Liberty head football coach Hugh Freeze met with the media on Monday following his team’s win on Saturday against FIU to move to 2-0 on the 2020 season. The Flames are scheduled to host North Alabama at Williams Stadium this Saturday at 1 p.m.
Here’s everything Freeze had to say, beginning with his opening statement.
“Excited to be 2-0. I think we played a very quality opponent that was extremely athletic. We did not play our best, and yet find ourselves with a win. Those are the ones that you definitely can teach from with a lot better attitude than should you have lost it and are trying to teach, you obviously try to do both when those come your way, but it sure is a lot nicer to be able to congratulate your team this morning with the truth of the day when you’re 2-0 and you found a way to win in a difficult football game, a difficult challenge even while not playing our best.”
“Again, excited. It was great to be at home. I thought that for the restrictions that we are under that everything was as good as it could be and excited to be back at home this weekend.”
Malik Willis, Noah Frith both banged up late in the 4th, how are they looking?
“Malik looked good this morning. He’s in therapy. It was a left elbow issue. He’s getting fitted for his brace today. He will be anxious to play. We’ll see how the week goes and it will be kind of day to day with him. It’s not something that should keep him out for an extended period of time, if any at all. We will just have to see how the week goes. We are very blessed that that’s the case. Some of the time, you see some of those injuries, it can be a structural or a bone fragment or something that’s also involved and that takes a little bit longer, but it appears we are blessed that’s not the case. Hopefully he will be good to go very soon.”
“Noah was a hamstring, that’s probably going to be a little longer, unfortunately. He was just getting back from his foot and having a very solid game. We’ve struggled to stay healthy at receiver this year, it seems, particularly at outside guys. Hopefully he can have a quicker recovery than what the norm is for those hamstrings.”
Big plays, was it them or was it you and how can you correct that going forward?
“I always share with our kids the truth of the day of what happened. Our defense held a very athletic FIU team to 304 yards, I believe, which man, when you say that in today’s time of how offenses are, you’re kind of excited, thinking man we must have played well. Then, you look at the point production that they had, and the average per run that they had and something doesn’t quite add up. That tells you there were a lot of explosive plays. I don’t watch every single play with our defensive staff. My norm is I walk in and they know I want to see the explosive reel and what caused it and what are we doing to fix it. Every single one that occurred with the defense, you obviously give them credit. 24 we didn’t know how good he was at running back. He’s very, very good. Obviously, they played all of their transfer receivers that we weren’t sure if they were going to play. So, you have to give them credit. Obviously they’ve got skillsets to make explosive plays, but could they all have been limited if we fit the things right and line up the things right if unbalanced which we didn’t do on the long run. Then, we turned a guy loose in man coverage on a wheel route. All of that is correctable. Could their guys have still made plays? Yes. I don’t want to take anything away from them because they certainly had ability to do that, but we certainly didn’t help ourselves by either lining up the wrong way or just not doing assignment football. We think that everything that happened to us defensively is correctable.”
How do you grade Malik’s passing performance from the game Saturday?
“I thought he threw it really well. I think his line was 24 of 30 with no interceptions, that’s a pretty solid day. He missed two throws, maybe three. He missed Jaivian on a little bootleg that would have been a big play, and he missed Demario on what would have been an 80 yard touchdown. The reason he missed Demario is he bobbled the snap and it just threw his timing all off. Then, he rushed it and kinda threw a missile. Outside of those three, then the corner route to Demario too was off, but man outside of that I thought he was pretty, pretty solid. He’s giving me more confidence to run our RPO game with some freedom. He earned that, in my eyes, this past Saturday. That was exciting to see.”
Is it exciting to see Stubbs emerge as the top target?
“I think the media probably makes, obviously it was certainly true with AGG last year, but I don’t know that you say…obviously we think Stubbs can make plays and we’re excited and he had an outstanding game, but a lot of that was how they were playing us too. After the first series when we went tempo and threw the RPO for the touchdown to Noah, they played their weak safety to the boundary the rest of the game. So, now you’re looking at your matchups to the field which is where Stubbs was, and he had to make plays and all, but the next game it may not be that way. So, I don’t want you saying, ‘Man, what happened, why didn’t you go to Stubbs anymore?’ We kinda play to what the defense, hopefully, gives us the best matchup for that given day or that given play. It certainly happened to be that slot guy. Even Demario, we missed him twice, and that slot would have had a big, big game. Obviously, Stubbs went over 100 but that just was the best matchup for that given day, if that makes sense.”
