Tulane did not make any players available for interviews during the open week, but Fritz held his usual Tuesday press conference after practice. That's it for this week.
Opening statement:
“We played a really good team up in Cincinnati. I give a lot of credit to their staff and their team. They played extremely hard and did a good job. I see why they’re undefeated. Offensively, defensively, a big club. They do a good job without making very many mistakes. There were some mistakes made by them, and we didn’t capitalize on them like we needed to. Way too many penalties. When you’re playing a team like that you’ve got to do a good job of playing as clean as possible, and we didn’t do that. This is a good time for a bye week for us. We’re practicing tomorrow. We’ve actually got Fall Break here at Tulane. They don’t have school on Thursday and Friday. After practice, we’ll get done tomorrow and let the fellas head on and then we’ll be back Sunday evening to get after SMU. There’s a lot of games left in the season. We’re at the halfway point right now. We’ve just got to continue improving each and every week.”
On whether the bye week is at a good time:
“Yeah, I’ve had so many that were the second or third week of the year. I really don’t think that is a good time. I had one year that I had it the second-to-last weekend of the season. I think that’s a little too late. That was a physical ballgame on Saturday. We have some bumps and bruises. There’s some guys who might not have been able to play if we played this Saturday but should be able to play a week from Saturday. I do think for the healing process, it’s good [to have the bye this week]. Recruiting-wise, we’re going to jump out and hit the road running. Tomorrow after practice, our guys are going to have some time off, but our coaches won’t. We’ll get a lot of valuable recruiting work it. But I do think it’s a good time for the guys to rest and heal up.”
On this week’s focus:
“We’re sneaking in a bit of SMU right now. We did a unit period today for about 30 minutes at the end of practice. We watched some tape and we’ll do that tomorrow as well, watch some more tape on SMU. They’ve also got a bye week this week, so there’s not going to be any more new information. So we’re able to do a game plan and all that kind of stuff right now.”
On how he assesses quarterback play:
“Just run the offense. If it’s a run play, reading the end, you give the ball, when he’s up the field, that’s a good read. Pulling, that’s not a good really. So really just running the offense, whether it’s running game or passing game. You take that for granted sometimes. You want a guy who can run the offense smoothly, and then when there’s opportunities to make plays, you make plays. That’s how you’ve got to look at it. But you’ve also got to understand when a play is – it’s tough to be successful on a play based on not good protection. That’s also something you’ve got to look at. The main thing is when the play is blocked properly, do you read the play properly? Do you do a good job of running the play properly? That’s an easy one to evaluate. And it should be. That should be 100 percent. When someone misses their assignment, that effects the quarterback’s grade as well.”
On possible missed communication a failed fourth-down attempt at Cincinnati:
“No, that was a protection issue.”
On quarterback situation:
“I feel like we’ve got two guys who can be very capable quarterbacks in our conference. Ahead of time, looking at it, we were going to do two series each. See how they played, see how they looked. And the guy who played a little bit better was going to go ahead and play a little bit more. It’s just tough to evaluate sometimes when it’s not blocked clean. It’s difficult to do that. My big deal is just talking to both of those guys just about execution of the offense. Just making sure that we’re doing an excellent job of running the offense. We understand things bog down a little bit. That’s a little out of your control. Also sometimes you get a play that’s blocked very well and you get a bit of false pressure when there really isn’t pressure. And also it comes back to some drops sometimes. I think we had four this last week and all four would have been good to have. A couple of them for sure would have been big first downs, one of them might have been a touchdown. We’ve got to do a good job of catching the ball. You’ve got to factor in all those things when you’re looking at the quarterback position.”
On whether the quarterback battle will continue into next week:
“Yeah, it’s always different with the quarterback position when there’s competition and there’s not a clear-cut guy. Jonathan [Banks] has done some great things for us, and I thought Justin stepped in and did some nice things as well.”
On playing the best players:
“At all positions you’re trying to find guys who are playing the best, guys who are playing better you want to play them a bit more. Sometimes, you look at a guy and you think, ‘Why isn’t he playing more?’ But maybe he’s not assignment-sound and there’s only part of your offense or defense he can execute. This is a little behind-the-scenes, but one of my jobs is making sure we’re playing the right 11 guys out there on offense and defense and then also making sure – as I said before it’s not a bad time to have a bye week – you can really reflect on statistical data. Analytics is so important, the analytics of how guys are playing. We look at Pro Football Focus. They rank every player in the country. That’s someone who has no preconceived ideas about who’s playing or what they look like or whatever. They’re putting a grade on there. Sometimes it’s incorrect. You have to take it with a grain of salt. They may not understand the play and what was actually supposed to transpire. But by and large I think it’s pretty good. We show that to our guys. This isn’t our grades, it’s some dude who lives in California someplace, a former coach. He’s grading what you did as far as effort or execution. We try to get everything we can to make the right decisions about who’s going to play. And there is some subjectivity in it. I wish it was all objective, you’re able to make an easy determination. That’s why it’s so easy with the field goal kickers. In practice, you go between those uprights or not go between. It’s pretty easy. You understand if they’re getting it off in the right time or not getting it off. You’re trying to make something subjective as objective as you possibly can.”
