Hugh Freeze Q&A as Liberty prepares for UAB in home opener

Liberty (1-0) opened the season with a dramatic 29-27 victory in four overtimes against Southern Miss on Saturday night. Now, the Flames begin to turn their attention to this coming weekend’s home opener against a very good UAB (1-0) team. The Blazers opened as a 6 point favorite for Saturday’s game with kickoff scheduled for 6 p.m. EST on ESPN+. Here’s everything Liberty head coach Hugh Freeze had to say during his media session, beginning with his opening statement:

“We just finished our Monday morning truth meeting. I let them sleep in a little bit longer after the long night we had. It was a little different Monday so we could try to recoup a little rest. I’m always conscious of it’s just a long season. When you have those long trips there’s no way, you lose a night’s rest. I think most of us in even talking to our kids this morning they were so used to getting up early that when you go to bed at 4 am you still are up at 7 or 8 o’clock in the morning.”

“The truths of the game were just our kids showed an enormous amount of grit, fight, belief. I didn’t think anybody ever really wavered that we weren’t going to find a way to try to win the game. I appreciate that about our staff, our coaches and our players. That was gratifying to see and find a way to win a difficult game on the road when we certainly did not play extremely well. It was very gratifying, as the truth is the ultimate goal is to win a game and put yourself one step closer to being bowl eligible. Our kids found a way to do that. That certainly was quite gratifying.”

“There’s a lot of positives. Special teams wise, we eliminated their return game which was excellent last year. Punt protection was very good, field goal protection very solid. Negatives on special teams, the two penalties were not good, uncalled for and obviously we missed a field goal that could have won the game. But, I was proud of Nick. I thought he swung his leg with confidence all night. I thought he, even handled the miss the way you’re supposed to handle it. I’m excited about the possibilities of him having a really solid year. Didn’t think we rushed the field goal unit very well. We’ve got to rush better. We saw in last night’s game how important and vital that can be to give extreme effort on those plays.”

“Defensively, incredible positives. 75% on third down, which is unheard of. 100% on fourth downs. Great percent in the red zone. 5 takeaways. Held them to field goals every time in OT or a stop. Two goal line stands. Negatives, the five explosive plays we gave them, all could have been eliminated, really, either with poor tackling or just bad technique in coverage. We had 20 missed tackles. Five penalties on that side. Eyes got bad in the second half in the secondary a little bit. I’m a little mad at myself. I just foolishly believed that they were going to go with a traditional quarterback offense. They saved it for the second half which was smart. Came out in our exact Coastal plan in the bowl game, that Sam carried from here. That’s hard. You got a zero coverage. We didn’t work very hard on that stuff and making sure our eyes were disciplined. They hurt us with some explosive plays out of that. We did make some good adjustments there, our staff did. Kind of controlled it when we needed to.”

“Offensively, we had 16 explosive plays. 4th quarter production was really good. In overtime I thought we were solid. Again, five penalties and three turnovers were unacceptable. Our short yardage plan was bad. I’ve got to get those fixed. We can’t have this many penalties, that’s just not the sign of a great disciplined football team. We’ve got to get our short yardage stuff fixed on offense. Again, the bottom line, kids found a way to win. Give them a lot of credit for the leadership and the grit that they showed.”

DO YOU HAVE ANYTHING ON CHARLIE BREWER?

“Charlie is having his scan tomorrow and then surgery to follow. The scan is just to see if they are going to put pins or a plate in it. The plate would be the shorter term, is my understanding, I’m not sure which one they are going with yet.”

IS THERE A TIMETABLE?

“If it’s the plate, they think he can be back earlier, earlier meaning 5-6 weeks. Pins, probably 7-8 weeks.”

WAS IT HIS HAND?

“It’s in the base of his thumb.”

DO YOU KNOW WHICH PLAY HE GOT INJURED?

“The first series. He played a few snaps after it, but on one of the throws hit one of their helmets.”

WHAT IS YOUR PLAN AT QB THIS WEEK?

“Play one of them. We’re fixing to get together as soon as they get through here. We will start looking at what the plan is and what suits everybody between JB, Nate, and Kaidon and kind of go from there.”

WHAT IS TJ GREEN’S STATUS?

“I think TJ is still a week away. Last week, I was told probably the Wake Forest week.”

WHAT DID YOU THINK ABOUT THE POISE KAIDON HAD IN THE GAME?

“I couldn’t be prouder. I thought he elevated the whole team, all the players around him. There’s been no secret, we’ve felt like he is extremely talented. It’s just a matter of him handling everything that comes with playing that position. Hopefully, this motivates him to try and make sure that the details of his life, the details of preparation, the details of studying the game like it needs to be studied, and the offense like it needs to be studied, hopefully that motivates him because there’s no question, I mean everyone saw and witnessed what his potential is, obviously we’ve got to eliminate the disaster plays. We’ve got a chance to win the game there, I believe with under six minutes, tried to force on where I think he could have run it probably all the way to like the five yard line. Then, there’s other plays he makes phenomenal throws. That throw he made after the holding call to Jerome and then the one in the two point conversion, that window is as big as that chair. He has that skill set to be able to do that. I was very proud of him. Hopefully this really motivates him to go to the next level as a redshirt-freshman and embrace the opportunity that could be in front of him.”

