Transcript: Dan Mullen on Kentucky's Defense, the LSU Game Flexibility and the Return of Kyle Pitts
Head Coach Dan Mullen met with local media on Monday to recap the win over Vanderbilt, preview the upcoming Kentucky game and the challenge of the Wildcats defense. Mullen also updated the return status of tight end Kyle Pitts and discussed the different possible changes around the scheduled LSU game on December 12 in relation to the SEC Championship Game.
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Opening Statement:
“Injury stuff. Kyle Pitts will be back this week for us, which is great to get him back. We’re excited about that. James Houston, we also expect to have back this week. Anybody I’m missing? Nobody really new on the injury front from the game.
Trent Whittemore – how extensive is his injury?
“He’ll be a couple more weeks. It’s pretty much a rib injury, and the ribs and the lungs. That’s just when we get the X-rays, when the ribs heal. Should be another week or possibly two, for Trent Whittemore.”
Shouldn’t be hard to get your team’s attention for Kentucky because of the last two years….
“Absolutely. They’re a really good football team. I think they had a tough game last week, but that was out of the norm of how that game played out for them. Even if you look at it, in the second quarter, they were driving in for a field goal to make it 7-6 in the middle of the second quarter. Then they snap the ball – some weird things started happening for them, and the game got away from them. But you look at them, very good defensive team, stout up front. One of the best pass defenses in the conference. Then they complement playing ball control football. Their physicality and how they’re able to run to the ball. For us, always, you know you’re always going to get their best when they come play the Gators. We’ve got to continue to take strides moving forward, have a great week of practice and come out and perform at a high level again on Saturday.”
Disappointing you didn’t really take a step forward vs. Vandy?
“There’s things that you can look at that we did pretty well. I think as a whole, I don’t think we had our best week of practice. I don’t think we played our best game of the years. However, you have a 21-point victory, it’s hard to sit there and say everything’s gone wrong. You had a 21-point win on the road at an 11 a.m. kick. I go back to the 2006 game, we had to recover an onside kick. In our 2006 game up there at Vanderbilt, we had to recover an onside kick at the end of the game to win it. We had a pretty good football team that year. So when you look at those things, you look at some of the positives of, you know what, we really started slow but then we came out. We did all the things you needed to do to win a football game. We get a big score before half. We open the second half with a drive to create a big point swing. We get defensive stops when we needed to. We put a 99-yard drive together to clinch the game in the fourth quarter. All the things you need to do as a team to win, we were able to do. Now as a whole, is that our overall best performance? No. But you can still look at all the positive things that we did as a team you need to do throughout the course of a long season.”
What mean to get back Pitts?
“Well, you know, he’s another weapon that we’re adding into the game, the rotation. He’s got to go battle for some playing time right now; those other guys are playing pretty good. I think he’s such a playmaker, he’s such a leader and bring such great personality, as well, to the team I think just having him back on the field is going to be great for everybody. And then for us, and then I think the matchup problem that he causes defenses."
Worried at any time Pitts might opt out?
“I wasn’t. I mean, that’d probably be a question for him, to see where he was. He was always, you know, he was trying to play this past game. He wanted to go play this past weekend. I don’t think that was ever something that popped up. I think if you just look at his competitive spirit, who he is, he’s played with a competitive chip all year. He wants to continue to do that. I mean, you can ask him and the family, but everything we heard, we were in close contact with the family, and he thought he should have been cleared to play this past week. Obviously, wasn’t and even if it was on the edge we would have been extremely conservative putting him back out there on the field.”
This would rivalry week, FSU, miss it, SEC miss it?
“God, I don’t know, I’ll be honest with you, yes, it’s such a weird deal right now, it certainly doesn’t feel like Thanksgiving week because we’re in the middle of the season. I think that it just makes it have such a different feel for it all this week. Hey, that’s always such a big game, for our state such a big game. Usually when you see those games on this weekend, families are getting and celebrating the holidays. This year, you’re not really supposed to get with your family and you’re missing out on your big football games to watch. So it’s just such a different year, but I’m sure it’ll be, it’s going to be a big game here. So hopefully everybody eats a lot on Thanksgiving Day and wants to burn some calories off in the Swamp cheering some Gators.”
