Aazaar Abdul-Rahim on re-ranking units, Malik Washington, efficiency, Purdue

3 minutes ago

11 min read

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VtSev6S7PAM

Opening statement

“Again, we see some encouraging things being able to watch film. Definitely see some encouraging things from our young men. Obviously, our focus has been the mental toughness, just getting our football IQ up. I think just watching the game, it was a lot less misassignments. Obviously, the penalties [were] encouraging, the lack of penalties, so I think they definitely were buying in. Our technique, detail and discipline was much improved in my opinion. Obviously, it's plenty of things to continue to work on. And then the effort. I thought guys ran to the ball. I thought guys really invested in doing the right things on the field, which was bigger than themselves. So it's definitely encouraging.

I'm excited about our next opportunity with Purdue, and excited about the preparation. My message to the team was essentially like we're doubling down on our core beliefs, and that's obviously mental toughness, technique, and effort. We have a lot of statistical data that says what we're trying to get accomplished is working in the right way. Now you've seen that on third down improvement on offense and defense. On defense our redzone improvement was encouraging, and just the missed assignments in general on both sides of the ball, we were happy with. Obviously, we're not happy with the results of the game and definitely want to get those things together.”

On re-ranking players

“That's a great question. I think first and foremost, you have to evaluate yourself as the head coach or as the defense coordinator at that time. And then, from my perspective, am I making the right calls, or do I put the kids in the best position to be successful? Secondly, I think it has to be a cumulative type of situation as far as with your staff of just input of us understanding who are the best guys. I could look at every [defensive] lineman and I think so and so is the best pass rusher, but you have to include the defensive line coaches. So I think it also allows us to have buy-in. So when we rank it, we look at each other's ranks. We had [defensive] line coaches rank the DBs, how they see it. We had DBs coaches rank the d-line. So it was interesting as far as the total rankings. But after we did that, we ranked every pass rusher, we ranked every interior pass rusher, we ranked every linebacker as far as a pass rusher because we felt like we needed to improve how we can affect the quarterback in the game. And once we did that we created certain packages where regardless of what position you play on first or second down, we can kind of put you at a different position because we want our best guys on the field. It showed up. I thought it was decent, but again, it was a lot of guys that for the first time were playing a little bit different positions, and I really think we should see them in the future more success from it.”

On taking the new operation under AAR to a road game

“Now you have to start being consistent in our behaviors and in the way we think. We got to continue down the same road where it becomes redundant, where it becomes pretty much the same thing. So we're not changing anything anymore. I think we'll refine what we have, but we're not going to change. It won't be a new message. It's going to be the same message. It should be plain Jane, keeping the main thing the main thing. So that's kind of the focus. I think we've got the infrastructure of what we want to get accomplished these next four weeks, and we want to continue to refine that infrastructure.”

On the fourth quarter, Illinois’ game winning drive

“We got to tackle, right? Got to tackle the individuals. We got to continue to put these guys in a position during practice, in my opinion, where like the fourth quarter is essentially, man, just like riding a bike. That's what we plan to do…a little bit more situational awareness, continue down that road. But it becomes – it's not about the play, it's about the players. And at the end of the day we had opportunities to win that football game, it's pretty evident. And we have to make plays during those times and that's part of the responsibility of ourselves as far as managing these young men but also and what our kids do a good job of is taking accountability. We missed tackles. From an offensive perspective, we didn't make plays during those last couple drives. We got great high character kids. Malik is, he may not have had his best game, but he's the first person that holds himself to such a high standard, and he's extremely accountable, and that's the type of kids that you want to lead your program.”

On Chris Durr

“He's got an underdog mentality, I think that the NIL or just just being on the highest level of football really hasn’t tainted his love for football, his toughness. He's so reliable and I think we have to even count on him even more. And that's kind of some of the things we really want to hone in on it. How can we get him a little bit more involved regardless of where he is, and how can we get him more involved to to really affect the game in a positive way? But it's his upbringing. He's a Chicago kid who wasn't recruited high, was an undersized kid in high school. Ended up having to go to a Mountain West School, and he's kept that chip on his shoulder, so it's a credit to him. That's who he is. And he practices the same way as he plays.”

