Victory Over SFA in Season Opener with UH Head Coach Willie Fritz

Victory Over SFA in Season Opener with UH Head Coach Willie Fritz

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welly Fritz, the head coach of your Houston Cougars, my
Houston Cougars and America's Cougars. Presented to you by our
friends the Joint Chiropractical, the official chiropractor of a University
of a Houston football coach. Fritz, thanks for the time
congratulates in the opening night win. What was the beyond
the shutout? Because shoutouts no matter who the opponent is
tough tough to find in college football. What else did

(00:21):
you love about the performance last Thursday night?

Speaker 2 (00:25):
Oh, I just you know, a bunch of it was. Essentially,
we tackle extremely well for game one. You know you
always worry about that. You know, don't do a whole
lot of live scrimmaging and live tackling and do all
sorts of work with you know, with dummies and agile bags.
And I got these big rings the years. You do

(00:46):
a little close proximity tackling as well. But for us
to come out and tackle the way we did, uh,
you know, after I guess twenty five practices, I was
happy when we had eight missed tackles and that's per
aren't good in week.

Speaker 1 (01:00):
One, it felt like your defense beyond the fact that
it was exceptional not giving up a pointing pubably got
a couple of pick sixes along the way. Is that
good nature grief from guys dropping balls, or like, hey,
this is fine this week, but we need you to
grab those in future games.

Speaker 2 (01:16):
Yeah. We always talk about, you know, winning the turnover
takeaway battle, and all my career as a head coach,
we've won ninety one percent of games and we've been
plus one or better is probably the most telling statistic
in football. And you know, we were plus two, which
is great. I think, you know, thirty three years the
head coach, I've lost one game and then plus two

(01:36):
or better. But I could have been about plus six.
We had some drops and I told the guys let's
start getting greeting and to catch those balls in the
opportunity to get a fumble recovery, and we we miss
out as well. But you're right, we had some We
had some you know, opportunities to get a few more
picks and uh, you know, one of them for sure
could have been a pick six. But uh, night's game

(01:59):
on and we need to improve on that.

Speaker 1 (02:01):
It is so interesting for me, coach, because I saw
your team for the first time playing as all of
us did so many different names. And look, that's the portal,
that's guys graduating, that's recruits that have come in. Is
there still going to be a little while before everybody
knows who everybody does well everybody can do. Are these
non conference games going to carry more weight because you've

(02:23):
got to figure out who is really going to be
on your depth chart come conference season.

Speaker 2 (02:28):
Well, I think you're right. You got we looked at
that and I told you, guys, you're learning playing time,
you know, not only in practice but also in the game.
And we got to figure out as coaches, what do
they do well, where they do not so well? Try
to keep them away from that. We've got forty one
new guys. Twenty one of them are incoming freshmen. We
signed to really get freshman class and really please those guys.

(02:51):
I think all of them have an opportunity to be
good player here a University of Houston at at some
point in time. And then we drought some guys in
from the portal also, and you know, we're kind of
figuring out what they're doing, you know, as far as
in our system, because we're doing things a little different
than maybe where they came from.

Speaker 1 (03:11):
I'll be honest with you, it was fun watching Connor
get his feet wet as a Houston Cougar quarterback. But
his tight end and I know he got banged up
a couple of times during the game against the Lumberjacks.
I can't wait to see his progressions because he looks
like a grown ass man on that football field right now.

Speaker 2 (03:25):
For you. He's he's here football player, you know, Tan
Tainer Cozelle is. You know, he's sixty six, sixty seven,
he's about two fifty runs, excellent routes, tremendous movement, great length.
You know, sometimes the guy's got tall and didn't have
real long arms. He's got long arms which he can
kind of catch the ball out in front of them,

(03:45):
away from the defender. And yeah, he's he's in great shape.
He had a little banged up. Decided not play him
anymore at night when the game was in hand, but
you know, he's he's gonna be very good player for us.

Speaker 1 (03:59):
If I was to pull us side Connor after the
game yesterday or on Thursday and then looked at his tape,
after maybe the visits you've had with him this week
during practice, what would you say was his bright spots
and what do you want to see him work on
As you get ready for this game against Rice, well.