Handle Thanksgiving with the team?
“We’ve tweaked it. I’ve always been somebody that tries to give everybody the opportunity to get home and do more with their family. So we’ve bumped back our Thursday practice just a little bit and we’re having a team Thanksgiving dinner here. But we have a home game this weekend. Parents are going to be coming in to be with their sons, I’m sure they’re going to have some Thanksgiving plans and some of that stuff, as well. We just kind of remind our guys you got to continue to be safe and continue to be smart with how they’re doing things.”
Are ready for schedule changes? How adjustable and malleable are you guys?
“I’ll be perfectly honest, I think you’ve seen we’ve become very adjustable during the course of this year. You even look how we handled Saturday of making things that are kind of very out there adjustments that you normally wouldn’t see in a year with getting dressed at the hotel tell, the locker room, that type of stuff. Even post game, how we handled it, trying to space guys out. Sometimes when you go on the road, I’m sure when people come here, I’ve been in our visiting locker room here on one occasion as a coach and it’s not real big. Limit that stuff. We’ve been very adjusted. As far as I know right now, I know we are supposed to play Kentucky on Saturday. If not I gotta get back to work and get my gameplan changed a little bit but we were working on them all day yesterday, all day today. I think that’s just kind of how its going and how the year is playing out. I think the conference and all the coaches understand that. They’re trying to do the best that they can under the circumstance that we have and just asking us that we’re flexible to be able to do that as well and everybody’s gotta understand, I can’t speak for other people but we’ve had to do it. We had to be involved in changing our schedule around because of, for safety reasons. That’s 2020. I thought you were gonna ask, am I ready for 2020 to be over, which I’m enjoying the football season but the rest of 2020…”
Well could this week change with Kentucky/schedule?
“The league has told us that there are those options. Not just this week, a couple of weeks ago, hey we could, you could get a call and a curveball and get a call and say ‘we’re gonna switch who you’re playing.’”
Are you willing to not play a game? You don’t want to give up a game but could cancel LSU game if you have East wrapped up?
“Yeah. We’re ready to go play. We’ll just keep playing and our guys want to play, they want to go compete and do those things. To me, I don’t know. Like I said it is what it is. I know what our schedule is currently. The best you can do is, we’re going to prepare for Kentucky this week. We play on Saturday. Sunday morning I get in early on Sunday morning and kind of see. We’re just going to roll on and get ready for that one until someone tells you different.”
What makes this offense special compared to others you’ve had?
“I think there’s some maturity on this team that allows us — and the guys understand what we’re doing — and it allows us to make a bunch of in game adjustments. You look at, they came out and kind of played us differently than they’ve played us all year on Saturday. So, the maturity of the team kind of allows you to get into the game, go make those adjustments in how they’re playing us. Maybe not differently but maybe not how you expect them to play, something they really haven’t shown a lot of. Now you have a plan for it, then you get everybody on the sidelines, get everybody together and say, ‘hey, here’s an adjustment.’ We have the make and maturity as a team not just to be able to handle those adjustments but to be able to execute those adjustments on the field.”
Seven games in and you’re still having defensive communication issues. What’s the deal?
“Yeah, just a lot of up-tempo teams, you know what I mean? They’re trying to snap the ball as fast as they can so the ball gets placed and we’re getting the defensive play in from the sideline and we get that call and you get the call in, you make the call, you see the formation and we’re getting lined up fast, but if teams run the ball, swap the ball fast and try to snap as fast as humanly possible, you’ve got to adjust and get lined up as fast as well.”
Common theme?
“Yeah, teams snapping the ball as fast as they possibly can on you. You don’t see it when they throw a pass out of bounds. Here’s how it works: if they run a play inside, the umpire’s going to get the ball and spot the ball and they’re going to get it ready to play faster than if the ball gets thrown to the outside or out of bounds or an incomplete pass further down the field. So there’s different times of how fast the official signals ready for play with the ball in there. So you can go really fast if you wanted to we could super fast and some teams would have a tough time getting lined up on certain plays and following certain plays. But as teams do that, that’s an offensive strategy. There are pluses and minuses to it. You’ll see a lot of explosive plays, where all of a sudden we do get lined up and they’re running a play and they’re not really ready. They had one and they snapped the ball and their receiver was still 5 yards down the field and it really hurt them. It kind of ended their drive. So there’s pluses and minuses to it and when you want to do it.”
