and not get one, and sometimes you might get five in a game. Some of it has to do with your mentality, some of it’s luck at the draw, to be honest with you. Some of it’s how careless an opponent is with a ball. You combine those things in the right placeat the right time, then get them in bunches.”
On the play of defensive tackles Damian Ilalio and Uso Seumalo…
“Well, for starters, both of them have a tremendous ability and both of our smart football players. Damian is a really smart football player. He has a great grasp of not only what he’s doing, what’s happening around him. Uso has got just such tremendous physical ability. So, when you combine those guys as a one-two punch – and we don’t care who’s in there. I don’t even know most of the time who’s in there. We’re rolling, and we feel equally confident with both of them in there. I think people around them and feel the same way.”
