Just wanna make sure you look right back. Well, that could take, well, yeah, we do. We need more than a camera now. He's picking on you chip. I don't know. And you didn't say anything, did you? You were just, oh, you did? He being a smart? Yes, no question. Um Welcome everybody really excited to be three and oh, with, uh, maybe the toughest schedule in the country. Um, in fact, um, there's only four teams nationally that have, have won two nonconference games against power five. So that's pretty cool and, and the guys have, uh, fought it. They, they've been physical, uh, they've had an overtime game so they've won a close game. Uh, and they've had two games that they, um, um, one in the fourth quarter and, and beat the other team down. Uh, we have not been four and o since 1997. So this is a huge week for us. We also haven't responded very well. Um, after positives, we, we, we haven't handled success very well and that's part of the growing of your program. We, we gotta get used to winning again and we got gotta think we're gonna win and plan on winning instead of, uh, feeling too good about ourselves getting the Pats on the back and, and not being as ready to play the, the next week. So, uh, that's important. But, uh, uh, three and oh, for back to back seasons for the first time since 96 97 uh, three and o for the third time in four years. Um, it's only three and, oh, start, um, the other two times back to back we in 96 and 97 A as well. It's also the first time we've beaten a big 10 and SEC team in the same season since 1976. So a lot of positive things happening right now with our program moving forward, uh, Jeremy can get you all these stats or any of these stats if, if you need them, a player of the game offensively was Nate mccollum 15 catches 100 and 65 yards and a touchdown. Uh, he had the most catches of any player during this regular season and he was one catch away from, um, tying Josh down's, uh record for most catches in a game if I'd have known that we would have thrown him one more ball. Uh, but he was one shy of a school record. Uh, so he's, uh, good to have him out there. Um, glad that he's, well, um, obviously you see the impact we thought he would have on our team and you you had what we thought the impact his uh Walker would have had on our team. Uh They were two great choices in the transfer portal to, to give us great speed outside and, and change games. And um that's not the only reason we were disappointed in Tez not playing because we thought he should. But obviously he, he would have a great impact on our team and put himself in a, a tremendous uh, position with the, with the NFL and, and within a money as, as well. So those are more reasons that, that we've been upset, uh, defensive player of the game. Power Echols played his best game, had nine tackles, had an unbelievable interception very much like the one he had against Oregon in the bowl game. Uh, that changed the game because we knew it was gonna be a possession game, a number of plays game and, and they were moving the ball, they were holding the ball. Uh, it was a hot day. We, we wanted to keep their defense on the field and, and this was a game changing play so really, really proud of, uh, power and the two special teams players of the game were Leon Boyd. Uh, Liam's never played in the game before. He was a, um, a walk on that, uh, was red shirted last year at Clemson and transferred in here and he had four touchbacks of his six Kickoffs. So he, and, and he had great placement on the ball. So we're really, really proud of him stepping in when, uh, Ryan Cobe, uh, had the lower body injury last week and, uh, Noah Burnett waited his chance again. He had the 42 yard field goal and kicked four extra points. So, uh, our kicking game was, was really good and those guys stepped up. Uh, another notable guy on offense was Drake. He had, uh, completed 29 of 40 passes for two touchdowns, 414 yards. Uh, he did have the, the two interceptions, one of them, he just under threw and he's human. We don't think he's human because he's the best out there. Uh, and the second when he got hit, uh, which was just, uh, an un unfortunate throw. But, uh, uh, he does things that absolutely amaze me and it's just, uh, completing ball after ball and with confidence and the number of the, I'm, I'm, I get mad at our defense for not stopping a quarterback run. Drake makes yards every week. I mean, it's hard to stop the quarterback from scrambling when you've got a guy that can run. That's why you need an athletic quarterback. And, uh, he's one of the best at the country at, uh, uh, finding the yards, uh, having a great feel for it and, and, uh, getting the first down offensively, uh, we were good overall but we've got room for improvement, uh, probably the, the most improved two areas. We're third down in red zone. Uh, we were 12 of 17, uh, in third downs and that was against a team last year. That was fifth in the country and third down defense, uh, Minnesota is really good and they're, they're really good on defense. They play hard and they're well coached and, uh, we've made over 60% of our third downs in three consecutive games, uh, for