What went wrong in the red zone?
“After watching the film, I felt awful about the plan we had and the calls I made. I have to look at myself first when we’re not producing touchdowns in the red zone at a large percentage of the time.That’s the way I felt after the game. I just didn’t feel..and then after watching the tape it’s a combination. The truth lies somewhere in the middle bad calls, bad plan, and then I had two really good calls that should have been touchdowns and we didn’t execute them. It’s a combination. We had a little scrape screen to a tight end on about the 3 to Jerome and it should have been a walk in if we just get the crack block and our receiver just MA’d and didn’t crack it. It’s a walk in if he does that. Then, had another good play call where Malik decided to bounce run instead of hugging the pulling guard and I think he walks in if we execute that correctly. It was a combination for sure. Our plan wasn’t the best, calls weren’t the best from me, and we didn’t execute a couple that were good calls.”
Off to a 2-0 start, how is the confidence level of your team?
“The confidence of our kids it seemed really nice this morning. We had an early morning this morning with practice, COVID testing, weightlifting and obviously the film from this past game. We had a team meeting. I thought the energy was good, the confidence, I think, is high. Like I told them this week as I talked about our new theme for this week, it takes a whole week to win a football game. I believe that. You don’t just show up on a Saturday and all of a sudden have success. It will take us all week to prepare to win a football game. It’s hard to win football games, particularly against talent that is close to the same. You see that, like last week. I told, I can’t remember who it was, maybe our AD, if we lined up and got tested in the 40-yard dash and the bench press and all those things that matter, I don’t know that we would win those tests against FIU. Those guys were long, lean, and could run, but you can be the better team on a given day. That’s, I think, what we have to be at this point in our program, we have to be the better team not just better individuals. It will take all week for us to do that. I do think our confidence is good, obviously, we’ve got to get a few kids healthy, and hopefully keep them healthy and keep COVID away from us. But, I like what I see right now in our kids. They’re a confident group. I think they’re enjoying the process. We didn’t practice great last Tuesday or Wednesday, and I’d like to see that change this Tuesday and Wednesday, so I’ve challenged them to do that.”
What has Durrell Johnson done in the first two games that would be a surprise to you or did you expect this?
“From the first time I saw his tape, his JUCO tape, I believed this is exactly what we would get. I think the biggest challenge for Durrell is to handle when things don’t go well exactly. It’s typical, when you recruit a JUCO kid, there’s usually a little learning curve that comes, particularly when things don’t come real well for you or you make a couple of mistakes. He’s hard on himself, and he’s got to learn how to play the next play and let the last one go. That’s the biggest challenge he faces. Physically, from the time I saw his first tape, I knew this guy could be explosive.”
What are your overall impressions of UNA and were you aware of them previously?
“Oh absolutely. North Alabama is a proud program. They’ve been national contenders at the Division II level for a long, long time. I’ve always known of them and the transfers they get from different quality Power Five programs, other Group of Five programs. I just have great respect for the job they’ve done. Coach Willis is a Mississippi guy, so I’ve known of him for a long time. He’s got a guy on his staff that played for me at Arkansas State, so this is the third week in a row I’ve got to face that. I have great respect for them. Getting ready for them is a bit of a challenge because they haven’t played. They do have a few transfers. I know from last year’s tape, I think their receiving corp is as good, if not better, as a whole as any that we’ve faced. I really like the running back, Carson. I think they’ve got some returning offensive linemen and then they had the two defensive linemen transfers from Louisville and UTEP. I think both of those, we’ve pulled some tape on them, they’re both very, very talented. I have great respect for them. Love the area there in Florence, Alabama. I think there’s a golf course there called Turtle Point, I believe, Turtle something, but really enjoyed playing that a few times.”
The disconcerting signals penalties, did the lack of crowd noise have an impact on that?