Hopper and Pierre played well. Could we see more of them?
“Yeah, sure, absolutely. We’ll see how it goes, see how the week of practice goes. You could see anybody. It’s Monday. I don’t know who we’re going to see. I get the call usually on Thursday night about midnight of who’s available.”
Impressed with those guys?
“They’ve prepared. Prepared for their moment. There were a lot of things they could do better. I mean a lot. I don’t think either of them graded out as a champion, but they’re gaining experience, you know, and have mistakes that are made that they can go learn through.”
How do you feel like your defensive changes have gone so far?
“I think it’s gone pretty well. You look there on Saturday, defensively, we gave up a couple of explosive plays. A couple of them were really good offense, not bad defense, just really good offense. There were a couple plays I didn’t think we executed very well. But their final eight drives of the game they had seven points, so I thought overall we played pretty good defensively. Like I said, some of the big play. You get upset at the big plays that we play bad defense. I don’t get upset at big plays when the other defense plays great offense. You know? We see great offense, you know what I mean? You can sit there and say, ‘Oh schematics.’ Our first game of the season, it is the game of football. Kyle Pitts made a catch and Lane Kiffin said, ‘I don’t know, we called the defense to have two guys cover him and he jumped over both guys and caught the ball. We’re certainly not going to sit there and say we played bad defense on the play. That was just really good offense.’ I think on Saturday, a couple of their explosives was really good offense and their guys made plays, and that’s going to happen. You’ve just got to get up and go play the next play. But overall, what you want to eliminate are the bad defensive plays and there were a couple of we gave up on bad explosive plays that we didn’t, that, you know, that wasn’t great defense. And that’s the stuff you have to eliminate. But you know, the majority of the game, I thought we were pretty solid.”
If you were to win the East and Alabama win the West before you guys ever get to LSU [Dec. 12], would it make sense to cancel that game?
“That’s above my pay grade right there. I’m good with whatever. I’m just hoping to play Kentucky on Saturday. That’s about as far as I can take it right now. We’ll get ready to go play that game and we’ll see what happens.”
What has not having Kyle Pitts the past two games revealed about Kyle Trask?
“I just think it shows that he – what I’ve said all along – is that he does such a great job of taking advantage of what the defense is going to give. It’s not like, ‘hey, I’m just going to throw the ball to a Kyle Pitts. I’m going to look at the matchups that I have and go take advantage of those matchups out there on the field.’ I think as the season goes on, I tell guys a lot, especially younger players, all the receivers, nobody ever has enough catches or enough touches or enough carries or anything. Everybody wants the ball more. But tell guys, ‘don’t get frustrated. Everybody’s going to play us a little bit different. One week, you’re a guy that they might try to take that out of the game plan. Well, if they are going to take you out of the game plan, somebody else is going to step up.’ So, I think you’ve seen that. As you see, the number of guys who have multiple touchdown catches, the number of guys that have 10-plus catches on the season, the number of different position groups. Our tight ends have 38 catches on the year and 13 touchdowns. Our receivers have 108 catches and 19 touchdowns. And it’s spread out to a bunch of different guys. But Kyle is just going to kind of take, and we’re going to coach him to take what they give us. And if they are going to try and bracket or double-team you or eliminate you from the game plan, another guy might have a big day. But eventually, they are going to go bracket the other guy or double-team the other guy. Now, you’re going to have a good day. You look even at our running backs, if I take our running backs and put their numbers together, we average well over 100 yards a game. But we roll those guys through. Now, you can say, those guys gotta buy in and then all them want to play more, and all of them want to get more carries and more touches, but in the course of playing a 10-game SEC schedule, we have also pretty fresh running backs right now. So I think the guys kind of understand that and buy into that part of the process.”
By setting two SEC records the past two weeks ago, has he dispelled the notion that he's only put up numbers because of Pitts?