the first time since they were keeping these stats back in 1990. So, uh, we're doing a much better job on our third downs than, than we've done. And we were three for three with red zone touchdowns and, and, um, that's something we have not been doing our, our last few years as well. So, um, and, and conversely, they were four for 12 on third down. Uh, and we did not do a good job against a state on third downs last week with conversion. So that was a huge improvement and they were one of two in touchdowns and in the red zone. So, um, 519 yards, um, we wanna be balanced, but we don't wanna be stubborn. I told, uh, chip and the offensive coaches at half time, if they had too many in the box throw the ball and we ran the ball one time in the third quarter and, and then we, um, came back out in the fourth quarter and, um, we had 16 rushes for 76 yards when they knew we were gonna run it, we knew we were gonna run it and that's, that's important. So, um, uh, they had, uh, four rushes in the fourth quarter for nine yards. So we had the ball 11 minutes and 26 seconds to their 3, 34. Uh, and for the game, we had the ball, uh, 76 play or 77 plays to their 61. And that was a real concern coming in because they had, uh not allowed another team to have over 50 plays uh on the average of, of offense. So, uh dominating the fourth quarter was really, really important to us. The time of possession for the day was 33 minutes and 10 seconds to 26. 50. Uh All of those things were really, really important, uh going through. Um So like the, the, the way we're, we're playing complimentary football, we're keeping the ball defense getting off the field. All of those things really helped us with time of possession on Saturday. I didn't like the way we, we, uh our production on first half, we had too many second longs and we overcame them and we got back to third down, but we had too many plays on first down specifically runs that, that did not make enough yardage to, to put us in the positions we need. And we can't have the two turnovers. We had to, they had to, uh we did stop one of their fourth downs that they did not stop us. So that put us in a better position there. Uh, defensively, we said we did a great job on, on third downs. Uh, we held, uh Minnesota to 100 and 33 yards passing. They were 10 of 30 I thought, uh, the, the fact that we were more aggressive with our disguise, we were more aggressive with our, our, our defensive backs. Uh, we, we were in people's face more, uh, we had more opportunities to, to make plays than, than in our past. So we actually had the two interceptions, but we had eight pass breakups and in our past few years, we haven't done a good job of, of being there. So we're around the ball now and when you do, that's when you start getting more turnovers and, and gives you a chance to win more ball games. Defense did a great job with sudden change after the interception that, that came back to the 16 yard line plus 16. We, we, in our past, we haven't done a good job of standing up and, and stopping people. Nate mccullum made a great play to tackle the, the guy he could have gone back for a touchdown. Uh, but then the defense stepped up and, and held them to three points and that's something that, uh, um, is, is definitely an improvement. Um, we gave up, uh, 100 and 70 yard rushes which is too much. We gave up 2 19 last week, uh three of of those uh runs for the, um, 170 yards were 80 plays. I mean, 80 yards, uh three of those plays. So, uh that, that's what we've got to do. We, we had three explosive plays that we were in position to stop and didn't, so we can't give up explosive runs like that. So outside of those three, we held them to 3.2 yards per carry and, and, uh, on the other 28 rushes, but, but that doesn't matter. We, we gave up 80 yards. Um, and, and, and we just didn't get where we were supposed to get. Uh, we've got to play those better and we've shown those to the players and the other thing that really hurt us and, um, we, we gave them a, a first down and on third and long with a penalty, but also they had two quarterback runs. So we've still got to figure out a way to do a better job, uh with the, the quarterback runs and, and trying to stop them. Um, but off of their turnovers, they scored three points, the two turnovers that we got, we only scored three points. So, uh the turnovers ended up balancing out special teams. We did a nice job as we said earlier with the kickers. Uh our punter did a good job kicking it inside the, the 20 uh, uh we had Drake in a, a shotgun formation where we can actually run the play or punt and he punted it inside the 15, um, which we felt like, uh, gave us an advantage. Um, and, uh, we had the one really bad punt, the, the 22 yard punt, which is unlike Ben and something that we can't do. We were fortunate that they had a block in the back, a personal foul that, that gave us 15 more in that situation and didn't hurt us. Um Pittsburgh, uh, they always play you tough. They're one of the toughest teams in this league. Um Traditionally, um I love coach Pat Nazi. He's, uh, he's tough, he's a competitor. Uh They're not happy with their start. Um We've