Liberty picked up a win on Saturday night, defeating LA Tech, 56-30, to move to 9-0 on the season and 7-0 in CUSA play. Following the win, head coach Jamey Chadwell met with the media. Here is everything he had to say following the game, beginning with his opening statement:
“I’ll say this, great atmosphere, great environment, I have a lot of respect for Louisiana Tech, they played hard. I think they’ve got a good team. I’m proud of our guys as far as securing home field advantage and getting a win, but I’m embarrassed as the head coach of our performance penalty wise, to be truthful. It’s frustrating me. I’m not going to say tons about it, but we are doing foolish things that are going to hurt us and hurt our program. I am disappointed in that. It’s not cool.”
“Thankful that our offense played really well and took care of the ball for the most part. We had the one hiccup there, but anytime you can rush for 300 and about throw for 300 that’s a pretty good day. Thankful that they did a good job.”
“I thought defensively we just let them do what they wanted. I was disappointed in that.”
“I’m responsible for the penalties, it’s on me. I’m disappointed in that and really embarrassed, to be honest. Frustrated by that, excited for the win. We will always celebrate wins, they are hard to come by. I’m thankful for that. Thankful for the fans, it was awesome, great atmosphere, homecoming, but we’ve got to clean some things up if we want to get to where we want to.”
FIRST TIME A LIBERTY TEAM HAS EVER RUSHED FOR 300+ IN 3 STRAIGHT WEEKS, HOW GOOD IS COOLEY’S VISION?
“Now, some of those, you could run through, I think. He’s really good. He can make one cut and he can make it and get vertical. Then, he can run through an arm tackle. He’s now obviously the fastest guy out there. He can see the cut and he puts his foot in the ground and he can run through any type of arm tackles. I’d love to go back and take all of his runs. I don’t know if he’s ever really been knocked back when he goes through arm tackles. He has a great knack. He’s a bowling ball. He runs hard. The more he goes, certain guys start bouncing off of him and he’s playing really well. Our O-Line is playing really well. For him being banged up, shoulder and all those things, 23 carries tonight, just tremendous. Billy Lucas got hurt in the game so we had to ride more on that. He is tough, man. He epitomizes what you want a football player to be.”
YOUR RECEIVERS WENT AFTER THEIR CORNERS, WAS THAT JUST TAKING WHAT THEY GAVE?
“You get some one on one shots, they won some we won some. When people are doing that, they are trying to overload you in the box and do some things. You’ve got to be able to win some of those. We were able to win a few. We got some PI’s on them, some we missed, but we have confidence in our receivers. They can make tough catches. It was great to have EJ Smoot back tonight. He made a couple nice plays for us. Obviously, CJ did a nice job. We’re going to get some of those one on ones, and the more that we can take advantage of those, helps our offense. We have complete confidence in Kaidon putting them ball there and then those guys making plays.”
“Noah had a great game. I’m really happy for Noah. Noah probably leads the country for number of catches that get called back for penalties. He had a great game tonight, touchdown, for a senior, a 6th year senior. Love that kid. Just how awesome, did you see how happy everybody was for him. He works hard, doesn’t complain. We ask him to block, he got his shot tonight. Really happy for him.”
HAS THE NARRATIVE CHANGED A LITTLE BIT ABOUT PLAYING BETTER ON THE ROAD THAN AT HOME?
“We’ve just not played four quarters at home. If you go back to all of our games we’ve played some really good quarters but maybe not complete games. It happened tonight. We were tremendous offensively. We had the hiccup on our own, we caused our own little turnover. We just messed that up. Then we had the one penalty on the pass that really put us back and made us punt. Beside that, that was four quarters. Previous games, defense has played well and offense has sputtered around a little bit. We love playing at home, but I also think opponents love playing here because the atmosphere is awesome. We got our fans behind them, saying things to them, ordering Domino’s for them or whatever they do for them. They do a fantastic job. I think we get the best of other people, as well. Our defense did some good things. My biggest disappointment, you have a chance, you go up 21-10 and 28-10, then they score. Just back and forth, you never could really get that comfort level. You want to put your foot on their throat and not let them come up. That was my biggest disappointment. We did some good things, obviously, but we allowed too much easy stuff. I thought tonight, special teams wise, probably wasn’t our best game that we had. We gave up some returns. We’ve got to continue to do better if we want to finish the way we started.”
HOW PLEASED ARE YOU TO CLINCH A HOME GAME IN CONFERENCE CHAMPIONSHIP GAME?