"Yeah, I would guess. What has he set the last two weeks? Like, oh that touchdown pass thing?”
Yeah, yeah.
"I know, well, I heard somebody say something like 'Boy, you know he had his worst performance of the year.' When the worst performance the year is like 370 yards passing, three touchdowns, no interceptions. It's, you know, things are going pretty well. You know, I didn’t, I didn't put it that way—worst performance of the year—but I thought he played pretty well.”
Along the lines of Trask and numbers, what have you, Heisman's and whatever, I know it's always team first. But, how much does it cross your mind, when you change quarterbacks and Emory got that touchdown pass, people say it could've been Kyle, how conscious are you of those kinds of things. And does that factor in your decisions in terms of, he's got a personal goal and you've got a team goal and sometimes they conflict, how do you manage that thought?
“You know what, no, it doesn't cross my mind because, you know, I've done this long enough to have a great understanding of individual awards are going to come with a team success. Just kind of seems that's how, that’s how it works in college football these days. So, you know, if we keep winning—um, I don't know there, I think there are probably, if you look for like national awards list, they're probably some guys this week that are on like that your Heisman list or whatever; maybe didn't put up big numbers, but their teams still won right and they're so, hey we're still—they're still rolling along. So uh you know and I think that that kind of goes for a lot of the awards. Usually, you know, you’re seeing players that are winning awards are on really good football teams as well and so it's pretty easy to just keep the focus on the team, the team winning. If we keep winning and we're successful, Kyle's gonna be putting up pretty good numbers. And he'll have the opportunity to get some individual awards. He won't be the only one. Hopefully there's other guys on the team that certainly have the opportunity with individual awards as well. But the, you increase your chances of that as long as the team does good.”
You mentioned the tight ends and Coach Brewster tweeted out that they were best in the nation, 13 touchdowns six-seven games etc etc. Why is that working so well. You have talented tight ends, but why, because rarely have I seen a team with three tight ends who could catch the ball as well as these three.
Well you know I mean one, I mean, they’re, they're a big part of our offense. We use them to create mismatches. And, you know, I think a lot, Kyle Pitts got so much attention but we know those other guys are there. You know you can't sit there and say hey, 'Well, he went out, we have to scrap our entire offense because you know we don't have another tight end that can do that stuff.’ And so you know we have a lot of faith and confidence in those guys. Those guys you know they get as many reps in practice as Kyle does, and, you know, so they've just prepared to be ready for their moments and you know they're pretty talented guys and you know I mean we just, you know, we run the office, and you know if that's, if they're gonna, I think, possibly you know they, they probably benefit from the fact that as people are looking and said, 'Hey, Kyle Pitts is not in, we're gonna focus on the other guys and not focus on the tight ends as much' and they get advantageous matchups and they’ve taken advantage of it.”
Kentucky is second in the SEC in interceptions, Trask has thrown the second-least. Something's got to give? Do you ever get worried about tight window throws?
"Yeah, one I think we have a lot of confidence in him. You know, the majority of them I'm not that worried about because I know what he's doing. It might look high-risk, but he knows what he's doing. It's not like I'm taking the chance. You know, that's where the ball is going to go and it's a tight window, I've got to have great timing and I've got to put it in that window. Especially if they're going to drop all kinds of people into coverage like we've been seeing. You know, the benefit of them dropping a lot of people into coverage is he has a lot, he really doesn't get much rush in. So, he can kind of sit back there, take his time, find the window and deliver the ball. And, there's a couple every once in a while that, 'Wow, that was a *whistle*, that was a heck of a throw,' you know? I don't want to make livings making, you know, doing that all the time, making that throw, but I don't see him make poor decisions that way. So, that is the most important one to me. It's like, 'Boy, the read told you not to throw to this guy and you still tried to force it into a tight window.' You know, he goes where the read takes him and he makes the throw and tries to do it on time, and then their coverage dictates how that window is going to open."
When Trask went in against Kentucky last year, could you have imagined that this is where he would be a year later?
