UConn Football HC Jim Mora talks Central Connecticut State Postgame
UConn Football head coach Jim Mora met with the media following the Huskies 59-13 win over the Central Connecticut State Blue Devils on Saturday afternoon inside of Wyatt & Pratt Stadium.
Following the game, Mora spoke with the media to offer an immediate reaction to his program’s victory and talk about what he saw in the first game of the year.
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Full Press Conference Transcript
Good to get a win. And like every coach would say, there’s a lot we have to work on, a lot we have to get better at, a lot of improvements we have to make.
What I didn’t like was the way we started the game. It’s not characteristic of what we want to be. What I did like is the way they responded to what I thought was a pretty poor start by us.
So we were able to get a lot of guys in the game. I think that experience is going to benefit us down the road. We played three quarterbacks.
We played five running backs. We probably played seven or eight receivers. And that experience is really important for those guys.
So big, big, big challenge this week was Syracuse. And, you know, I think we come out of this healthy. For the most part, we’re concerned about Malachi [McLean], who went down.
Malachi is in the UConn health system. He’s at the hospital right now in Farmington, so we know he’s in really great hands. But we are concerned about him.
It’s nothing that’s life-threatening like that. It’s just that they’re going to be very, very careful with him, which is what our doctors do. They take care of our players.
So, any questions? Was that a head injury? No. No, it was not a head injury. No.
How does Skyler [Bell], it felt like, like you mentioned, kind of a sloppy, a little bit slow start. But then Skyler, the 80-yard touchdown, I mean, that play will play the team up. But what about him that can make those plays happen? Well, he’s fast and he’s elusive.
And he plays with great passion and energy. He knows what to do. He’s got a big play mentality.
And if you look at the way he’s worked this summer, this offseason, his body looks different. I mean, he’s much more physical. He’s gunned up.
His legs are bigger. He’s more sturdy. But he didn’t lose any of his elusiveness.
He didn’t lose any of his speed. And he’s a guy that Joe [Fagnano] has a tremendous amount of trust in. We do as coaches.
We want to get the ball in his hands when things aren’t going the way we want them to go. Feel that way about Cam Edwards, too. Those are two guys you go, hey, if we get the ball to them, something good is going to happen.
And, you know, you love having a Skyler Bell on your team because you can count on him. You talked about having maybe the best set of skill players you’ve had since you’ve been here. And they all seem to chip in.
Like you said, Cam was there. Mel Brown had a decent game. Joe had a good game.
Well, and you could go on, you know, getting Oliver in there. And then MJ [Flowers], you know, Chris Parker, Jackson Harper, you know, John Neider was in there at receiver. Juice, I think those guys all contributed.
You know, in the past there were times when you would have certain players you needed to have in there at certain points in the game or you didn’t necessarily feel like the play was going to be as successful as it was drawn up to be. And now we’ve reached a point, I believe, hopefully, you know, I’m right here that we can have different players in and not have to worry about who’s in, you know, because we feel like there’s enough depth that guys can go out and produce in any situation. Backup guys, guys that aren’t listed as starters.
We don’t necessarily call them backup guys. They’re just not. They don’t go out with the first 11.
Coach, you talked about the slow start and how you guys responded. Was it more about the own mistakes that you guys were making and creating better and better stuff as a team? It was us. It was first play, tackle for loss.
Fortunately, they had a penalty when the guy’s helmet came off and he continued play. So that gave us first down. We had a drop on third down.
Then we come out and we snap it over the head of our punter. They score. We get a kickoff return to put us back in field goal range.
We have a hold. That’s on us. We have a false start on first and 10.
That’s on us. Okay, we break one for a touchdown when Terrence breaks it and we have another hold. So those are just self-inflicted wounds.
I think in the first 10 minutes we had five penalties, which is not characteristic of us. Well, it is now because this is a new team, but of what we are trying to be. So those are things that we have to be much better at, and we’ll work hard at it.
