The Liberty Flames became bowl eligible this past Saturday with a 35-26 win over North Texas in Denton, Texas to improve to 6-2 on the season. This week, the Flames return home to play host to UMass with kickoff scheduled for noon at Williams Stadium. Liberty head coach Hugh Freeze met with the media for his weekly press conference on Monday and here is everything he had to say beginning with his opening statement.
“Just really, really pleased with the effort and the fight that our team showed,” he said. “I thought North Texas was what we thought they were watching film – a very dangerous team and they played up to that, for sure. We are not playing our best football. That is somewhat frustrating to me. Me and the coaches have got to get us to play better at some things, but I’ll tell you I couldn’t be more pleased with the heart, the fight that our team continues to show. To be bowl eligible for three straight seasons, I think is a remarkable feat for our team and obviously we have had a good record against the Group of Five schools over those three years.”
“I was pleased to come back bowl eligible. This morning, our team celebrated that as we look forward to hopefully move forward and play better football and continue to pick up a few more wins. There were some positives. Defense gave up seven trips to the red zone, that’s not great, but they only allowed two TDs in that red zone. That was pretty solid. Got turnovers defensively. The second half response against the run was really, really nice. Negatives, we couldn’t get off the field in third down. That was disappointing. We will have to go back to work on that, we have been really good.”
“Offensively, the 12 explosives was good, zero turnovers which we usually have a good chance to win when we take care of the ball. We had three TD drives over 90 yards. That was the positives. We’re not protecting the quarterback right now. We’ve got to figure out a way to do a better job with that. I thought JB was solid. He missed a couple of touchdown throws right before half, but he was solid in his play. Of course, Malik continued to do some things that just make you scratch your head that is pretty phenomenal. Love the way he wants to compete and fight.”
“Special teams, it was our worst punting performance in a long, long time, averaging only 29 yards, but man had the two explosive returns one by Shedro on the kickoff and then obviously the touchdown by Demario. A lot of great blocks on that play. Some good things for sure, but the main thing is our team just fought and found a way to play better for 60 minutes than the other team on the road which is tough. A tough stretch, I think we’re sore and tired, but we’ve got two more to go and then we get us a break. We’ve got to have a great week of practice to get better this week as we get to come back home which is awesome and play UMass. A lot of things to improve on, but again thrilled to be bowl eligible for a third straight year.”
WHAT’S THE BALANCE BETWEEN PROTECTING MALIK AND HIM TRYING TO AVERT DISASTER AND SOMETIMES THAT LEADS INTO TURNOVERS?
“Typically DLines are more athletic than most offensive linemen. If they know you are going to throw, they have a good chance at winning some one on ones. So, you are forced with either do you try to max protect to get him max protected but then you don’t get as many guys out to defeat the coverage that you face, as opposed to getting everybody out and knowing you might get pressured, but Malik sometimes pressuring him is not the greatest idea. The other night he took way too many hits in the pocket. It was happening too fast. We don’t mind it when he scrambles a lot of times as long as he continues to make good decisions when he does that. He had a great throw away the other night that was a phenomenal, athletic effort, and then a 20 yard shovel pass which I don’t think I’ve ever seen one quite that far before. He is going to be him, but we’ve got to protect him better.”
IS THE PROTECTION ISSUE LINKED TO THE INABILITY TO ESTABLISH A TRADITIONAL RUN GAME?
“I absolutely think they are correlated. In the games where you truly are balanced, your pass protections are going to be better. We just weren’t balanced the other night. It was a weird game. I don’t know. It just felt like we needed to throw to win it. I felt like we probably could have run the ball on them, I should have probably stuck with it. It had a weird flow to it to me. We ran it well there at the end when we needed to other than them calling the penalty that we could have put the game away the drive before, but we got the holding call on the third down conversion. We were running it effectively on that drive. They definitely are correlated. We’ve got to stay more balanced.”
HOW IS MALIK RESPONDING TO TREATMENT SO FAR?