"I was just trying to get through the fourth quarter of that game, to be honest with you. Find a way to win, and then figure out what we were going to do from that point forward and make sure we were really shifting to completely build around his strengths. You had to tweak the offense and you always got to tweak around players, so. I know I had confidence in him, and so, and what he was going to bring to the table and what he was going to be able to do. I think the whole, everybody realized we had confidence in him, he just hadn't had the opportunity to go out on the field and show it in a game situation. I mean, he's just shown that if you're willing to work hard, if you're willing to make sacrifices, and you're committed long-term, you don't quit, you don't give up, you don't stop on your dream, you can see what you can accomplish. And I mean, he's a great example."
How do you temper egos with all the talent on offense?
"Players or coaches?" (laughs)
"No, I think this: I think it's a big thing of getting guys to buy in and believe in what we do. And I think you can go watch on Sunday and see the number of offensive players having success at the next level. Not just an individual or one star player, but the number of receivers and running backs. Those guys get to see how that plays out for them and how it lets them grow and how all those guys bought in and what it did for them and it makes it a little bit easier. And then as the season goes on, I think you see early on it's a little bit trickier sometimes. Early on it's, 'Hey, this guy had all the catches. I didn't have any catches.' But as the year goes on and now you start seeing the balance of numbers of guys with touchdown catches during the course of the game, I think it makes it a little bit easier. They're like, 'OK, you know what, I got it. I understand it. I saw it, I understood it, but I want the ball.' And as the year goes on they realize, 'Hey, I'm gonna get the ball. I just gotta be patient and keep working.'"
Did you address young guys rolling through on defense and do you foresee that improving?
"Yeah, absolutely. I've always been a big believer in, we like to play a lot of players. The reasons you do it is one, it keeps everybody fresh during all four quarters of a game so that people aren't exhausted come fourth quarter. So early in the game, right, we roll guys through. So if I'm a starter and I've only played 27 plays and it's the fourth quarter, I'm still fresh and ready to go make plays. The second one is it gets everybody into the game. All of a sudden, I don't want a guy that has to sit there and say, 'Hey, this guy now got hurt. I need you to go make the game-winning play.' And you've been standing on the sidelines for three hours and never even touched the field. So it gets guys in and keeps them into the flow of the game. Then it also creates depth and experience. So, you know, young guys, 'I might only get 8-10 plays, but I know I'm going to get those 8-10 plays. And I gotta prepare and be ready for that. If I do really well, I might get 12 plays next week.' It helps develop depth amongst the team and experience. You look at the receiver position, is a big example of it, when we have four guys that leave for the NFL last year. Well Jacob Copeland and Tre Grimes and Kadarius Toney had all played a bunch of football, even though maybe they weren't the returning starters. Tre was, the other guys weren't. But they had played a bunch of football because we roll them in and they have experience. This isn't their first time on the field. I think that just helps build depth throughout the entire team and the entire program, and it helps keep you fresh for an entire season."
Given your playing days and coaching career, we’re going back almost 30 years now, have you ever seen someone come out of just nowhere like Kyle and perform at this kind of a level? Do you have an example of an injury paving the way for someone to have this kind of ascension?
“Lou Gehrig?”
You were too young for that.
“Yeah, I don’t know. I’ve seen it, to be honest with you, at the University of Utah. That kid name Brett Elliott was our starting quarterback. He got hurt on the final play of the game against Texas A&M and four days later Alex Smith got the start for us at Utah. He was ready for his moment. He went 21-1 as a starter and won again yesterday. That was a long time ago. I think it’s happened. I don’t think it’s something you see very often. I think Kyle’s story is very, very unique. Because I think his, you trace back to a guy that even his high school (can’t make it out) to get to where he is is unique. I’ve got to go to the Alex Smith stuff. We knew Alex eventually was going to be the future in everything that we were doing. At some point, he was going to be ready and it just got accelerated because of an injury. But I think for a guy like Kyle, it’s just such a unique story of continuing to stick with your goal and continuing to believe in yourself to get to where you are. I think that’s what makes his such a special story. There’s a lot of things that come up with reasons why he’s not here. In today’s world, it’s hard to find a lot of people that would put themselves in the position he’s in, and yet it shows you the success you can have if you’re willing to stick with your goals and your dreams.”
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