TO BE DOWN 7 AND TO GO IN THE GAME, WAS THAT SOMETHING WHERE YOU SAY, THAT’S WHAT I WANTED TO SEE OUT OF YOU?

“Yeah, it was pretty exciting to witness and to watch. After they got the explosive pass play and got down to the five. I thought we managed our timeouts very well. We had all three of them at the end of both halves. The discussion right then is should we let them score so we get the ball back with adequate time. I got my timeouts. Or I could use all three of my timeouts and maybe hold them to a field goal. I just felt like we could go down and score. What a drive. We didn’t even have to use our other timeouts. We practice that all the time. It was a great drive to see him take us down and score. Now, we’ve just got to get the other stuff cleaned up. The last possession of the fourth quarter, if he takes care of that, hopefully we’re not in the overtime game and they don’t have the opportunity to go back down and maybe score if we can milk the clock there and do it. But there is no question, for his first outing, not getting significant reps for practice and the game plan, I thought it was way above average.”

WHAT DOES GETTING HIM PREPARED LOOK LIKE?

“That’s what I mean by does he seize this opportunity to study and plan and prepare. Even in the success that we had, he called some wrong protections. He got out of trouble a couple times, but we’ve got to set those protections right. We’ve got to go the right way on a called run play. Those are the things that he’s…he’s very capable of doing it, we just got to lock him in and make sure we feel very confident about the entire game plan should he be the guy.”

“I didn’t think JB played bad. Obviously the turnover right there, and he missed a couple of open receivers, but he also did some good things. I think Nate can do some good things. I said that all along, I thought we had four guys that could make some plays. Let’s see how the week goes.”

WHAT WAS IT ABOUT JB THAT YOU FELT YOU NEEDED TO MAKE THE CHANGE?

“I didn’t think we had any juice at that moment. Obviously the pick six gave them the lead, I believe. He had missed a couple open throws. I just thought maybe, let’s see if Kaidon Salt can give us a little spark.”

UAB IS A GOOD TEAM, THEY LOOKED GOOD IN WEEK 1, WHAT CAN YOU EXPECT FROM THEM?

“We are a 6.5, 7-point underdog at home against a team that has probably been the best team in Conference USA over the last few years, arguably one of the best. Physically gifted, extremely physical. On defense, the secondary I think is extremely talented. Held their first opponent under 100 yards rushing and very little passing, also. They play fast. They were 16th ranked in the country last year in defense. I think Southern is going to be a top 25 defense and we’re looking at another one this week that’s the same. They have takeaways. Last year, they had 12 takeaways in 13 of their games. Linebackers, they are good. They mix it up between the odd and even. It’s hard. These defensive coordinators have gotten like us offensive guys. They are very multiple now. It is very hard, it used to be a lot easier. Folks would just line up in four down, cover 4. I felt like we were going to score a lot of points. Now, it’s every coverage and every front. He makes play calling a lot harder.”

“Then, offensively they’ve got the quarterback back. The running backs are very talented, interchangeable starters like last year. Wide receivers are probably the deepest we might see all year. Very dangerous threats there. They use their tight ends extremely well. They get in 12 personnel, but it’s not 12 personnel really with the pictures they give you. Coach Vincent has taken over but he’s been with Bill Clark a long time. I’m sure that they remember last year, the disappointing loss they had to us, opening their stadium. It will be a very, very difficult challenging game for us again.”

DO YOU THINK COLLEGE TEAMS SHOULD BE ABLE TO SCRIMMAGE OTHER TEAMS IN THE PRESEASON?

“I think it’s one of those things that the leadership, whoever, I’m not even sure if it’s the rules committee or the NCAA, it’s just one of those things where it makes zero sense that we don’t get to do that. I don’t understand it, never will. If they don’t want us to do it in the fall then let us do it in the spring and have a scrimmage. I’ve made the proposal every conference I’ve been in, let’s have a spring game. Let’s charge $10 for every spring game and give every bit of it to charity after you pay the visiting team’s travel, buses. Do it with local teams if you can, whether it’s an FCS opponent or whoever. Let’s all adopt a charity and give back to communities that we operate in. I think it’s crazy. They talk about health and safety of our kids, then the most dangerous situations we’re in is when we’re scrimmaging each other. We’ve got 22 people of our own out there. You play somebody else, you only have 11, the percentages go down. It doesn’t make any sense to me that we can’t do that. If NFL can get together and control a scrimmage, certainly two of us colleges that are not playing each other on that given year can get together and let’s practice against each other one time, probably the second week of camp would be the best to do it. I don’t know, it just makes no sense that we can’t truthfully, and I don’t even know the reason behind it.”

