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BRIAN FERENTZ: Thank you, guys, for being here. I appreciate, as always, the opportunity to meet with you guys in person, for the first time since camp.
I just want to start with some general thoughts. I think, obviously right now we're all disappointed and frustrated by our performance offensively on Saturdays, but I'm proud of the preparation and the effort the guys have put in on a weekly basis, seven days a week. The effort and the preparation has been excellent.
The reality is right now the production certainly hasn't been what we expected, and it's not meeting our level of expectation, most importantly.
I felt like we had seen consistent improvement going into the Illinois week, but unfortunately, I think we took a step back that night over in Champaign.
The positive is we've got an opportunity to come back to work this week. Guys have come in with an eye on the future, the eyes on the horizon, and really a renewed focus on improving. I think for us right now it's very important that we're worried about improving and executing at all 11 spots. We all have ownership in this right now.
Making the makeables, doing our job. Just the simple basics.
Then, I think we all understand and need to understand that we need to take advantage of the opportunities that are in front of us. We have six football games remaining in the season, and the reality is we all need to do better, and the good news is we're committed to doing that moving forward here.
I would like to open up to questions, and who wants to start?
Q. I could recite the stats and the rankings, but you probably already know them, and it doesn't really matter anyway. Is there a clear source of where the offensive issues start? Is it positional? Is it schematic? Is it you? Is it the play-calling? Is it your father? Is there one area you think you're looking at saying this is where the root of all this is?
BRIAN FERENTZ: I think, unfortunately, we don't have a root cause. I think we have to look at everything. The reality is, as I just said, we all have ownership in it.
As simple as it sounds, the basic are the basics. If you just think about offensive football our job is to possess, advance, and score the football.
You have to start by possessing the football, so you look at turnovers to start. Certainly in the first two weeks those were huge problems in those games, right? We turned the ball over four times in two games. Every single one of those turnovers either took points off the board for us or put points on the board for our opponents.
I felt like we had addressed that, and I've seen marked improvement in that regard. The next thing you look at offensively is first down production. Are you staying on schedule? Are you staying ahead of the chains in those manageable situations? Are you being efficient on first down?
Right now the reality is not consistently, which then leads to critical downs. So now you're going to need to stay on the field on third down or fourth down. Not doing that as well as we need to do and as consistently as we can.
Then on top of it, right, that's going to limit your ability to move the ball down the field. Are you creating those red zone possessions? When you are, are you scoring touchdowns? Are you scoring points? That hasn't been consistent enough.
If you are not doing any of those things, then you better be banking on explosive plays. At times that's gotten us out of trouble. We've hit some big plays that have gotten us out of bad situations, but that's not the kind of world you want to be living in on a consistent basis.
I look at all 11 spots. I look at the coaching. I look at the scheme. I look at everything, and I say we have to do better in all regards. How do we put our players in better positions to be successful in those opportunities, right?
How do we execute better when we have those opportunities, and how do we make the makeable plays at the end of the day?
Q. You had nine months to try to improve this offense after not so good numbers last year. Why do you think it's since then regressed for all the ways that you have just pointed out?
BRIAN FERENTZ: Sure. The hard part is, like I just told Scott, it's very difficult to pinpoint one issue. When we've been good in certain places, we haven't executed in other places. The reality of offensive football is it takes 11 guys. It takes 11 guys, and then it's more than that if you include the play caller, right?
We all have a hand in it. The clear explanation or clear issue, clear root, I wish I could give you one. The reality is we've got a lot of issues that we're working to address right now, and it starts up front, continues outside.
Really the tight end position I feel like the production has been good there. It's hard to point the finger at those guys.
There's plenty of examples where we can block better, we can run routes better, we can catch the ball better. Okay, we can run the football better at the running back position or we can throw the ball better at the quarterback position.
It's a culmination of all 11 things that lead to some of those issues. That's what we're working hard to address.
Q. For you guys it's always started up front. What do you see from your offensive line not getting the push that they normally would and the issue for pass protection?
BRIAN FERENTZ: Sure. Well, I think the other night is a good example, right? So there's different kinds of games you can be in. We knew what kind of game it was going to be on Saturday night. Part of the reason I have a lot of respect for what they do there, they're going to play in an eight-man front regardless of what they're doing behind it.
What they're doing is they're going to line up and say, hey, listen, we're going to play one-on-one at every single spot across the board here. If somebody wins for us, we're going to be in good shape.
If somebody loses, it's not going to be so good. You look at the game a year ago. I felt like we were able to run the ball pretty effectively against Illinois last year in Kinnick. We were winning some of those one-on-one battles.
The other night we knew there were going to be man blocks, and at the end of the day we just weren't able to win enough to get anything going.
You think about push, and that's true to some extent, but at the end of the day if you are not going to be able to win the one-on-one battles, it's going to be a problem.
Same thing in pass protection the other night. The same issues that the front creates in the run game, it creates in pass protection where you know it's going to be five-on-five for the majority of the night.
Maybe not true against a four-down front or some other teams, but the problem is real simply we've got some guys playing right now that simply haven't developed to the level that they probably need to be out there, whether it's injury issues, whether it's missed time, and it really doesn't matter.
The reality is what we have to be doing right now is pushing those guys forward as quickly as we can trying to get them the tools they need to be successful and get them out there.
I think I would be remiss to say in fairness to some of those players, I've seen improvement. I've seen marked improvement with some guys. I think a lot of guys are making strides.
Didn't show up consistently enough the other night, but I'm excited to see how they continue to progress.
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