Thoughts on September 5th Press Conference--Rutgers vs. Howard

The Rutgers Scarlet Knights take on Howard this coming Saturday at High Point Solutions Stadium. Kickoff is at Noon. Rutgers looks to rebound after getting thrown from their horses at Washington. Meanwhile, Howard is coming off their own 52-13 laugher in College Park, Maryland. So, both teams should be motivated to put on a better showing.

I was able to catch the Monday press conferences of Head Coach Chris Ash, Offensive Coordinator Drew Mehringer, and Defensive Coordinator Jay Niemann. Here's a few highlights from what they had to say as well as some of my thoughts:

As would any coach, Ash is looking forward to the home opener, stating that as a visiting coach he felt Rutgers was a great environment for a game. He said that the program will be making some tweaks to the game-day experience, but that the tradition of the Scarlet Walk will remain. He mentioned they may also try to add some new wrinkles to the Scarlet Walk. Keeping the Scarlet Walk is a great idea. It's a big deal for the students, boosters, and especially the young fans. From having witnessed quite a few Scarlet Walks, the young fans look up at the players as if they were gladiators, and I think this is a good thing to instill in the young fans. It's something that makes them want to play at Rutgers or attend Rutgers when they are older.

Ash also let the media know that he wouldn't be giving a weekly injury report, but would rather just inform the media when a player had a significant injury that would require him to be out of action for a long period of time. This makes sense to me because it gives the opposing coaches less of an idea of who they may or may not have to prepare for. To go along with that, he mentioned that the depth chart for Howard will be identical to last week.

The coach mentioned a few times that the players on both offense and defense, particularly the offensive line and the secondary, were caught off guard at the start and took awhile to adjust to the speed of the game. This much is evident to anyone who watched it. But Ash stated he was pleased with the defensive effort after the first quarter in terms of their ability to adjust to the speed of the game, defend the deep ball, sound tackling, and the quickness with which they ran to the ball.

On the offensive side, he mainly made a couple of points about quarterback Chris Laviano; that he can't put the ball in harm's way, and that it took him awhile to adjust to the speed of the pass rush. This wasn't all on him. As Ash pointed out, the protection was poor at the outset. And I have to agree with this as well. On the first fumble, Laviano needed to make a quicker decision to get to the ground, but he was in fact in the process of sliding. And the interception was a bad read, but he played a lot better once the offensive line made their adjustments.

Ash also confirmed that former Michigan wide receiver recruit Ahmir Mitchell would be joining Rutgers football, but will not be eligible to compete until next season.

OC Drew Mehringer felt Laviano had an up-and-down game, but that he didn't grade out poorly when they assessed the game tape, despite the ball protection issues. He felt the offensive line needed to do a better job with their technique and communication. Rutgers didn't take a lot of deep shots because they felt it was better to try to call plays to methodically move the chains and establish the run.

To me, the most interesting thing Mehringer discussed was how he sees the roll of the quarterback in his offense. The quarterback is not someone who needs to run the ball a ton. Rather, he just needs to be someone who can run well enough so that the defense needs to plan to defend it, and that the QB really just needs to be able to gain 5 or 6 yards a clip to help move the chains. He felt Laviano was able to do that against Washington.

The line of questioning in Jay Niemann's press conference was a little surprising to me, in that there weren't any questions about the deep balls the defense gave up in the first quarter, but I guess the reporters felt enough had been asked about that immediately after the Washington game. Instead, they asked more about specific players. Kiy Hester and Darius Hamilton were singled out as having had strong showings. Another positive note for Niemann was that the felt the 3rd down pass rush was effective.