WHAT ABOUT A MIXED PRACTICE?

“Same thing, let us and Virginia, we’re not playing this year, let’s get together and have a mixed practice one day or two days. Have a couple live periods in it. Find out a little bit more about your team. It would make perfect sense to me and to most coaches, I would think.”

WHAT DO YOU EXPECT IS THE BIGGEST JUMP YOUR TEAM MAKES FROM WEEK 1 TO WEEK 2?

“I would hope it is a reduce in penalties and turnovers, for sure, and situational awareness. On another positive note, I’ve just got to give props to our nutritionist Danielle and to our strength staff Dom, I thought our kids were in phenomenal shape. Played 100 plays of football, I don’t know how long the game lasted, I didn’t look at that, but not a single cramp. I thought our D-Line dominated their offensive line, I thought in the fourth quarter. I thought our O-Line did much better in the 4th quarter too. Give props to that, I’m happy where we are there, but I would hope to see us be more disciplined and better situational awareness.”

HOW WOULD YOU GRADE OUT YOUR OFFENSIVE LINE AND RUNNING BACKS FROM WEEK 1?

“We averaged 5 yards a carry, 5.1, but some of that is skewed because of the quarterback scrambles, probably. We rushed for 280-something, that’s a solid night. Would I like to see it formed a little differently? Yes, but some of the stuff, they were playing us a lot of 2-high early on in the game. Were not going to let us throw RPOs. When you do that, the quarterback draw game and run game is one of the first things I like to go too. It was very good to us. You empty it out, their box is really light. Kind of tried to play to what their giving us too. Yeah, I would like to see it improve. We didn’t play terrible up front, I thought our pad level was a little high early on in the game. I thought Dae Dae and Shedro ran it hard. I would like to get us some more production in the traditional run game.”

JOHN KOURTIS PLAYED CENTER IN THE 2ND HALF, IS THAT SOMETHING YOU SEE GOING FORWARD?

“I don’t care who starts. These depth charts that y’all all worry about and throw out, who cares. You’re going to play hopefully, 9 or 10 linemen. We should have played more. Two of our guys played 94 snaps, that’s too many. I had a conversation with Coach K this morning about that. We can’t do that. It’s a long season. We’ve got to play more guys. The plan was all along to play both. Cam made a couple mistakes there that really cost us. One on a play we didn’t even have a play called. 4th down, we’re not snapping it even if they jump, unless they blow it dead and make contact with us. We snap the ball. I’ve got to coach that better, obviously. The plan was to play John all along. We believe in both of them. We needed them both.”

THE CFP WILL EXPAND TO 12, HOW MUCH DOES THAT BENEFIT A PROGRAM LIKE LIBERTY?

“I saw Ian McCaw tweet out “Boom.” That’s pretty exciting for Ian, for him to do something like that. I would echo those sentiments. I just think the chances are greater now than they were, for us. Do I still think it’s an easy road? No. Do I think it is a possible road? Yes and I am all in to possibilities. If you have a special year like we had in 2020 and you get to that 10 wins, have a couple good wins here and there, you’re right in the discussions. Get a few breaks with some other schools losing some critical games, and all of a sudden you find your way in. I think there’s a lot of questions that I would have. Should we shorten the season to 10 or 11 games? Save a little money. Some of those teams, that’s a long season on a student-athlete. But our game is changing and it is more and more about the money than it is being the student-athlete in some people’s eyes. But there’s certainly a greater chance for schools like us to be in the mix with the expansion. I think that’s a real positive. I hope that the other bowl games don’t lose some of the excitement that I know our kids have experienced. I think it’s important to go to bowl games. That’s why you play, but I’m all in on it expanding, I just don’t know exactly what that looks like. I like the fact that we have a better chance now than we did a week ago.”

HOW IS CHARLIE TAKING THIS?

“Very hurt. Very, very disappointed and down. Obviously he was wanting to rewrite his last chapter of college football quite differently than what it’s going to be. That’s one of those challenges in life that we get. I just talked to our team for 30 minutes on our theme for this week that I had planned a long time ago and it was a message that I’m sure Charlie needed to hear this morning. We’re all on a Potter’s Wheel. We all have cracks, we all got fractures, and sometimes we even get broken, but we’ve got to get back on the wheel and repair those and stay in the fight and don’t lose heart. That’s challenging sometimes. I’m sure he’s going through that right now and hurt for him.”

DO YOU SEE HIM COACHING THE QBS DOWN ON THE FIELD DURING THE GAMES THIS YEAR?

“I don’t know. He’s not the most vocal guy. He kind of respects other people, but we’ll see. We’ll talk to him about that.”