Scott Frost Press Conference: UCF must clean up mistakes ahead of WVU

Coming off a 20-11 road loss at Cincinnati, UCF head coach Scott Frost met with reporters Monday to reflect on the performance, assess where the team stands at the midway point of the season, and preview Saturday’s homecoming matchup against West Virginia.

Now 3-3 overall and still seeking their first Big 12 win, the Knights are preparing for a Mountaineers team (2-4, 0-3 Big 12) also in search of momentum.

Here’s everything Frost had to say:

On the health status of quarterbacks

“I think we’re gonna have all hands on deck. So now it comes down to who gives us the best chance and honestly probably that’ll come down to a coach’s decision and who practices better this week.”

On assessing his team at the midway point of the season

“You know, it sounds like coachspeak, but there’s a lot of positives to take from Saturday and that’s true. I really like the fight of our team and I told them that afterwards. I knew this year was going to be a growth process because just of a relative inexperience and 70 new players.

“It would be really nice to be 4-2, 5-1 right now, and we had our chances. Like I said, I don’t think we were outmatched in any one of those three games. We just got to execute better and that falls on the coaching staff and the players just to keep finding ways throughout this season to keep improving and we’re gonna have a chance in every game.

“So there’s no reason we can’t do some special things here down the road.”

On the team’s confidence level after these close games

“I think the confidence level is fine. You know, I really liked the frustration, but togetherness of the team in the locker room after the game. When you’re learning new things and coming together as a football team, it’s not always going to happen the same.

“It’s going to happen different every time and when you’re not experienced, then new situations can affect you different every time. At Kansas State, I don’t think we started very fast. At Kansas, we did start fast.

“One thing that’s common is just key mistakes at the wrong times right now. Like I said, we’re going to keep coaching those things, but we kind of got to be in those situations and experience them and then handle them better the next time.”

On how they go about limiting mistakes

“Yeah, we talked about that a lot. It’s not changing the formula. The formula has worked and will work, but if we need to alter it and not be doggedly committed to one way of doing things, then we will.

“We’ll find little ways to tweak practice to make sure that we’re getting exactly what we need. It’s hard to recreate with the defense like we played last week. It’s hard to recreate all the looks that we were going to get from them because it was a little different every time.

“That’s the biggest thing is when the looks aren’t exactly what we practiced, you still just got to fall back on your rules and execute. I think that’s where we can get a little bit better.”

On whether mistakes are a lack of discipline

“No, again, it’s not discipline. It’s experience. You’re expecting to have a combo block off to this guy and then they blitz inside and the guy you were going to combo to disappears to another spot and somebody else shows up and you got to be a good enough football player to come off the combo to a safety instead of a linebacker. Those kind of things happen over the course of a game.

“Now, the false starts and things of that nature at key times, that’s concerning to me and we got to keep addressing that and make sure because they don’t seem to be happening when everything’s going smooth. They happen at key moments and we got to make sure and fix that.”

On getting over the mental lapses

“I think it’s just keep practicing. Again, we can try to make practice a little more game-like. It’s kind of hard to explain, but you have to do enough in practice to execute the plays you’re putting in for the game on offense to make sure that the guys know their scheme and know the adjustments depending on what we’re going to get.

“If you try to run all those reps a hundred miles an hour, you’re going to kill your guys. So we just have to be smart about making sure they know their stuff and get enough game speed reps to make sure that they’re ready to not just execute it, but execute it well.”

On balancing health in practice

“Yeah, but that’s not unique to us. That’s football in general. You know, having just come from the NFL, they have more walkthroughs than they do practice plays, but a lot of those guys have been playing football for a long time and you can just get sitting in a meeting room and say, hey, we’re altering this and changing this.

“You’re going to run this route on this play and they write it down and they’re good. We have a team that needs more reps than that, but again, you can’t take 300 reps of practice on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays or you won’t be able to run on Saturdays. So it’s growth and we’re going to try to be as smart with it as we can.”

On whether the receivers are getting enough separation

“Well, I think that’s the big thing right now is we’re really good sometimes. We throw to the right guy sometimes, we block really well sometimes, we run the route precisely sometimes, and we catch it sometimes. And defensively was good, but we busted a couple coverages, so we’re in the right coverage sometimes and that needs to be most of the time or all the time and then we become really good.