been up there the, the last two times and played overtime games and lost both. Um This will that they'll be ready to play. Uh They'll be excited to play. Um So, so we've got to go do a great job and go fight our guts out and as I said, be able to handle success because, uh, we know how they're gonna play. The question will be, how are we gonna play? Uh, because we haven't always responded well, when people are patting us on the back. So that's really important that we, we do that this week questions. Now, you were talking earlier about, uh, you know, the team traditionally not responding as well as some positives and things like that, what do you want to see, you know, in that process of their response? Like, what do you want the response to, to the, uh, I want the response to look like you just got beat and there's so many things that you've got to improve on your team to get better and you're playing to a standard. Uh, you're not a team that plays up and down. I always loved Coach Osborne's team at Nebraska. I thought they, they played, I saw him play Northwestern in the Alamo Bowl once and they were disappointed because they didn't get what they wanted in the bowl game and they beat him like 59 to nothing. And, and I always told our teams at Texas, you, you, you play to a standard period each week and you gotta play to a standard of the best team when we won the national championship after we beat Oklahoma, we started playing to the standard of us c because they were number one, we were number two and that was really stupid at that time. But we said, uh, let's compare our stats every Sunday to us. CS, not the Oklahoma States, not the Kansas States. We're not playing them. We're playing for the national championship. So to get there, you've got to play to the best of your ability. So we actually did that. So, uh, we're trying to get this team to do the same, uh, understand what we didn't do. Well, don't start sitting around talking about what she did. Well, everybody knows what she did. Well, uh, but what didn't you do? Well as is what didn't I do? Well, what didn't our coaches do? Well, uh, and I'm on our coaches this morning, like we lost the game and that's what I told him. Why did we give up 3, uh, 80 80 yards in three plays? We didn't coach him. Right. We didn't have them in the right place that's on. You don't blame the kid if he didn't fill the right gap, if he didn't play with the right leverage. That's coaching, that's you. Uh, why did we, we threw two fades a 2nd and, and 10 in the red zone, both of our in complete out of bounds. Why did we throw them? Why, why didn't we have a better call than that at that time? So, uh, we, we want you your, your best when you're uncomfortable and, and, uh, if you get comfortable in this business, you better look out because about the time you think something's not gonna happen. It does and just look at the scores around the country every Sunday. I go in there and show players teams that have better players that lost the game. So it's not the best team. It's the team that plays the best on that day. And, and I've said, what do you think they were thinking last Sunday before they got beat? How do you think they practiced on Tuesday? What were they thinking about on Thursday? They sure didn't think that team had any chance to beat them because none of us thought they did. And, and that's the, the mentality you got to have is get up every morning, uh, have an edge every morning and, and get better every day. I, I gave up the coaches a quote this morning. You, you, you get better or worse every day and every week you're not gonna stay the same period. So, are we gonna get better this week or are we gonna get worse? Uh, that's, that's the question mark and, and only the people in this building can handle that. No, because we're not good enough to do that yet. We don't have anybody. We're chasing, we're trying to get yourself better. So, what we're doing is we're taking those three plays for the 80 yards and we're showing them to the entire team. Don't be griping about the defensive call. Don't be griping about somebody else's play. You didn't get in your gap period. Here is the reason that, uh, the protection one is good. We didn't play as good inside. Our guards didn't play as good and they're banged up, but we, we got to play better at inside. You're only as strong as is the middle in sports. Everybody's only as strong in the middle. So if you don't play well in the defensive line, you don't play well in the middle of the offensive line, usually gonna lose the game and, and, and quarterback and running backs and, and safeties. It's just right down the middle. Baseball is the same catcher, pitcher, shortstop, center fielder. It, it doesn't change whenever you look at it. Uh, the middle has to be strong and, and we've got to play stronger in those areas during the off season and you talk about going from good to you. You sort of view this weekend as a lit test for the team to see if they Yeah, Michael, it's, it's a good point, but every week's a litmus test and, and I quit saying good to great because we didn't play great against state. And I said we