“The penalty for that is if our snap count is a clap, which it was last Saturday, the defense is not allowed to do that. They were doing it the first series. We talked to the officials, they went and talked to the opponents, and they stopped for the remainder of the first half. The first series of the second half it began again. The officials did the right thing, got together and communicated, and got the call right. That’s what the call was. As far as, you know, the stadium wasn’t as loud as it normally is, but I just, we’ve got to have our mindset where we can’t use that as any kind of reason not to perform well. It’s out of my control, it’s out of our administration’s control, it’s out of our kids control. Whatever you can’t control, let’s not worry about it, let’s control what we can, and that’s create our own energy by the way we play. That’s kind of the message that they will hear from me every single week.”
LU is 8-2 against G5 programs since joining FBS, is LU on the path to being one of the best G5 programs as you have mentioned previously?
“You’ve got to give the success to the people that laid the foundation. Coach Gill and his staff and the vision of the administration here. They’ve put in place the things that I think you need to be successful to build this into one of the Group of Five top programs. Are we on that track? The record is what it is, you can’t make that up. Have we arrived? No way. We’re not deep enough in certain spots. We’ve still got to get a deeper roster. Do I believe we can do that? Absolutely. I wouldn’t have taken this job if I didn’t believe that, and I believe it even more today than I did two years ago, or a year and a half ago, whenever it was. I do think we’re on track. Are we ahead of schedule? I don’t really know. It’s too early to tell. I do think we beat two quality football teams in the last two weeks. Where they rank in the Group of Five and that conference this year remains to be seen, but I do believe we are on track.”
Are Jimmy Faulks and CJ Yarbrough still on track to play off their injuries?
“I think CJ will be ready this week. Jimmy was a, the game kinda, they only played 50 snaps on defense. The first half was kind of strange and he didn’t get in, and the second half when we were about ready he really tightened up and wasn’t loose and just didn’t feel like, probably would put him at more risk to do that. Hopefully he will be ready to go this week.”
Coach how did you spend your birthday, did you get on the golf course?
“I don’t play during the season typically, but my wife and I did go out yesterday and play a little bit. Then, came in and worked with the staff. Then, we had a big family dinner last night, it was a great day.”
Is there a target number of plays you want for your offense and defense?
“Man, we could talk a while on that one. A few years back, when I kind of brought our offense into the SEC, my whole goal, I still had the offensive coordinator’s mindset. When I was offensive coordinator at Arkansas State we averaged like 92 plays a game. That’s all I really was caught up in that. Was just caught up in that’s what we do, that’s what we do, that’s what we do. Then, you get in that head coach’s seat and I really didn’t change my mindset a lot my first few years there, and about year 4 and 5, I think we would have won some more games if I thought like I think today. We got 80 plays Saturday and we didn’t even go fast. That means you must be getting a lot of first downs, which we did 31 I believe it was, and it means you’re somewhat controlling the number of snaps the other team is getting because we’re not really going fast. We’re not having 3 & outs and using only 40 seconds, which I used to do some. Our defense only played 50 snaps, you’ve got a chance to be successful if you can do that. I think about it a little differently. I don’t have a set number any longer, I used to have a set number. I said we’re going to get 85-90. I don’t even talk about that anymore. It’s more of me just managing in my mind what gives us the best chance to win. Now, if we need to go warp speed, it was advantageous for us the other day when we changed speeds on them. They struggled lining up to it. Right now, I just go into the game knowing we can do that, but certainly it’s been kind of enjoyable looking at the stat sheet and us having a 15 minute time of possession advantage and a lot of first downs.”
Is it more time of possession in place then?
“I used to and I would say it, so I don’t want to be like some politician and you say that I’m double talking, but I have changed. I have changed. 6 years ago I would have told you I cared nothing about time of possession, and I still think there could be a game this year where I don’t care about it, but in the two given games we had it mattered to me. I don’t know if that makes sense. We may get in a game where I’m like, you know what, our best chance is to get 95 plays, I don’t care the time of possession. We can do that. I haven’t felt that way in the first two, and I don’t know that I will. I think it depends on the game, but if you’re asking me right now if we continue to be what we’ve been in the first two, that time of possession matters a lot more to me than the number of plays. I really don’t care about our number of plays as much as I do our defense’s number of plays. I like keeping them around 50. If that means we have to get 80 and control the clock or 75 and control the clock, I like them playing only 50 snaps a game.”