“But again, that’s a process.”

On facing West Virginia coach Rich Rodriguez, who like Frost returned to his previous school

“Well, first thing I want to say about Coach Rodriguez is after what happened with Coach Clark passing away, man, I got a big envelope of letters from I think everybody in their athletic department, individually written and signed, and I think that speaks to the class of who Coach Rodriguez is and obviously the people in that athletic department too. So I want to say thank you for that. We received a lot of notes and messages, but I opened the envelope and all the cards fell out, and it’s a lot of them, and I thought that was a really high character thing to do.”

On the play of QB Cam Fancher and his scramble ability

“You know, in the course of a game you can scheme everything up and and try to hit as much as you can based off the plays you designed, but you know there’s gonna be five or six, sometimes three, sometimes ten plays that break down and you have a quarterback that can turn those plays into good plays, then you extend drives and that makes you even better. I thought he did a great job of that.

“There shouldn’t have been as much running around as we had to, as he had to do Saturday. If we protect a little better, get balls off on time, run a little cleaner routes. You know, I don’t want a quarterback looking like Fran Tarkenton back there and running around. We got to be a little better and more precise for their execution, so that only has to happen once in a while, but I thought he played tough and did a good job with that.”

On the play of center Carter Miller, who struggled with penalties and low snaps vs. Cincinnati

“You know, they had a really good player lined up head up with him at nose, and I don’t know, he was in a battle, and I don’t know if that had anything to do with it. There were a couple snaps that were off, and we haven’t had that problem all through spring ball, fall camp, and to this point in the season, so we’ll talk to him about it, but I don’t want to make something that’s not a thing a thing either, so, but those can hurt you, and we had a couple broken plays because of it.”

About Carter Miller’s overall play to this point

“Carter’s great. You know, we have 70 new players. I really, I think the coaching staff and recruiting department did a great job bringing guys in.

“Again, we leaned on talent, maybe over experience, because that’s what we could get. I think we have a lot of talented guys. Carter is a guy definitely that we’re really glad to have here, and he’s one of the bell cows of what we’re trying to do on offense, and hopefully will be for a while.”

On the message to the team this week

“We just got to play our best. We got to play four quarters, and the guys have been close now a few weeks in a row and had opportunities three weeks in a row. We got to capitalize on it, and what happened in the first three weeks didn’t affect the next three, and what happened in the last three won’t affect the next three, so we’re a .500 football team right now.

“We got a chance this week to try to be one over .500 if we play well, and that’s what we need to focus on, doing little things a little better this week and trying to improve.”

On choosing a QB starter based on game play and how that’s different than the preseason

“Well, this is the first time we’ve kind of had both those two guys since since game one, since the first quarter and a half, I guess, in game one. Both guys healthy, and I think you guys can see now through limited reps compared to what we’ve seen, what we thought coming out of camp, both guys do some things really well and are good enough to help us win if we play well around them and execute well.

“So again, we’ll let them compete in practice this week, and it’ll probably be a coach’s decision.”

On whether their playbook has been limited

“You know, with the relative inexperience in this game with everybody in our program, this is year one for everybody in our scheme, offensively and defensively. We’re trying to limit the total number of plays we go into a game with a little bit. The biggest difference to me is just the inability to really make adjustments, and that’ll come, but some of the concepts that we have, that we should be able to run out of any formation against anything, it should be a go over to the sideline and tell them instead of running this, we’re running this, or we’re running the same thing out of this formation, and it ought to be done, but we’re still growing in that, and that’s typical year one stuff.”

More on the Cincinnati game

“We have to not make critical errors on drives that stop drives, and we did that several times, and then, you know, if you watch Cincinnati and as aggressive as they are, when the game’s tight, other teams hit big plays on them, and we didn’t hit enough explosives. We had opportunities to. We hit one explosive and were lined up wrong. I think we dropped a ball. We had a deep ball that was wide open, and we kind of under threw it a little bit.