should have, there wasn't any reason not to, so I'm gonna quit talking about great till you start showing me. You wanna be great. Uh, it's, it's a conversation. I, I wanna see it. I don't wanna hear it. So we've quit talking about it. I don't use that anymore. Uh, and, and what you gotta do is you gotta go do it every week. Winning. Playing college football is really hard. I admire those kids so much that play regardless of whether you're playing in the game or not being out there is really hard. I mean, they, they have to work so hard year round and some of them don't get in a game. Some of them have 12 games that they play for, for the, the 300 plus days that they work. So it's really, really hard, winning is even harder. And I've told them why I work so hard and lose. If you're gonna do that, get ready to play each week. And in TV, it, it amazed me that people cannot be ready to play. How can you have 12 out of 300 something and not be ready to play? And it happens, it happens every week and it may be that they're ok but they're, they're not at their, their peak and you've got to play your best to win because everybody's pretty good transfer portal is, is made a lot more parody in college football than ever before. I'm, I'm watching um I, I have this thing on, on youtube at home where I watch highlights of a lot of the games across the country. It's amazing to me how many people have good players and I watch him all. I try to figure out where did he come from? Good Lord. He's good. Um And that's just, that's just what we're looking at. So uh let, let's really press ourselves, make ourselves very uncomfortable and, and try to get to some place we haven't been before and that's what we're trying to do. You had five sons who change situations if you included the outside kit and you've given up two. Is that an example of the A team? And what is that. Yes. Uh Andrew experience, positive and negative experience. I got a lot of both so I understand when those things come. Uh But II, I felt like that, uh the fact I was going down before the half to, to tell the team, this is a critical series. All that, uh said Gray was telling the defense better than I was gonna tell him what I was gonna tell him. And that's when I said, yes, we're, we're, we're getting better, we're getting there. Uh The fact we're playing so many more people is helping us on defense. We played eight defensive linemen, we played eight secondary players. We've never done that. So for Don Chapman to play 35 plays instead of 65 he's got 35 better ones in him because he's fresh and then you're developing depth and you've got better team around, you're less likely to get people hurt. Uh, so that helps too. So we've got older, more experienced players that can actually play too deep now instead of putting a guy in and letting him play like, uh Travis Shaw, I think played 15 plays. Uh, and that's, that's progress for him. Dez Evans played great. Jacoby Cowan made one of the best plays of the game. Uh, and he might have only played 78 plays, but, uh, he was highlighted as a guy who made a difference in the game because he held him on a, a third down and three. I think that ended up being a third and two, third and three. It ended up being 1/4 and three and they punted. So that's a huge play in this game. So all of those things are better Power Echols so said, playing power stepped it up. We were able to play a Campbell a series, the third series of the game, we need to play him more. We need to play him 10 or 15. We got to get our, our, uh, guard area straightened out. It's amazing when one position gets hurt and it, it makes no sense, but it does and it, and it gets hurt a lot. So we're pretty healthy everywhere except in the offensive line. So we got to get those guys healthy. No chip after we ran for 319 yards. Um, those backs are really good too. So that's the one thing that is an advantage for us right now is we can run it and we can throw it and everybody knows we can do both of them pretty well. So we, we've got to, we've got to go into the game with a balanced thought and then whatever they take away, we've got to use the other one and, and I, I said the word stupid on Saturday, which I shouldn't have said. I said, let's don't be stupid and it's not stupid. It's stubborn. Let's don't run up the middle if they've got too many in there and, and just act like we're gonna be tough, but we're, we're gonna get beat, be smart, be smart and, and don't be stubborn and, and you wanna run it. But I thought what the coaches did on, uh, Saturday at half time was unbelievable. They went from Drake's hot. We got guys open, let's throw it. So we ran the ball one time in the third quarter, which I would have never dreamed and wouldn't have thought sitting there pregame that, that would have been a smart thing to do. And then we ran it 16 times in the fourth quarter for 76 yards. So, uh, take what they give you. There's the old quote, um, dance with the one that you is the old quote and Drake was hot and I'm, I've never seen him better and, and people anymore. Uh, it, it's like it was with Colt mccoy. If Colt mccoy ever thrown in completion, we all