Back in Black & Gold, Scott Frost reflected on his return to the Bounce House and a hard-fought 17-10 win over Jacksonville State, a night that included a weather delay and a clutch fourth-quarter finish. Here's everything he had to say in his postgame press conference.
Back in Black & Gold, Scott Frost reflected on his return to the Bounce House and a hard-fought 17-10 win over Jacksonville State, a night that included a weather delay and a clutch fourth-quarter finish.
Here’s everything he had to say in his postgame press conference.
Opening statement
“Yeah, I got to start off with two things. No. 1, I can’t tell you how much respect I have for Coach (Charles) Kelly and the job their coaching staff did and their players. Those were tough, tough circumstances tonight.
“They did a hell of a job, played really well, were coached really well. So hats off to them. And second, I can’t tell you how much I love coaching here.
“Even with the stands empty after a thunderstorm, it’s just fun here. So I appreciate the people that stayed. Game didn’t quite look like I anticipated it would go, but I was really happy with the fight and perseverance of our guys.”
On UCF DB Jayden Williams stuffing JSU on a 4th-and-1 play, which gave UCF’s offense the opportunity to win the game
“Yeah, Jayden got game ball. He’s one of, seems like 100 new guys around here, but he’s played a lot of football and he’s very savvy. And when they handed it off, it looked like they dented our line a little bit and I thought it was a first down.
“I was getting ready to figure out where to use my timeouts and he just shot in there and knifed him. And that was probably the biggest play of the game.”
On the QB situation, Cam Fancher being injured after a targeting hit, and the decision to put in Tayven Jackson after the weather delay
“Yeah, first Cam got a targeting penalty. That was a big, big play. It looked like it was gonna be a game-changing play for them.
“And the guy got too high on the head. His head was fine, wasn’t concussion or anything. He had a kind of a issue with his back and he’s got some shooting pain down his leg.
“And he tried to keep it going through the long break, but didn’t feel like he could go and the trainers didn’t feel like he could go. So it was plan B pretty quick.”
On how UCF fought through adversity
“Fight through adversity was one of the big questions about this team. We got a lot of other questions that we need to address that probably haven’t still haven’t been answered. But I was wondering how this team would respond when things got hard and whether or not they’d fight or not.
“And then the defense just kept fighting. They gave up one long touchdown drive and otherwise came up with stops when they needed them. And the offense kept plugging despite shooting ourselves in the foot a lot and really good play from them.
“Kept plugging and found a way to make a couple big plays.”
On RB Myles Montgomery and his 150 all-purpose yards
“First of all, I love Myles. He is the captain of this team. Not officially yet, we had four captains tonight, but he’s the leader.
“You know you got a good kid when, and I’m looking at my play sheet, frustrated. And he comes over and encourages me, and that says a lot about Myles. But going forward, we got to rotate those guys a little more.
“Stacy Gage is a good player, and Jaden Nixon’s a good player, and AG’s (Agyeman Addae) a good player. This game was just tight the whole time, and he’s a warrior, and he stayed in and handled the bulk of it. But I’m really glad Myles is with us.”
On the overall play of the defense, which held JSU to 3-15 on third-down conversions
“We thought the D-line was gonna be one of our strengths. It looked like it tonight. It’s game one. We have a lot of improving to do, but there’s certainly some bright spots, and the D-line was one of them. I thought they kept the pressure on rim set all night. Thought they did a good job in the run game for the most part.
“We got a lot of guys can play, and we rotated them through, and those guys made a big difference in the game. But it wasn’t just them. I thought the corners played really well, and obviously, the safeties came up and played well.
“It’s gonna get harder when we play Big 12 opponents, but luckily, we got about a month until that happens.”
On the thought process during their UCF’s offensive drive, whether to try and burn clock or take deep shots
“Yeah, I’m gonna compliment them again. We couldn’t scheme much in this game, so we had to be kind of vanilla, and not necessarily with our schemes. But we couldn’t go in and say they do this, we need to do this.
“We just didn’t know. And then within the game, they were coming from everywhere, and lining up and odd, and even, and different coverages. And so it’s hard to even with the video we can watch now, it’s hard to even say, hey, let’s get in this formation and run this, cuz they did a great job mixing it up.
“And with no real film to prepare for, that was tough, and I give credit to them. That last drive, we hit a couple plays, and Tayven made a couple big plays. And particularly the third down run, we kind of rolled the dice with that call.
“Call that was only good against a certain defense, and we happened to get it. He did a good job making the play with his legs. We called another one like that on third down, and they made us give it cuz of pressure.
“And we got a yard, and second down wasn’t that productive. And yes, we just kind of sat there and said, let’s win this thing. I think a lot of people probably expected us, maybe they expected us to call something and kick a field goal.
“But we still had a few bullets in the chamber to place the call, and we hit one.”
On Dylan Wade being a “safety valve” for Tayven Jackson
“No, that was really a function of their defense. They were coming after us, and when they saw, they did a good job filling with safeties that were playing deep in the run game. But then when they saw pass, they were playing really deep on us.