But like I said, there’s a lot to be learned in success, and there’s things to be learned when you have adversity, and that’s how is your team going to respond when it doesn’t happen exactly like they think it’s going to happen at the start of a game. Are they going to become flustered, or are they going to stay focused? And we were able to stay focused. It’s exciting to see a lot of big plays.
What does it say about the execution of your offense, the ability of your offense to have in-yard plays, in-yard mission plays? Yeah, like we said, I believe we have pretty good playmakers. I mean, it’ll be a true test this week, going against a team like Syracuse, who even though the score was close last year, I felt like they beat us pretty handily. We scored late to make it a seven-point game.
But the way that game started was not good for us. So having some guys that have some confidence coming out of this game and that we’ve seen be able to make big plays, I think that’s a real positive for us. Jim, how much? I don’t know if you’ve looked closely at Syracuse yet.
We have not. We haven’t looked at them at all. What type of a challenge does playing a team go on that? Well, I mean, listen, I have great respect for Central Connecticut State University.
So they were my first game at the Rent three years ago. And that team today looked completely different than the team we played that day. This team that we played today was bigger.
They were more physical. They were very well coached. They played hard.
So I don’t want to necessarily make a comparison between them and Syracuse, other than to say that Syracuse is a little bit different level of football than CCSU, and as they proved last year, at that point, than us. So we want to narrow the gap, and we want to do all we can to put ourselves in a position to win. But it presents a great challenge for us, which is we embrace, and we want that challenge.
I mean, what competitor doesn’t want that challenge? But they’re going to be big. They’re going to be physical. They’re going to be experienced.
They’re going to get to play at home. But that’s what’s exciting is having that opportunity to go play a team like that. I was not satisfied with the way we played in the first half.
I felt like we were very, very tentative. I felt like guys were either not doing their job or trying to do too much. I didn’t think we tackled well.
I didn’t think we were playing downhill. I thought we were on our heels a little bit, not up on our toes attacking. So there was a sense of disappointment.
I felt like in the second half we were much better, but we’re light years from where we need to be. But having a game where we can go in and look at the film, and we’re playing a different offense than we see every day in stores, going against our own team, it’ll really help us grow. But we’ve got to make sure that we make the corrections, and those corrections are applied, and we move forward as a more violent, aggressive, cohesive defensive unit.
I didn’t notice anything. I wish I’d have noticed more. And I think as we go through the year we will because I think he’s a good player.
I believe he’s going to be a really good player. But I felt like we were soft at the middle. I felt like they were able to run the ball on us, and that’s not who we can be.
That cannot be something that people think they can do to us. But I can guarantee as Syracuse is going to look at that film, they’re going to try to run it right down our throat. I mean I would if I were them.
So we’ve got a major challenge in front of us, and fortunately we’ve got a bunch of really good coaches, and we’ve got a bunch of really great kids that want to be good, and they will work as hard as possible to be good. Can you just talk about your own running game, 250 yards today, and the times your offensive line opened up some nice big holes? Yeah. You know, we didn’t run the ball well early I didn’t feel, you know, the first couple drives.
But Skyler, you know, making that play helps you. You know, it takes him out of just being able to stuff the box. But, you know, running the football is something we’re going to stick with because we believe that we’re good at it, and we understand our run scheme, and we know that if we just keep pounding up in there that we’ve got guys that can break it, you know, like Cam did, like those other guys did.
So we’re not going to be stubborn, you know, to the point of it’s not working. We, you know, stick with it to the point of, you know, making a mistake in terms of our ability to adjust in the game because we can throw the ball. But, you know, it’s my firm belief that in order to win football games consistently you have to be able to run the ball.
But you can’t be stubborn about it. So today was good. You know, we struggled a little early, and we kept it going.
We threw the ball. We spread them around a little bit. We were pretty balanced, and then we were able to break some runs., can’t thank them enough. Can’t wait to see them out there next week. Appreciate you guys.
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