“It’s awesome. It’s awesome to put yourself in the conference championship and now to host it, that’s great. We love playing here. That’s a big deal. I’m happy for that, but as a coach you see your issues. You are constantly thinking about your issues. I’m going to enjoy tonight, but I’m going to think about how are we going to fix these things that are going to cost us at some point if we don’t get corrected. I’m very pleased with where we’re at. I’m thankful for the job and people entrusting us and our staff to build a program and be able to qualify for the championship in the first year is awesome. That credit goes to the players buying into each other, our strength and conditioning, all those things. Our credit goes to those people for helping our guys every week be ready to go.”
KAIDON THROWS FOR ALMOST 300 YARDS, HAS HE DONE A GOOD JOB OF SHUTTING OUT THE OUTSIDE NOISE?
“He’s getting notoriety every week. I think he was the Maxwell Award semifinals. He deserves those things. If you watch him play and the things that he does every week, he deserves it. I do think he’s done a really nice job of making it a team thing, but also preparing himself. He’s handled all the things he needs to handle, but that’s the challenge. The more you go, the more you win, the better you play, there’s more noise and more noise. Can he continue to lock that out? He is a big personality. Can he continue to lock that out, continue to stay hungry and say can I improve here if we’re going to get here.”
DEFENSE STARTED OFF STRONG, WHAT DO YOU THINK WAS THE TURNING POINT THERE?
“They score right before halftime. Statistically, we were doing alright. They’re not doing a lot. Right out of halftime, I think when we scored. 3rd and long, they got it. 3rd and 10 and then we had a roughing the quarterback. Then, boom boom boom boom. We go score. They get a big kick return then boom boom boom boom boom. It’s one thing to score, but we can’t let them score in two minutes. I think we got a penalty, gave them some yardage, they made some plays, got a little frustrated. I think we lost our cool. I think we started losing our aggressiveness. We started losing our belief that we can stop them because they were getting just boom, boom, boom. At that point, sometimes you can have the best call in the world but if you are thinking about what you messed up and you’re not playing well. I think that’s what happened. I think we got down on ourselves a little bit. We lost confidence. We had nobody on that field step up and say hey this is not how we play football. This is not how we play defense here at Liberty. I’m disappointed in that. Coaches, I can holler at them, I can talk to them, I can encourage them, whatever. It has to come within if it’s going to mean something. I didn’t see that. We had some guys make it about themselves instead of making it about how can I help the team get out of this rut.”
DO YOU LOOK FOR PLAYERS TO MAKE THOSE STANDS IN GAME OR IN THE PREPARATION LEADING UP TO THE GAME?
“You hope the preparation leading up you put yourself in enough situations and circumstances, and you practice where hey 3rd and long, we had a bad play. You hope that prepares them, but there’s nothing like the game. You hope practice is so tough. Sometimes there are gamers. We needed somebody during that time frame, but what happens is some of your leaders maybe weren’t playing as well as they wanted to. So, they started thinking about themselves. They started thinking, hey, I’m a leader, my actions mean something. Actions are always louder than words. We had some of our leaders not doing a great job of following through. Again, that is more on me. I am the one that sets what we’re trying to do. I’ve got to put them in a position to make sure they lead. I have to do a better job. It’s not on them, it’s on me. I’ve got to do a better job. I would hope by now, nine games in, we would step up. Tonight, might have been the first time where we had 3 or 4 consecutive drives where they scored. We couldn’t get a stop. That’s not happened before. We didn’t respond in a great way, but that’s the beauty, we always have next week.”
3 WEEKS BEFORE CONFERENCE CHAMPIONSHIP GAME, WHAT DOES THIS MEAN FOR THE PROGRAM AND WHAT’S THE MESSAGE TO THE PLAYERS TO KEEP THEM FOCUSED ON THE TASK AT HAND?
“It’s obviously a great honor. To be in a conference at FBS. Being Independent for four years and then having a chance to be in a conference, a conference says hey we want you part of us. Our University gives us a great idea and then it gives us a great brand. To be able to represent the new conference in the first championship game is tremendous. It’s tremendous for our fans, for our administration that believes in us and helps us get in a conference. That’s huge. I know our team is thankful for that. We talk a lot about making history and being a part of history. That’s part of it. We just celebrated our 50th year of football. All the history that has came before us, we got a chance to write our part of it. We are part of it. I told our team last night, you get to be a part of history. You get to be one that nobody has done that history. That was cool. So, my challenge will be, we can still make history. Nobody has ever been 10-0. Nobody has ever been 11-0. Nobody has ever been 12-0. Nobody has ever won a conference championship at the FBS level. There are a lot of things out there. The main thing for us is all those things are great, but we’ve got to keep our eyes and our vision on why we play and what we’re doing and what we’re trying to accomplish there. That’s going to be my message to our team. Hopefully they will take to it.”