“And until that last bit where they’re up trying to stuff the run, and that gave us a chance. But they were just dropping so deep, they were kind of taking away our things down the field and leaving the check downs there. We gotta be more efficient taking those, we missed a couple and stepped out of bounds on a couple.
“If that’s what they’re gonna give you all game, you gotta take them all game. But that didn’t have anything to do with the quarterback, just had to do with their defense.”
On deciding when to run a faster tempo offense
“We’ll do that when it counts, at times, when it’s appropriate. And we’ll see game to game how fast it’s gonna be. They’re a team that does it themselves.
“And our plan going into the game was to earn a couple first downs and then go fast. The first drive was going pretty well, and we shot ourselves in the foot. And then the second drive, probably threw a ball in a bubble when it shouldn’t have been thrown and missed a block, and it was just a lot of little things like that.
“Offensively, you either have to create more explosive plays, or you have to be really consistent. Becuase if you’re gonna have 13 play drives sooner or later, something bad could happen if you don’t execute really well. So we need to be better at both, creating explosives and being consistent.
“And when we get really good at that, we’ll maybe try to do it faster.”
On whether he had the opportunity to “soak in” his return to UCF
“Yeah, except the rain. We got a really young team, and that’s not an excuse. I wanted it to go better, particularly offensively.
“It’s hard to say you wanted to go better on special teams or defense with the performance they had. And offense, we got a lot of young and experienced guys, and I thought that showed up a little bit tonight. Took us out of a couple scores, scoring chances, and had some plays that didn’t hit, and just kind of in the wrong place, or did something a little bit wrong.
“But it’s just so fun being in this stadium. And so even though it didn’t go exactly how I wanted it to go, and the night was weird with all the breaks, and we spent a lot of time in the locker room together, we’re gonna keep getting better. And we got a young team, I think has a chance to improve, maybe at a steeper climb than some other people that have a lot more experience.
“And I’m gonna love every bit of it, cuz it’s just awesome being a coach here.”
On the defense overcoming penalty issues to force a stop
“Yeah, resiliency was great, the penalties were the problem. We didn’t have a lot of penalties, they were just the wrong time. And it’s little things, you can’t push off somebody when you’re getting up.
“You gotta keep your head and not get off setting penalties, and get one for the team. Holding play on a touchdown, a targeting, I’m sure that wasn’t intentional, but it just kept seeming like it was happening at the wrong time for us to catch any momentum. Those things gotta get cleaned up.
“Those are first game mistakes and undisciplined mistakes and or selfish in some cases. So those things will definitely be addressed. But the perseverance part and continuing to fight, thought that was outstanding.”
On how much improvement they can make going into week two
“Well, I think we can impprove a lot, but I think we need to. Again, particularly on the perimeter, we got kind of stuck handing the ball between the tackles a lot because of some mistakes early on on the perimeter. Part of it was their defense, again, giving them credit.
“But when they have too many in the box, the ball’s gotta go outside. And we gotta be efficient with that, blocking the perimeter or running our routes on the outside. So when the game dictates it, we can cash in.
“And we didn’t do a good enough job of that. So we gotta go back to work on those things and make sure we’re efficient on those types of things.”
On Cam Fancher’s status and who will start at QB moving forward
“Yeah, I don’t wanna comment on that right now. I love both kids. Cam’s a warrior, and I really don’t know yet.
“I was told he was out for the second half, or I don’t remember which break it was after, I guess the first one. But I’ll talk to the trainers either later tonight or in the morning and have something more going forward.”
On the defense being offsides on several occasions
“Yeah, you’re reminding me of more, I mean, offsides at the wrong time and giving them first downs and false start on the one yard line. That one was interesting cuz I’m not sure what was said to get our kid to jump offsides, but we gotta be more disciplined than that. And you can go back and watch the tape and we didn’t capitalize on a lot of opportunities.
“We didn’t make the play when we needed to or we made a mistake when we couldn’t. And again, I thought they did a great job on the other side of staying in the game. And we got a lot to clean up.”
On whether he had a favorite moment that reminded him how happy he is to be back at UCF
“You know what the coolest one was as I was sitting back in this, what they call my office back here. And my son and oldest daughter came in to see me at the game. And that didn’t happen last time I was here.
“So it’s great. I’m so grateful to have an opportunity to do this, particularly with my kids old enough to understand what’s going on right now. And when I wake them up in the morning, we’ll be able to tell them we won.”
On what the team did during the weather delay
“I came in right away and told them I thought it would be longer than what they were saying. So we had them take their pads off and cleats off and kind of hang out. We debated going back into our facility, but we stayed in here.
“Andrew Sims, our DFO, was smart enough to order some sandwiches. So I think Horace (Lockett) ate 15 of them and then made them work. But not much you can do.
“Just try to stay loose and get ready to go back out, touch your toes and attack.”
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Category: General Sports