Whether Durr was known to be this big of an impact

“I did because he's been really consistent in practice. You know, you see it, and you know what? He's not bashful, so he'll let you know how he feels about himself as well.”

On QB Malik Washington’s production, whether OC Clint Trickett can do things differently

“I think first and foremost, and this is a conversation that I had with him on the field, and as well as yesterday, is that Malik cannot assume he has to win a football game. Malik needs to just be a distributor in the offense and be a part, a humongous part of our program, obviously, our offense, but he doesn't have to feel like he has to win everything. And that's what I want from him. It's just for him to just do his job at a high level, and that's good enough. He doesn't have to make the miraculous throw. He doesn't have to put the whole team on his back, so it's more of just a mindset of as his brothers can again lift themselves up to essentially where Malik is. And we need to move accordingly I think in that fashion, man. Because I think he's a little bit too hard on himself, and sometimes just doing your job is good enough.”

Whether Washington is pressing

“No, I wouldn't say he's pressing. He's a great quarterback and great quarterbacks want to do even more. And at the end of the day, if you just do your job and others do their job, we'll have the right amount of success.”

On Zac Spavital as defensive play caller

“I thought Zac did a really good job. Myself, Zac, [James Thomas]. We’ve been on the same staff for the last three years. We know each other well, and we all have worked in the secondary together. So we've worked hand in hand together. And again, Zac, he's called defenses before. He has a lot of experience. I think we share the same vision. What I was – I was really encouraged about just how collaborative it was just on the headsets. It was just a lot of information being thrown at each other and a lot of suggestions. And he took some of those suggestions from JT, from myself. I thought as a defensive staff, we were on the same page.”

On how players take the rankings

“Well we didn't put it up in the locker room, we didn’t go that far. They don't know the actual rankings. I think those are individual conversations, in my opinion. So I'm big on meeting with players. I think it's important not just to be in front of the whole team, but I think every player deserves individual attention and just a connection with the head coach, I think that's important. Each day I might meet with eight to ten players. I have a list that I go through that our staff meet as far as players that I think I feel like I need to meet with, whether some of them may have not got the playing time that they felt. I'm really trying to get ahead of possible distractions. I think that's my role as a head coach. And I and I think you know me being a new head coach, it's important for me to know all of the offensive line and know something about know something about the kickers, the punters, and everything else. I think it's important because as a corner coach, you don't touch certain positions. You're not really around you know certain positions. So I think it was important for me to do that.”

What worked well to avoid 3rd-and-long offensively

“I think you know Clint did a really good job of winning second down. I think that was more of the motivation of what we needed to get accomplished during the bye week, is really looking at ourselves, man. There's a lot of talk about third down, but the reality is, if you put yourself in the right position on second down, it gives you like you said a manageable third down. So the goal is to get better and have a higher level execution on second down to enable us to have a medium third down. We did a good job on third down of converting some of those. And again, it's more things to help.”

Needing to win out for bowl eligibility

“I don't feel back in any corner, with all the respect. I'm busting my tail today. Our staff was upstairs busting their tail today, and we're just trying, we're focusing on Purdue. We should not be getting ahead and thinking about anything beyond just Monday. I mean, this is – like this Monday is so important for the preparation. We don't have our kids in the building who literally can go from sunup to sundown and really create a tight plan for us to be successful. And then have a successful Tuesday. That's where I'm at right now. I'm barely scratching Tuesday right now, and I'm not focused on the outcome four games from now.”

On the poor attendance

“I would love for the fans, as many fans as possible to be in the stadium and cheering us on. But to be quite honest, it's an external factor, and I got to get these young men ready to play a game. Unfortunately, the crowd, I would love for them to be so tunnel vision where they don't know if they're playing versus 100,000 or just 100 people. We have to focus on what we can focus on, and our job is to execute. Our job is to manage the game as coaches to the best of our ability. We do the right things, man, they'll they will come. We have to put the right product. I think we have to take accountability for the product that we put on the field. And obviously, if the right product is on the field and the right results, then we expect the right amount of fans to be there.”