said, what's wrong with him? Well, that's the way it is with Drake right now. We, if he ever throws an incompletion, we say what's wrong with Drake, man? It's that way in practice. I went up to chip one day and Drake had thrown two incompletions and I said, what's wrong with Drake today? He said, coach, he's 8 to 12 or 10 or 12 or, you know, and I said I got it. I got it. So, uh, but that, that's, that's where we're headed do you feel like these past two weeks with that statement been primer for that kind of, how do you think your team, how to respond to that? How is it going? Yes. The really, the first three games are as physical as we'll play all year. These are really physical football teams and, and, um, I think, uh, PJ Fleck at Minnesota was 17 and one in, uh, nonconference games. So 19 and one is a really good football team, well coached, tough, uh, coming in here undefeated. Um I was proud of our fans. Uh We've got an unbelievable student body that helps us, we gotta get back to winning at home and now we've won two games at home. That, that will help us because we had a three game stretch after the open date here. Uh, but this is the most, one of the most physical teams we could have played after those three physical games. So, uh, yes, uh we, we've got to continue to do a better job stopping the run and disrupting quarterbacks coach will talk about that in a minute. I'm not going to get into them, but we had a lot of pressures. We had a lot of hits on the quarterback. Um, even though the sacks don't look the same, it still pressures hits making him uncomfortable or all very valuable. Um, and, and I think part of that's because we're, we're doing a better job with our secondary of getting up there. Tough. But, but yes, we're banged up. We're sore. Um, tough game. Gotta get ready to go. Uh, a lot of people are banged up and sore but a lot of people aren't three and, oh, either. So, uh, we should be taking high energy and confidence to Pittsburgh. Um, unlike a lot of people who haven't played anybody. Do you think this is the type of team that looks forward to a fight you guys or is that, does that? Does that? Yeah, we, we, we didn't look forward to the upstate fight. We did one in three. So we'll see Saturday night about midnight. I don't know, ask me, you'll, you'll know, you don't have to ask me. You'll, you'll tell by the look on my face when I walk in a press conference. Yes. Uh, yes, I did. We had the, one of the best weeks of practice this week I've ever been around, guys were upbeat on Tuesday. They were excited. I could tell there was a buzz and I told them that yesterday, I said you're sitting here right now and you've got to get rid of this one, which is gonna be hard to do with everybody patting you on the back and you've got to get excited about going to Pittsburgh where you haven't won and, and we'll see, we'll see tomorrow and, and usually, you know, on, on Tuesday and, and it, it was amazing. We had great practice for South Carolina. Great practice for Minnesota. They were ok for Upstate and we played ok. So they, they usually tell you, and I'm telling you it's really hard to flip it when you see it. It's, it's like when you're talking to them on a week like that, they're looking at you. Like, what are you mad about? We're three and, oh, and I said, yeah, I'm, I'm mad because I want you to be four and, oh, you can't get comfortable. Absolutely. Absolutely. We, we won the coastal and didn't win another game because we hadn't, won the coast in a long time. We won nine. We hadn't won nine in a long time. So we got comfortable and you can't, you can't get comfortable in life. You can't get in, in football is a microcosm of life. That's what it is and you can't, you can't get comfortable. You gotta, gotta go back to work. So, uh, we'll see this week. I know Pitt's gonna play hard and I know they're gonna play well, I don't know about us. I think we will and I'm gonna be really disappointed if we don't. But, but we, that's, it's something last time we were at this place we didn't play very well. So it's, it's something that we, we need to do. We haven't done well. You mentioned the red zone and the success you have against Minnesota just going through these first three games. You've been able to run the ball really well. In, in that short yardage, how much easier does that finish and drive? And you get that far and you can, everything's tighter in the red zone. Um, so it's harder to run the ball and, and I, I do think, uh, Chip's experience with Gus Miles on in the run game and his past, uh, the fact that, uh, Clyde Christensen and, and, uh, Freddie Kitchens are here in the NFL. So much tougher because the players are bigger and stronger when you get in the red zone and they don't even use as many formations as we do. Uh All of those things have really helped us with who we are in the red zone but don't listen to butter however we did two years ago, but it was so weird because you had a monsoon on your possession at time. I think it was either Karen Kelly had a, nearly had a dick. You still think about that. Yeah, we, we had lost four overtime games and two of them at pit and two