Speaker 2 (04:14):
I think that Connor is like everybody. He was the
first game playing in quite a long time, and giddy.
You know his teammates a little bit, and you know
that first game that you know, you try to draw
it up and I hope you got drawn up like
they're going to do it. But it was a little
bit different some of the looks and coverages in fronts
and things like that that they presented to us. I

(04:37):
thought for a first game, he did a really nice
job and he's only going to get better. This will
help him grow as a as a quarterback and leader
and football player and our program, so you know, there's
a lot of good things to build upon from game one.

Speaker 1 (04:53):
I was watching so much college football this week, as
I'm sure you have as well before you as you're
preparing for the Rice game. You know, it's kind of
a little bit of a running Joe coach that you
can't trust college kickers. I don't know if it's just
a good batch this year, but there were some major
kicks made all across the country. You had several kicks
made in the game against SFA from field goal perspective
to the extra points. Are we now seeing a better

(05:16):
crop of place kickers out there or are we just
doing a better job of evaluating. And because again you've
got portal and you've got nil, and you've got ways
to compensate these young men that you're expecting more from
that position maybe than from years past.

Speaker 2 (05:30):
Well, you know, I think they're getting better at coaching,
you know. I think you know that was kind of like, oh,
I guess I don't play golf twenty thirty years ago,
pab You didn't have very many people could help you
with your golf swing, and same thing a little bit
with punters and kickers and snappers. There are some specialist

(05:50):
coaches out there that and you know, I know our
guy does a really good job, you know. So it's
there's a lot more information and drills and technique and
you know, plant foot too close to the ball or
wherever the case may be. And we're in the past,
and you know, everybody's kind of only worried about it

(06:11):
to go through those two uprights out there, that's the
only thing anybody can really coach. So yeah, I think
you're you're right. I've watched a little bit of football
this weekend too, and there's some good kickers out there.
There's some good kickoff guys. Not very many opportunities to
get kickoff returns anymore. Guys are kicking a real deep
So there's been an improvement in that area for sure.

Speaker 1 (06:34):
Wellie, are we sure that Ken Haffield's not running rice again?
They had fifty five attempts against Louisiana Lafayette last Saturday.

Speaker 2 (06:43):
You know, coach On Abels does a really good job
with that spread gun option attack. You know, I ran
that at the same Houston State when we had our
good run, you know, back in the early two thousands,
and then we ran it over at Georgia Southern, and
and you know, difficult because it's hard for you know,
to prepare for it. You get the speed of it,

(07:04):
and you don't have as many practices to work on
it as you'd like, you know. So we had a
lot of success at Davidson. And you know, the big
thing that we've talked to our guys about is number one,
we've got to have our alignment correct and you gotta
have your eyes on the right thing. What's your key
on that particular play because you start looking at other

(07:26):
places you can ask problems because it is an assignment football.
But they got to have somebody on the dive, you
got to have somebody on the quarterback, and you got
to have somebody on the pitch.

Speaker 1 (07:37):
Is there any benefit to playing rice in that style
right now? I mean, is there anybody else on the
calendar this year that's going to pose that? And if
the answer is noted that that's a lot of work
for your young men to learn in a very short
period of time so early in the season.

Speaker 2 (07:50):
Yeah, you know, it's one of the good things is
we worked on a little bit during preseason camp. You
know there's some days we go fifteen minutes here, fifteen
minutes there, and and then also we were able to
work on it on Monday. We had a Thursday game,
we lifted and you know, kind of put that game
to bed and then get the kids off Saturday and

(08:10):
Sunday and then jumped into it. So we really got five,
you know, five days of preparation instead of the four
that you usually get.

Speaker 1 (08:17):
Coach, thanks for the time is always congratulations. I enjoy
these road trips that go six miles from campus to campuses.
It was easy for us to travel with and we
wish you the very best of Saturday against the Owls.

Speaker 2 (08:27):
Thank you very much.

Speaker 1 (08:28):
Go cood all right, thank you well. I appreciate it.
Willy Fritz joining us here