On takeaways

“Turnovers are tricky. Sometimes, some years they come in abundance. Sometimes the ball finds you, but other times, you're right. It's been, it's been an emphasis, whether it's practice where we have certain turnover drills. I think we have to do a better job of forcing fumbles, and that comes from just strip attempts and just emphasizing it. So I think that needs to be more of an emphasis. As far as the ball in the air, I think just, it kind of depends on what type of defense you're playing. We've been, this past game we were a little bit more matchier, and a lot of times when you're matchier in the back end, your eye is really on the opponent, not really looking at the ball. Messiah [Delhomme], we were in a cover two deal where Messiah got a pick, which is great because he has vision and he's very instinctive. So I think it kind of depends on style of defense that you're deciding to play, but I think it has to be an emphasis because turnovers is such a key component in football. If you win the turnover battle, you usually have a good chance of winning the game. Illinois, they were 4-0 when they won the turnover battle. They were 0-3 when they didn't. So that was a point of emphasis to our staff, is hey, if we keep the game to a clean game and we don't have turnovers, we have a high chance statistically to win it.”

Illinois’ 114 rushing yards in fourth quarter

“You take away the last quarter. You're absolutely right. I thought we did a really good job of really creating a few negative plays on first down, which was critical for us. And that was a good rushing team that we were going against. The 67 yarder was a misfit, and I and I really truly didn't like the effort of the back end of not getting it down and erasing it. And that was and so you take 60 something yards out of your 112, you know it's that's 50 yards left, which obviously you want to stop everything. But we did a good job the entire day of limiting those big explosive runs, and unfortunately we waited to the end and we gave up one that we shouldn't have given up. And obviously we'll learn from it. I thought, from a big picture standpoint, I thought our defense played hard. I thought that they gave great effort. Now we just got to continue to be smarter in those critical downs. And I think it goes back to we'll figure out some competitive situations in the fourth quarter that we'll try to mirror in practice to get us going a little bit. Now the other part of that, in my opinion, is it has to be complementary football, so we have to sustain some drives on the offensive side as well. You can't put it all on defense. We're a team, so the offense sustains a few more drives, we may be in a better situation.”

On the change to no suits pregame in Terp Walk

“Yeah, I think first it's more about just want us to think about just football. I want us to really just be the same person. This day and age of NIL, and I keep saying the same things, but the reality is everybody doesn’t make the same. And sometimes when you dress up, your suit might look a little different than someone else's suit. Sometimes your bag might look a little different than someone else's bag. But it's a distraction, in my opinion. It has nothing to do with the sport, the beauty of the sport that we're able to coach. So if we can minimize it, they all have college shirts on the same shoes. And a credit to the team, they said we don't want no one wearing chains, right? We're leaving all of that back and we're just going to play football and be as one. So coaches too, me as well. I have the same sweats on. I know not at Terp Walk, but the day before the entire organization looked the same, and yes, that's part of our messaging. It's moving in the right direction the same way, with a singular purpose and literally a single way of thought.”

On Purdue’s defense

“From them on the defensive perspective, I'm impressed with their edge guys. They have some heavy-handed, big edge guys. Their inside linebackers are good players, and obviously their secondary. They're big guys. I think their boundary corner is a good player, and they have pretty good safety play. They're in the same situation as us, in my opinion, as far as just being in the Big Ten and really creating an identity for themselves. Offensively, I'm very impressed with their quarterback. I think he shows a lot of poise, gets the ball out fast. I think from an offensive perspective, they'll stretch you horizontally and vertically. I'm very impressed with their wide receiver core. They have guys that just get the ball to them in space, and they're taking off and making a lot of plays. I think that their running back is probably the number one person that we need to really focus on. I think their offense kind of runs throughout their running ball. Although you'll see them in ten personnel, you see them in 11 personnel as well as 12 personnel. So, formidable opponent and that's why like this Monday is critical for us because they do so much week to week, but we have to be prepared for a lot of things.”

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