“After they got up 14 points, we weren’t going to get behind them as much, and then we just kind of had to earn it, but, you know, the week before KU, or two weeks before KU, had a 93-yard pass and a 75-yard pass, and we had our chances to do that, and we didn’t connect on them, which meant we had to sustain drives, and we did that until we didn’t, and it’s got to be more consistency and a little more explosiveness.”

On the play of RB Stacy Gage

“He brings depth. He’s a really talented player. He’s grown up, too, and we’ve got to make sure that he’s doing the right thing with exactly the right technique all the time, but, again, that’s not unique to him.

“That’s kind of who our team at least was at the start of the season is a lot of young guys with some talent that are learning how to do this the right way, and Stacey will continue to get better.”

On how Gage is different than Myles Montgomery

“You know, I really like our running back room. Myles is a warrior. Jaden’s been huge for us with some of the big plays that he’s able to create.

“Stacy’s a little bigger and more powerful, but kind of the same type of back as the other two.”

On the injury status of safety Jayden Williams

“Yeah, Jayden had a broken thumb, and they fixed it surgically, and the surgery failed on him, and so he had to go back in and get a pin in his thumb. It’ll probably be another couple weeks is the last report that I got, so he’s got to get the pin out of his thumb, and then I think he’ll be able to hopefully be able to come back and help us.”

On what stands out about West Virginia

“Well, offensively, I know it’s been said a lot, but I think Rich Rod was one of the guys that kind of changed what college football looks like. I was around Chip Kelly, and I don’t think he gets enough credit for how college football and offenses have changed, and that’s leaked into all levels of college football, but Coach Rodriguez is definitely one of those. I know they’re going to be creative on that side of the ball.

“Defensively, I think they’re blitzing, according to our report, 61% of the time, so we’ve got to have answers for all that, and they’re really mixing up looks and not staying in anything so that you can’t really dial them in. That presents challenges for us, probably presents challenges for them, too, to make sure they can get all that lined up to formations and tempo and everything, so it’ll be an interesting test match.”

On the importance of getting a win, especially facing a similar team in a rebuilding mode

“Yeah. I mean, you can keep trying to put more emphasis on one than any other, and that’s not the way we’re going to look at it around here. We’ve got to practice well this week, get a little bit better, and then take a chance to win another game, and it’s going to be the same every week.

“We’ve got to practice well, install well tonight, practice well on Tuesday, practice well on Wednesday. I think we’ve got a good opportunity this week, just like we’ve had the last three weeks, and we need to cash in on one. And I think once we get one here in conference, I think the confidence will blossom, but I don’t care what happened here before or anywhere else.

“This team isn’t going to quit. They’re going to keep going, and I think you’ll see that Saturday.”

On the significance of homecoming

“Yeah, homecomings are great. They’re even better if you can win the game. But I know it means a lot on campus, and hopefully there’s some guys that come back and are proud of the program, and hopefully there’s some guys that I coached several years ago that I get to say hi to. It’s a special weekend.”

On the biggest adjustment during Big 12 play

“Yeah, again, I don’t see it any different than the first three games. It’s just based on opponent and us making decisions to try to put the players in the best place to have a chance to win each game. And I’ve said this a bunch, but I think this league’s really even. I think there’s a lot of parity. I think any week, if we play well, we’re going to have a chance to win, and if we don’t play well, we probably won’t.

“But that’s, again, that’s not any different than our first three games. And if we play a little better the last few weeks, we probably have a good chance of having a little different record right now, but we can change that this week.”

On what has stood out about UCF’s defense

“Yeah, any time you have a lot of new, I think defense can usually get ready quicker. I think that’s been the case. We have some special players on defense, and I was really impressed Saturday with the fight.

“We busted a couple coverages. Otherwise, they didn’t do a whole lot on us, and we need to fix that. I think our defense can go from being really good to elite if we are a little more consistent and don’t have the breakdown.

“But you’re going to talk to Nyjalik. We have some special players on that side of the ball that can make special plays. I think the fight was really evident. Even at the end of the game, we were down nine, and the game was probably out of reach at that point, and we still got a stop. I think that says a lot about how hard those guys are playing and fighting for each other.”