of them great games and they're, they're hard fought games. And uh the, the game last year here was a real physical game. We, we lost two players, we lost Dez Evans and uh Noah Taylor in this game, which really hurt us as, as we were going down the stretch at the end of the year. So, uh this will be a physical battle on Saturday night and there's no reason to think it'll be anything other than it's been when we go up there in the country right now, that one of maybe the elements that warms your coaching heart, you know, something like that. And is that just a of having a great quarterback in Drake? I mean, those two things, yes, running the ball and having a great quarterback are really important. If you, if you can't run the ball, uh, you're depending on the, the, the play and the health of one person and your program is more important than that. You can't depend on one person to be great all the time. It just, you can't or if the receivers are not hot one day or if you're not protecting him, uh, you get him hit too much. So, uh, running the ball in this game is so important. Um, we, they, we, we ran it for over 100 on Saturday but it was hard. They ran it for more than we did. Uh, and we were still able to win, usually the team that runs the ball, the best, wins the game and, and, but when you have a great quarterback and they stack the, the box so much, it gives you 414 yards of rushing, I mean of, of receiving and, and that gives you a chance to win the game with some huge plays. The should have been a touchdown to Kari Morales. He's tackled at the six inch line. Uh, he threw the great ball down to, um, Nate early in the game and that's a, a ball, he's falling back and running to his right and he throws a strike, Drake's just an unbelievable player. Uh, but those running backs are good too and we've got to do a better job in the offensive line of making sure that we get hats on hats so we can make some yards and run a game. Was it third and 12th? Yeah, man. Sense of earlier week. The best question, you know, and p the best coaches that I've known that kept teams from getting comfortable, had the best players and they were too deep and you put them on the bench if they weren't ready to play and, and when, and, and that's why I feel like we shouldn't be as tired on defense. Uh, Aaron Crawford played 98 plays against Virginia Tech our first year here in six overtimes. Now, how could he possibly come back and be ready to practice on Tuesday? He's exhausted at £320. Uh, so playing eight defensive linemen, they should be fresher on Tuesday playing eight defensive backs. You're fresher, but you also want to get more snaps and I've said you get your snaps in practice, you don't get your snaps in the game, so you've got to earn it. So what I've seen is when you got good players and you put them on the bench if they don't play well, they have a tendency to want to play well because, uh, in practice because they wanna play and, and that's the best teams that I've been around. Can you this, uh, not at linebacker, uh, because we had three transfers. Uh, Eugene, as was one of the players of the week in the SEC last week at Auburn made 12 tackles. Um, he would be here with us, uh, playing at linebacker right now. Uh, Dilworth left, um, Ethan West got hurt. He's not playing. So you, you're, you're thin at that position. Uh, we're thin in the offensive line probably because we've had three offensive line coaches in five years and, uh, recruiting has changed. Some of those guys got hurt. Um, we're, we're thin at quarterback because we don't have experience if, if Drake goes out. Um, Tez really hurts us at wide receiver because that would, you need six and we, we've got five right now. We're playing, we got to find more now that he's not playing. We gotta get somebody in his position, uh, defensively other than linebacker. We're pretty good. We're pretty deep. We can roll fresh people and, and that's, uh, um, uh, a huge thing as you get toward the seventh game because people are just beaten down mi a plus or minus. Now, art that's a, an eight day discussion and we've got about 15 seconds here to exactly lead to lack of jealousy. Do you? Um, I'm talking to head coaches across the country that say I'm depleted in this position because I got two that left for the transfer portal and it was too late for me to get anybody else and I've had three hurt and that, that's, that's causing all of us, uh, to have to look at roster management a lot differently than ever before, not coming into the year. There was a lot of discussion from an AC C standpoint about success against other leagues. You guys, Syracuse and Duke be the big 10, uh Florida State against the SEC. One kind of curious what your thoughts have been so far when you around the AC C. Yeah, Aaron, I'm really proud of our league. We've got a lot of good teams and, and um with all the real talk, um it, it distracts from who the teams are, these teams are playing well and they're well coached and Syracuse going to Purdue and winning was huge. I mean, that's huge. Um So you start looking at Duke's been unbelievable. Uh And I watch some of those games every Sunday