“Yeah, I think good. I asked him this morning and yesterday how he felt, he said, ‘I’m good. I’m good.’ We will see how the week goes with his treatment and stuff. I think he’s feeling pretty good today.”
WHAT DO YOU SEE WHEN YOU WATCH TAPE OF UMASS?
“They are the same offensively. Walt has done a great job offensively in his career. He knows what he’s doing on offense. It’s not any different. Defensively, it’s kinda hard to figure. It’s like they want to be three down but then you turn on the tape and there are some games where they are almost exclusively all four down. Not quite sure, that’s a little different than years past. I haven’t watched a ton yet. I will dig in this afternoon. They are very similar to what they’ve been in the past offensively, and then defensively they are a little different.”
HOW IS THE DEPTH AT SAFETY AS CEDRIC STONE AND JAYLON JIMMERSON LOOK TO BE HURT?
“Depth is a concern for us. Jaylon has a shoulder and Ced, he was really just struggling with body cramps. I think he will be fine. Not sure on Jaylon.”
TRESHAUN CLARK TOOK AARON PIERRE’S PLACE AS CAPTAIN, WILL THAT REMAIN FOR THE SEASON?
“TreShaun is very deserving of being a captain, probably should have had him out there the whole time with the others. The other three have done a good job too. AP (Aaron Pierre), from the time he came here until now really, really couldn’t be more pleased in his development. He’s having some family issues that he is helping tend with and we want to help him along with that also.”
BOWL ELIGIBLE FOR A THIRD STRAIGHT YEAR, HOW MUCH DOES THAT MEAN TO THIS PROGRAM?
“I think it’s huge. I’ve been clear about that. I have very few spoken goals. I’m not a big goal setter. I think it’s more about the process than it is some goal. I’m big on dreams, going after your dreams. As far as specific goals, there are so many different circumstances that can affect the journey. To me, it’s all about the approach of the process. One goal that I have said clearly that we have here is every year to compete to be bowl eligible and take our program to postseason play. I think that is really something that our fans should be excited about.”
“The day that programs start being not excited to be bowl eligible is a sad day. I think some of that is happening in college football at places. I hate that. That’s disappointing. It used to be that’s what kids got really excited for. I think the kids still do a lot of the time. Hopefully we never lose that excitement here to be one of the teams that is eligible to play in postseason.”
WHAT HAVE YOU NOTICED THAT HAS ALLOWED YOU TO NOT GET CONSISTENT PLAY OUT OF THE RUNNING BACKS?
“You probably look at the total number, I care more about the yard per average. We’ve been pretty good actually. Some of that is skewed some with Malik’s scrambling. I recognize that. I think we’ve just got to stay committed to it and get into the flow of the game a little better. When you have a kid like Malik it’s hard not to call plays where you know it’s going to end up in his hands whether it’s a pass or whether it’s a run. He’s that special of a player. I think you’ve got to count him into that run game and look at the total picture of the rushing game. That doesn’t mean that we’re not confident in our tail backs, but when we have to run it is what I want to look at. We do need to improve. We’ve got to be more balanced for sure than we were last Saturday.”
WILL THERE BE AN EXTRA MESSAGE TO THE TEAM ABOUT FOCUSING ON THIS WEEK’S OPPONENT?
“We talked this morning in our class that I present on Mondays. I planned this back in the summer. Our whole deal this week is how do we want to finish? We’re in the last quarter of the season. How do we want to finish? It starts this week. If we want to finish well, then how do you do that? I went through a plan this week, whether you are talking about your spiritual life or your football life, how do you finish well? Hopefully they hear that loud and clear and it comes across this week in the way we prepare and play.”
JASON STRICKER TOOK THE KICKOFFS IN THE 2ND HALF, DO YOU WANT TO STICK WITH HIM OR GO BACK TO ALEX?
“I want whoever is going to do the best job. People ask coaches all the time – are you partial? Truthfully the answer is yes, we are partial to people that are playing well. Ultimately, Tanner (Burns) made that call. I trust in Tanner, and he thought it was the right move at the time. Kudos to Stricker for coming in and doing a nice job. We will see moving forward how that goes.”
