Ric Rodriguez Arizona poatgame

What kind of pressure does it put on an offense when you can't make the mistake in the second half? Obviously, you made a couple of first-half turnovers. That's actually probably a good way to put it. It's really frustrating. First off, I've got to thank our fans. They were fantastic. I mean, they showed up today I thought was a great crowd. They tried to lift our defense up, had great crowd noise, and we just didn't reward them enough. very frustrating because we can't get a stop on defense and then offensively there is probably a little bit of feel like pressure. You can't have a turnover. You've got to score in every possession. It's just extremely frustrating. I told the team I think you're playing hard but there's some stuff that we as coaches have got to figure out in a hurry and fix in a hurry. I think our guys are conscientious enough to try to do that. But we didn't get it fixed today, defensively especially, and then offensively when we had a couple turnovers it really cost us and we couldn't get the momentum that we needed. You talked about Prince and the impact that you made. What did you think of his performance today? Oh, yeah, I mean he made some – I don't know what his numbers were. I guess I can look, whatever it is. He's a big, strong guy. We missed a couple other opportunities. They blitzed the – you know, like they did. That's who they are. They blitzed the whole game, and we hit some, and some we didn't hit. You know, that Mike was competitive, as he always is, but we missed a few throws here and there. But I think, going back to Greg's point, I think there is – I don't know if the players feel it, but I feel a little bit like, you know, every possession is so critical that sometimes your calls reflect that and we shouldn't do that. You know, there's a lot of possessions in the game, But, golly, it's as frustrating as I've ever been defensively with it. The first half of defense tried something to limit, but they gave up a ton of explosives in the second half. Yeah, I mean, I don't blame the fans for being, like, upset when the guy just hands the ball off and one guy's out of a gap and then he runs for 60 yards. Well, I inquired what it was, and, oh, one guy is out of a gap. Well, where's everybody else at? Does that mean there's ten other guys that can't rally to the ball or whatever? I mean, like I said, it's ridiculous that some of those – and I think Fafita is one of the best quarterbacks in the country. I've got a tremendous amount of respect for him. He's tough. He's competitive. You know, he doesn't take sacks. He gets rid of the ball so quick. And, you know, that's second and one, and you go cover zero, he's going to find a guy and get rid of it before he gets hit. And that's exactly what he did. So I don't know if we didn't think he would do that or what have you, but he's really good, and I thought he played really sharp. He's a great, great player. Was the defensive issues part of what led to going for one and fourth down a couple times like that, just lack of confidence in the defense? Yeah, just figuring that every possession is so important, and then even going for seven instead of three. It's like, ah, I mean, it's, like I said, we can get it fixed. I mean, we've got good enough players and guys that know football that we've got to get it fixed. It's as simple as that. I mean, you can't win playing that poorly on defense. And offensively, you can't win by turning the ball over when you have seven points down there, not where we're at right now. And, you know, I'm sure when I watch the film, offensively especially, there's going to be some like, ah, we had this, we had that. But when team blitzes you a lot, then you have a chance to get big plays. We got some, but we didn't get as many big plays as we needed offensively either. So it wasn't just poor on the defense. Where is Hawkins in terms of throwing the deep ball? It looked like sometimes overthrown, but he's getting closer. Yeah, I think Mike's – I'm sure he's pressing a little bit too at times when he's behind him. I mean, he made some really good throws. And then there's some other ones that we overthrew or what have you that we like to get bad. I thought our wide outs, we dropped a couple. But Prince gave us a little spark there too. I said it was just the level of frustration, which everybody involved in this program has right now, is pretty all-time high. But the good part is it's just half the season. It's over. Move on to the second half. We've got to be a better team in the second half of the season, which we will be. We'll be a better team. We'll get it fixed. but I don't want to wash this, like, just wash it away because, hell, we've got to learn from it. That's the biggest thing. We can't just say, well, okay, what the hell did we do wrong in the first six games? What did we do good? And then let's figure it out. We'll figure it out. We owe that to our program. We owe it to our school. We owe it to our fans. And that's our job as coaches to get our players to get it right. Was it your decision to put Zach in the box? No, that was his. and I'm like, you know, I signed off on it, I guess. I'm not insane. We expect a different result. I'm not changing anything. The result wasn't any different. We'll have a lot of long conversations again tomorrow. Like I said, these guys know ball, but, you know, there's a – and I don't want to – it's not an excuse to say, well, we're still learning who our guys are. No, we've played six games. We've had most of them here since the spring. We know who our guys are. And so that part of it, you know, we can't use that as an excuse. We've got to play better. We've got to put them in positions to play better and then work really hard and play better football. Just play better football. And there's a lot to that. But it's not my first rodeo, but it is as frustrating as I've ever been as a head coach with one side of the ball still, you know, So it's not like they're not trying, trying to figure it out and not having progress like we need, if that makes sense. And, you know, we've got to make that progress like starting tonight. Any chance of changing play calling on defense? No. I don't know who you're going to – yeah. Fair question. Not at this point. Is that fair? Yeah.