On OL Noah Fisher being available against SMU:
“Hope so. We hope so.”
On quarterback battle’s impact on other 10 players on the field:
“When there’s not that much difference, you always hear about the quarterback when you have rhythm and all that other kind of stuff. I’ve done this in the past a bit where there’s been a couple guys who have played. I liken it though to linebackers, we roll three guys there. We roll running backs, we roll wide receivers. Doesn’t seem to get much attention. But when you do it with the quarterback position it does get a lot of attention. For the other [10] guys I don’t know how much it does matter.
On whether lefty vs. righty quarterback matters:
“I do think early in the year when Justin first got here it did make a difference because the ball comes out of his hand a little bit different. But this is six weeks in now. Just like last week with the punter, a left-footed punter. It comes off the foot different. It rotates different. Luckily we’ve got a jugs machine that can punt them left-footed too. It is different.”
On whether there’s a big difference between how the team plays on the road vs. at home:
“We’re looking at everything. I’m looking at how we warm up. You start looking at everything, you’re wanting to make sure that you’re doing everything perfectly. Obviously you’ve got to look too that we’re playing some good teams on the road. I don’t want to act like it’s all us, not the team we’re playing. Certainly we need to play better on the road, no question about that. I’ve won a lot of games on the road, generally speaking that means you’ve won a lot of games. We’ve got to play better on the road though. We try to keep our preparation almost identical to when we’re playing at home as far as what we do the night before or the morning of, our warmup. We try to keep things identical as much as possible. One of the things I’m going to do next time we do play on the road, if the opponent allows us to do it – we couldn’t do it at Cincinnati because they had a big high school game the night before – but we’re going to actually warm up the day before at the venue we’re playing at. I haven’t done it in the past. I shouldn’t say I haven’t, I have done it a few times. You get to the stadium so early, you’re there two and a half hours early. You walk around the field, you do all sorts of things. I don’t know how big of a difference it is. As I’ve said before, I’ve won a lot of games on the road doing it this way. But I’m also up for change.”
Opening statement:
“We played a really good team up in Cincinnati. I give a lot of credit to their staff and their team. They played extremely hard and did a good job. I see why they’re undefeated. Offensively, defensively, a big club. They do a good job without making very many mistakes. There were some mistakes made by them, and we didn’t capitalize on them like we needed to. Way too many penalties. When you’re playing a team like that you’ve got to do a good job of playing as clean as possible, and we didn’t do that. This is a good time for a bye week for us. We’re practicing tomorrow. We’ve actually got Fall Break here at Tulane. They don’t have school on Thursday and Friday. After practice, we’ll get done tomorrow and let the fellas head on and then we’ll be back Sunday evening to get after SMU. There’s a lot of games left in the season. We’re at the halfway point right now. We’ve just got to continue improving each and every week.”
On whether the bye week is at a good time:
“Yeah, I’ve had so many that were the second or third week of the year. I really don’t think that is a good time. I had one year that I had it the second-to-last weekend of the season. I think that’s a little too late. That was a physical ballgame on Saturday. We have some bumps and bruises. There’s some guys who might not have been able to play if we played this Saturday but should be able to play a week from Saturday. I do think for the healing process, it’s good [to have the bye this week]. Recruiting-wise, we’re going to jump out and hit the road running. Tomorrow after practice, our guys are going to have some time off, but our coaches won’t. We’ll get a lot of valuable recruiting work it. But I do think it’s a good time for the guys to rest and heal up.”
On this week’s focus:
“We’re sneaking in a bit of SMU right now. We did a unit period today for about 30 minutes at the end of practice. We watched some tape and we’ll do that tomorrow as well, watch some more tape on SMU. They’ve also got a bye week this week, so there’s not going to be any more new information. So we’re able to do a game plan and all that kind of stuff right now.”
On how he assesses quarterback play:
“Just run the offense. If it’s a run play, reading the end, you give the ball, when he’s up the field, that’s a good read. Pulling, that’s not a good really. So really just running the offense, whether it’s running game or passing game. You take that for granted sometimes. You want a guy who can run the offense smoothly, and then when there’s opportunities to make plays, you make plays. That’s how you’ve got to look at it. But you’ve also got to understand when a play is – it’s tough to be successful on a play based on not good protection. That’s also something you’ve got to look at. The main thing is when the play is blocked properly, do you read the play properly? Do you do a good job of running the play properly? That’s an easy one to evaluate. And it should be. That should be 100 percent. When someone misses their assignment, that effects the quarterback’s grade as well.”