night when I get in and then I get to watch highlights. So I, I watch everybody that we play and everybody I think is good nationally and I look at us compared to them and see what we've got to do to get where they are uh in different cases. So, uh but uh Uh, yeah, and, and then you've got, uh, Florida State dominates LSU and, and they come down to having to hold on to beat Boston College. So that's what I mean. You better play, you, you better play every week. You better go in mad if, if don't get comfortable, I got to use, you've done this a lot and getting guys to play. Well, we talked about earlier, how is your approach? Sort of altered? Uh, Tommy, I was, uh, offensive coordinator at Oklahoma and Coach Ls was coming in to do a TV game and I had dinner with him on Thursday night and he said something that has really stuck with me. And through the years, he said that, uh, um, he said, what kind of team do you think you have? And I said, coach, I don't know, you know, how do we know till we play? And he said, well, here's my experience, you're gonna play great four times a year and you were playing 11 at that time. And he said there's seven times where you're gonna have to figure out a way to win because they're not gonna play at their, their height of enthusiasm every game they can't do it. They're just, they're human beings, they're not video games. And I sat there and I thought about that and he said, so look at your schedule and unless there's seven that you're better than, and four that you've got to beat, then you're in trouble, you're not gonna have a great year. So every year, I'm like a little kid saying, OK, who, who's this? And how good is this one? How good is that one? Uh But what I have found is the more people that you can play, the fresher you are and the, the, the more pressure there is on a young man to play well, every day or he gets benched, the better chance you've got that they're gonna play on Saturday. You can't say all the magic words to get them to play. There's 100 and 20 of them and they're all different. There's a key to each kid and every kid is different. So how can a coach get all of those to go? Now, the, the assistant coach can get hot points and, and try to get them ready and individual meetings are more important than team meetings because people will listen in individual meetings because it's about them. If you got a guy that's not a good listener in a team meeting, he's probably gonna drift and fall asleep anyway. So the one that needs to hear it is not gonna hear it. Uh The one that's ready to play is gonna hear it. Power Echols doesn't need me to be talking to him in a team meeting, he's gonna be ready to play. Um But I, I think the, the, the fact that the, the more players you get the better players you get and the more a guy has to earn his right to play every day, like real life, the better chance you got to be good injured in the spring. A lot of those guys. Yeah, I hope so. He, he's one we'll see on Tuesday does he feel too good about himself? Uh, had some trouble on a couple of plays. Uh, in fact, it's so weird. His interception was caused by Dez Evans. We've been so hard. People have been so critical of Dez, he hit the quarterback as the quarterback was throwing the ball so I could have intercepted it and, and it was good, but Dez Evans made the interception, not, not, uh, our money, uh, but Armani should feel good about himself. Now as we feel good about ourselves, are we that person that motivates ourselves to do better than good or are we the person that gets complacent and, and we don't know him very well yet? So that'll be a, that'll be a, a good test on, uh, on Tuesday, you were able, you have been able to get dr without hurting people or attempting to help people. Um, but yeah, it took a couple of big hits of that. Uh, I mean, I guess there's only so much you can do to keep him from. I mean, not, I'm not trying to prevent him from doing, he's playing football, but like, where are you with that? And trying to keep him as clean and as you know, but yeah, we love Drake. We part of what we love is his competitiveness because that's who he is. But also we gotta be smart and I told him last year that it's, it's selfish for you to take hits because we need you to play. So let's be smart. But the there, there's a fine line between competitive and smart. If it's to win the game, go dive uh other day, step out of bounce. Don't, don't take a hit because everybody's trying to hurt him. Everybody, I mean that they want him out of the game. So get out be smart. Um, and, and, um, next year when he's in the, in the, in the NFL, it's gonna be the same thing with bigger guys and faster guys. So let's learn now how to stay healthy because we need you healthy and, and, um, he just, he just loves to compete and you love that about him. Let's be smarter. Let's don't be stubborn because yes, we, we were very physical in the first game. I thought the offensive line obviously did a great job with 300 yards, 3 19 rush in the second game. Uh I didn't think we did as good the other night and, and they, they played really well and they played, they're real well