bleedCrimson.net will be conducting weekly interviews with Aggie head football coach Hal Mumme during the 2007 season. This week Coach Mumme talks about the last week's game against Louisiana Tech, where J.J. McDermott's performance ranks among first starts for his quarterbacks and the upcoming game against Idaho.
bleedCrimson.net: Reggie Theus used to say in his post game interviews that the best thing about sports is that the next week you get another chance to go out there and fix your mistakes. Is that something you tell your players?
Hal Mumme: We always look for next game. We were disappointed over the loss, we played without six starters that's pretty tough when you consider who they were. You've got a Heisman watch list quarterback and NFL prospect tight end a split end who's likely going to be an NFL prospect next year and then on defense you lose three of your four starting linebackers who all run a 4.5 or better. We're not a team that's deep enough to replace those type of folks yet. I'm not making excuses for them but that's how I tried to present it to them. You have to overcome it as a team, the kids fought hard, they played as hard as they could. When you're on the on road in the WAC with six starters out, it's tough, you play hard, you try to overcome it. Now we'll try to get a win at home.
bc.net: This team has shown that it's mentally tougher since you took over but what kind of effect does a loss like this have on a team?
HM: I thought they maintained well, they've got character, display it all the time, a loss like that hurts you, you've just got to pick up and play this week and hopefully we won't let it affect this week.
bc.net: Having all the injuries that your team has had to deal with this season has obviously hurt you this season, but what does it do for the team in terms of speeding up the progression of the younger players and how much will that help down the road even looking into next season?
HM: You can't replace game experience, it's not something we want to do. Letting Kyle Nelson, Wes Neiman and J.J. play, it does help for the future, but it's not something you want to do. All those guys have played well. Defensively there's not as much benefit, the guys that played behind those three are mainly guys who are seniors. Nick Ply is a senior, Michael Brewer and Kramer Winningham are seniors. We're just thin there, it's not as big an effect.
bc.net: Can you talk about J.J.'s performance?, 29-40, 319 yards 2 tds and no interceptions?
HM:I think he played magnificently for his first start. He managed game well. He had 3 td passes that were dropped. He played well, I wish everyone else had played as well as he did.
bc.net: How would you rate his performance among your other qbs making their first starts?
HM:It was about as good as any other I've had. I haven't had many freshmen who started, at Southeastern Louisiana I started Martin Hankins, it was about on par with that, he won his first game but it was lesser competition. J.J. made fewer mistakes though.
bc.net: Chris Williams was a one man show again, he had 11 catches for 170 yards and two touchdowns, how has he been able to continue to put up numbers despite having all the focus on him?
HM: He knew going in that was going to happen, it's been more so with injuries. Chris has played more of season without Nick Cleaver, Derek Dubois and A.J. Harris than with them. We've tried to do things, get him off of kickoff returns, rest him in places, he working so hard all the time to beat double coverage. We've gotten Derek Dubois back, he'll get into swing of things this week. He was not as big an impact as we wanted [against La. Tech]. Hopefully we'll play better at that position, We need Jeremiah Williams to play better coming out of the backfield, all those things help him [Chris].
bc.net: From the very beginning of the game you were throwing the ball deep with J.J., maybe a little bit more even than with Chase. What are the differences between the two quarterbacks and are there things that you can do with J.J. that you can't do with Chase or vice versa, physically, not game experience wise?
HM: Not really, they're very similar. The reason we were throwing deep was that they were determined to play a lot of guys in the box to stop run. They knew we were going to try to run the ball so we purposely scripted deep passes to prove J.J. could go deep. They were free safety blitzing, #34 Antonio Baker. He nearly knocked out Colt Brennan, he'd laid licks on all the quarterbacks he's played against this season, we were attempting to keep him in blitz mode. You don't get that same kind of deal against Chase, people don't do that because they know Chase can audible out and go deep on them.
bc.net: How much of your playbook at you able to use with J.J. in there and is it increasing from one week to the next?
HM: It's getting better, we'll be able to do a lot more this week. He can run all the plays, Chase calls most of all his own plays, but we call all the plays for J.J. I think he checked off 4 or 5 times against La. Tech but have to call the whole game for him, that's the difference. He'll progress, he'll be better this week, it took Chase six games [starts] to get point he's at and he had an entire two years in system. J.J.'s only been on campus since Aug 2nd.
We're pretty solid at quarterback here for the next few years. The good news is as he progresses and plays, we don't get deal we got stuck in at Boise where we three plays in we have to abandon offense and have to run the ball and throw short passes. The more he learns and knows, the more wide open he can be. He's showed us that he's deserving of more leash.
bc.net: How is your backup situation different this year with J.J. vs. last year with Alex Gibson?
HM: J.J. is a scholarship player, Alex was walk on guy. One thing to remember about last year is that we lost Scotty Grantham in July to the brain injury. So the guy we had developed in that spot was taken away from us. So it's not even a comparable situation.
bc.net: J.J. now has 3 straight games throwing passes and getting the defense to commit pass interference penalties. Is there anything that he or the receivers are doing or is it just a coincidence?
HM: It's probably more a coincidence than anything else.
bc.net: Have you ever been a part of a game where there were so catchable passes that were dropped by both teams?
HM: They dropped an awful lot of balls, we only dropped three, the problem for us is that they were all for scores. I attribute two of those to Jeremiah Williams being out two weeks and not being in the swing of things. Chris Williams is a terrific player, as much as he's thrown the ball to, he's going to drop a few. He also kind of got held on play, Chris beat his defender deep on an up and out route and the guy kind of grabbed him and it didn't get called. I think it threw him off stride slightly. They were all catchable, I can't really speak for their team [La. Tech] but I'm sure it's something their coaching staff is working on.
bc.net: What can you tell us about Idaho?
HM: They're pretty much like Louisiana Tech. They've been struggling all year. They want to pound you with the run, I thought our guys did a terrific job considering lack of linebackers, They played well in that respect. Idaho is going to do same thing, they want to pound you with the run and throw when they have to. Idaho is more of a play action team, Louisiana Tech was more drop back and pass or run.
bc.net: Talk about this week's game a little bit, what do the Aggies need to do?
HM: We need to take care of the football. All these injuries have caused us to falter on special teams, we play one guy on defense so you have to rest him some place, so you take him off special teams, and you end up playing with guys who are walk ons. We'll get some guys back but we need to play better there.
Offensively we've got a little better shot at doing what we do. A.J. [Harris], Nick [Cleaver] and Chase [Holbrook] will be back
Defensively, Woody was hamstrung on defense too. in passing situations, he was stuck with 3 man rush and dropping eight guys. When your blitzters are all hurt, Dante Foyd was in there, but you don't blitz if can't get there to the quarterback. When you have to replace three linebackers who run a 4.7, 4.6 and 4.5 and all their backups run 5.0 flat it's difficult. I don't know what if anything will improve much there, I know we won't get Jamar Cotton back.
bc.net: Last week you talked about needing to have a balanced attack if you were going to win the game, the team had 33 passes and 33 rushes at the 6:46 mark in the 4th, will that be the same type of game plan for this week?
HM: No, Chase will play this week, it's going to be more wide open this week.
