York, Northwestern coaches talk about their teams, Friday matchup

Northwestern coach Kyle Richardson

I tried to peg you as a running team in the spring but you said you guys would take what the opposition gave you; how happy have you been with your offense’s ability to do that through the first six games?

Just like last week, (running back) Jerry (Howard) had nine yards rushing but we threw for 500 yards. But the week before that he rushed for 100-plus yards because our passing game wasn’t as wide open. The key is you have to get your kids to understand that I don’t know as a coach what we’re gonna do on Friday night. But you’ve got to be ready if your called. Jerry’s done a really good job of that. Like any good running back he wants the ball 30 or 40 times in his hands but he’s a very unselfish player.

Your 2013 team had a killer instinct to bury opponents- is this bunch starting to develop that?

I don’t know if it’s an instinct that we’ve put into them, but the one thing we do preach to them is we want to score every time we touch it. Obviously that’s not gonna happen, but in our kids’ heads, it’s not about flipping the field, it’s not about field position. Our kids come off the field and if they haven’t scored a touchdown on a drive, they’re upset.

The 2013 team was like that where, as coaches, we spent more time on the sidelines trying to get them to understand everything’s okay, that we’re gonna go back on the field and you’re gonna get another shot at it, whereas usually it’s flipped. But we couldn’t have to sets of people upset on the sideline. That’s kind of the way this group is.

York coach Bobby Carroll

With an offense like Northwestern’s that is predicated on taking whatever the opposition allows, how do you defensively game-plan?

At the end of that 25 seconds they’ve got to snap it and run a play, and we’re gonna have 11 guys out on the field (laughing)... hopefully, what we’re doing dictates what they’re gonna do. How we line up.

Bottom line is it comes down to players. It doesn’t matter what you run. You can play man, man-under two deep, you can play three deep, one deep, you can do all sorts of things. You can rush 11, you can drop 11, but the bottom line comes down to players that can execute plays. That’s what it is.

A lot of attention will be focused on your offensive backfield with your three running backs and Wally Wilmore, so what do plays like the 31-yard wheel route touchdown you threw to Paul Moore last week do to open up your offense?

That’s what this whole football thing is about, then defenses start saying, ‘hey, we’ve got to defend the pass.’ You take guys out of the box, they run the ball. So, you’ve just got to take what they’ll give you.

Wally, he took a year’s sabbatical from quarterbacking and now he’s jumping back in there. He’s got to wear his big boy shoes and the team’s got to rally around him. But again, it’s all about who those players are. We played Northwestern when I was at South Pointe and held them to seven points. And we played them when I was at South Pointe and given up 42. The key to all of it is who they players were.

Both

What has surprised you about your team thus far?

Carroll: Even though we’ve given up some points, we’ve played a little bit better defense. We usually don’t start rocking and rolling until everybody gets accustomed to one another, and also the resilience in facing adversity, like Rock Hill last week. But what really surprises me is the mistakes we’re still making this late in the season, this point in the season. We’re still committing penalties, crucial penalties, we’re still turning the ball over - we had two turnovers last week that resulted in five points - that just surprises me a little bit. We’ve talked to them about it in practice. We’ll see where it goes.

Richardson: I thought our d-line was gonna be good; I didn’t expect them to be as good as they are, right now, just due to the fact of inexperience. Logan (Rudolph) had never played over there, moving (Trae’von) Hinton to a more physical position where you’re getting banged on every single snap, so moving those guys over there, the four things - D.J. (Williams) moving to corner, (Davion) Blake moving to corner and Logan and Hinton moving in the spots they have, just having the success is not surprising, but has been something that has jumped out.

Do you ever work weather into game-planning?

Carroll: Here’s what I’ve learned in my life: little boys that tell lies grow up to be weathermen. You just don’t ever know; that thing could skirt to the east, skirt to the west, go north of us. This is football, we have turf, as long as it’s not lightning, we’re gonna play.

Richardson: Every week we have a wet ball day. Our center will put his hand on the ball and get ready to snap it and I’ll walk by with a water bottle and douse the ball and his hand. Sometimes I’ll walk up to the quarterback on that day and make him stick his hands out and douse them, and our coaches all have water bottles and they go around and do that with all the players and the balls. We’ll do that once a week in practice because you never know what conditions you’re gonna get on Friday night. The only thing that’s changed is we haven’t been able to go outside like a normal week. We’ve only been able to go outside one day; that doesn’t help our preparation.

This story was originally published October 1, 2015 at 4:16 PM with the headline "York, Northwestern coaches talk about their teams, Friday matchup."