Head Football Coach Mike Leach Quotes
September 18, 2000 | Football
Sept. 18, 2000
LUBBOCK, Texas - On Saturday's game
"I thought it went pretty good overall. We had two pretty good drives, and I thought the defense played well the whole night. It was good to see Wes Welker get his punt return. The biggest thing I think we need to work consistently is tempo and attitude. I think there are times we go out there and hope things will happen, hope that things will work out good instead of go out there and make it."
"I've got our practice [from this past Wednesday]. When we watch this game film we're going to show bits of that practice on Wednesday, and the tempo is remarkably different on Wednesday than it is on Saturday at some points. That's what I'm going to do this particular time. The first drive was great, and then anytime you have a 90-anything that's tremendous. We're just going to build on that and get healthy this week."
On blocking in Saturday's game
"Yes, it was better, in particular by the backs. For the most part, receivers were better, too."
On injuries to the offensive line
"That's been hard. Off and on we've had four of them down, four starters. We've had [Paul] Erickson, [John] DePasquale, now [Matt] Heider's down and Jason May's been down. It usually doesn't work like that. The big people don't tend to get injured as much as the little people. In this case, it's happened. Funny things happen. Most of the guys will be healthy, I think, not this week but next week. At [Oklahoma] I lost three tight ends in one game. I had never seen that up to this point. I'd never lost a tight end, ever. He'd bump something, bruise something. Against Baylor, we lost all three, just 1-2-3."
On the off week before Texas A&M
"We're going to do the same stuff we do. The thing about it is we get a chance to heal up."
On QB Kliff Kingsbury's play Saturday
"That brief period where he became a running quarterback, I wasn't too cranked about it. He settled down and didn pretty good, I thought, in the second half. The thing about the second half, we only had seven plays in the third quarter."
On the running game
"I think we should have more yards per carry than we do. That's my biggest concern. We're a whisker away from breaking a bunch of those, one block short or some guy grabs somebody's heel or foot. Some of that we just have to run through. Some of it we have to block better. We should be getting more yards per carry."
On beginning conference play
"I've never had any reservations about it. There are things I wish we would have played better and done better. We have done a pretty good job of composing at the key times and making things happen."