coached. They, they play with low pads, uh, but we didn't play as well inside part of it's injury, but that's an excuse, they, they don't, they're not gonna call the game off because we got some sore guys. Uh, so what we've got to do is we've got to get people on people. We made some mental mistakes, Saturday and we actually missed some people and had some run through. Uh, and we just, we just can't do that. So we were, we were disappointed, um, in, in some of our offensive linemen on Saturday. But if you see some of these kind of a little bit more about Jeremiah. Absolutely. That was part of the discussion this morning in the, in the staff meeting. If, if they're not sure what to do, find five things they can do, find five plays, they can run right now and have them go in for those plays and teach them five plays and nobody else is gonna know what five they are. And in three weeks they might know that if comes in, here's what he's gonna do. Uh But right now they don't, so, so find something they can do to give him a chance for success. Andre Green is getting better. II, I was hoping he'd catch that deep ball Saturday. That would have been a, a true breakthrough for him, but he's getting better and he's practicing better and he's playing with more confidence and some guys do it faster than others. Uh but, uh um and, and I, I will say to, to brag on him to Omar and Hampton never changes his, uh, look on his face, his personality, his demeanor. Uh, he rushed for 236 yards last week. He didn't rush for many Saturday and you wouldn't know any difference in him. That's who he is every play. Uh, and I think that's why he's gonna be such a great player. He's got a, he's got a toughness about him that's really special. Then he caught the ball from behind him that he ran for about 20 yards like a dart and then he caught one over the middle that he was so quick with, uh, and he ran, we didn't, we didn't block a couple of times on the goal line. People are grabbing him. He didn't care. He just ran over and ran in the end zone. So, uh, but we, we need to get some of those young since, since Ted's not, is not playing. We need to get some of those young ones out there for fresher legs too. The scene after the game with, I want to ask you about it Saturday, but I saw a video later, you, you know, just what was going on in the locker room looked like you got a little choked up. Uh, you know, you've talked forever about not doing a good job of enjoying these, uh, I mean, do you think 35 years in now that, uh, maybe you're starting to get a better handle on that? I mean, are you allowed yourself to be in the moment? Yeah, I'm really trying. It's not my personality and it's not an easy thing for me to do. But, uh, you're sitting there, we dedicated the game to Mitch Mason who's been through an awful time and, and, uh, you, you see Tyle Craft there every day fighting stage four cancer. Um, and, and we, we've talked about it with Tez, these kids are our family and we want them treated like I want my son to be treated my grandson to be treated and that's really important to us. That's our job and that's who we are. And when you see them accomplish something, that's so cool and, and it was gonna be tough to beat Minnesota. I wasn't sure if we could beat them. Uh We had to play good and they did and they did the things they needed to do. I was so happy for him and so proud for them and to see them happy and, and, and, and not asking me to dance. Thank God. Uh um So I, I keep waiting. Yeah, if they ask me, I have to and II I try to get out fast. So uh so they didn't grab me, usually said Gray said no, come here. Uh But uh it is, it is really emotional because you want them to be happy and you want them to get rewarded for how hard they worked and you want them to be confident and you want them to, to accomplish things in their life. That's a huge accomplishment. And I always get proud because it brings so much money to the university. When we sell out, it brings so much money to Chapel Hill. When we sell out the athletic department, it pays for the other sports when we sell out. So it's really cool for me when everything comes together and, and you're at that moment at the end where it worked. This is really cool. It worked and I'm so proud of it. So I, and I'm a, a real emotional person. II, I get mad easy. So I don't usually talk when I get mad at it by myself because I don't say things that are good when I get mad and that's not good for me. So I have to, I, I've, I've learned that. So I uh when you see me not talking, it's because I don't need to be talking. And usually after a loss, I don't talk to anybody, I gotta talk to the team. I gotta come in here and talk to you all. I try to get out of here as fast as I can and not say anything. Um And then I got to go try to figure out why we lost what I should have done differently because I feel guilty. I feel bad. But I feel so proud for those kids when you're sitting there looking at them and you're looking at every face and everyone's different and especially if you're seeing a Jacoby Cowan who made a great play in the game and he is so proud of himself. That's really cool.