On possible missed communication a failed fourth-down attempt at Cincinnati:
“No, that was a protection issue.”
On quarterback situation:
“I feel like we’ve got two guys who can be very capable quarterbacks in our conference. Ahead of time, looking at it, we were going to do two series each. See how they played, see how they looked. And the guy who played a little bit better was going to go ahead and play a little bit more. It’s just tough to evaluate sometimes when it’s not blocked clean. It’s difficult to do that. My big deal is just talking to both of those guys just about execution of the offense. Just making sure that we’re doing an excellent job of running the offense. We understand things bog down a little bit. That’s a little out of your control. Also sometimes you get a play that’s blocked very well and you get a bit of false pressure when there really isn’t pressure. And also it comes back to some drops sometimes. I think we had four this last week and all four would have been good to have. A couple of them for sure would have been big first downs, one of them might have been a touchdown. We’ve got to do a good job of catching the ball. You’ve got to factor in all those things when you’re looking at the quarterback position.”
On whether the quarterback battle will continue into next week:
“Yeah, it’s always different with the quarterback position when there’s competition and there’s not a clear-cut guy. Jonathan [Banks] has done some great things for us, and I thought Justin stepped in and did some nice things as well.”
On playing the best players:
“At all positions you’re trying to find guys who are playing the best, guys who are playing better you want to play them a bit more. Sometimes, you look at a guy and you think, ‘Why isn’t he playing more?’ But maybe he’s not assignment-sound and there’s only part of your offense or defense he can execute. This is a little behind-the-scenes, but one of my jobs is making sure we’re playing the right 11 guys out there on offense and defense and then also making sure – as I said before it’s not a bad time to have a bye week – you can really reflect on statistical data. Analytics is so important, the analytics of how guys are playing. We look at Pro Football Focus. They rank every player in the country. That’s someone who has no preconceived ideas about who’s playing or what they look like or whatever. They’re putting a grade on there. Sometimes it’s incorrect. You have to take it with a grain of salt. They may not understand the play and what was actually supposed to transpire. But by and large I think it’s pretty good. We show that to our guys. This isn’t our grades, it’s some dude who lives in California someplace, a former coach. He’s grading what you did as far as effort or execution. We try to get everything we can to make the right decisions about who’s going to play. And there is some subjectivity in it. I wish it was all objective, you’re able to make an easy determination. That’s why it’s so easy with the field goal kickers. In practice, you go between those uprights or not go between. It’s pretty easy. You understand if they’re getting it off in the right time or not getting it off. You’re trying to make something subjective as objective as you possibly can.”
On OL Noah Fisher being available against SMU:
“Hope so. We hope so.”
On quarterback battle’s impact on other 10 players on the field:
“When there’s not that much difference, you always hear about the quarterback when you have rhythm and all that other kind of stuff. I’ve done this in the past a bit where there’s been a couple guys who have played. I liken it though to linebackers, we roll three guys there. We roll running backs, we roll wide receivers. Doesn’t seem to get much attention. But when you do it with the quarterback position it does get a lot of attention. For the other [10] guys I don’t know how much it does matter.
On whether lefty vs. righty quarterback matters:
“I do think early in the year when Justin first got here it did make a difference because the ball comes out of his hand a little bit different. But this is six weeks in now. Just like last week with the punter, a left-footed punter. It comes off the foot different. It rotates different. Luckily we’ve got a jugs machine that can punt them left-footed too. It is different.”
On whether there’s a big difference between how the team plays on the road vs. at home:
“We’re looking at everything. I’m looking at how we warm up. You start looking at everything, you’re wanting to make sure that you’re doing everything perfectly. Obviously you’ve got to look too that we’re playing some good teams on the road. I don’t want to act like it’s all us, not the team we’re playing. Certainly we need to play better on the road, no question about that. I’ve won a lot of games on the road, generally speaking that means you’ve won a lot of games. We’ve got to play better on the road though. We try to keep our preparation almost identical to when we’re playing at home as far as what we do the night before or the morning of, our warmup. We try to keep things identical as much as possible. One of the things I’m going to do next time we do play on the road, if the opponent allows us to do it – we couldn’t do it at Cincinnati because they had a big high school game the night before – but we’re going to actually warm up the day before at the venue we’re playing at. I haven’t done it in the past. I shouldn’t say I haven’t, I have done it a few times. You get to the stadium so early, you’re there two and a half hours early. You walk around the field, you do all sorts of things. I don’t know how big of a difference it is. As I’ve said before, I’ve won a lot of games on the road doing it this way. But I’m also up for change.”
