Colorado State University Athletics
Fairchild: Changes in store after disappointing season
12/3/2010 12:00:00 AM | Football
Dec. 3, 2010
FORT COLLINS, Colo. -- Head Coach Steve Fairchild took time away following the team's season-ending loss to Wyoming, to recharge his batteries, reconnect with his family and begin to consider significant changes in the Rams' program following a 3-9 season. He met sportswriters from the area's three largest newspapers Friday afternoon, in between individual meetings with each of his returning players. In addressing a wide range of topics, from the team's unacceptable effort over its final two games to the minimum expectation that the Rams are in a bowl game in 2011, the coach outlined the state of the program. Following is a transcript of that interview:
On the season’s final two games: “Obviously, I’m very disappointed in how we played the last two games. I thought halfway through the season we would start making improvements. It started to show in some areas but then obviously we played very, very poorly down the stretch. So there are some things to fix.”
On changes in store: “We’ll take a hard look, like we always do, at every aspect, but I’m quite certain we’ll change some things schematically on defense. Technique, scheme. Every year, we always address personnel. This year, there may be some guys switching positions. That’s normal. Even off a good year, you’re going to do that. That’s No. 1. And then, like we always do, evaluate our entire program. It’s a good time of year to look at what we’re doing in recruiting, how we’re training in the offseason. I’m going to make a big change in the offseason. We’re going to (practice) Tuesday-Thursday mornings. The kids go to school in the afternoon, so our spring ball, I don’t have the exact time, but it may actually be 7 a.m.”
On the progress of recruiting: “I anticipate us having a great recruiting class. It’s going better than I ever would’ve thought.”
On visiting with the athletic director following the season: “I had a nice visit with Paul Kowalczyk. I got feedback from him. Obviously, he’s disappointed, as I am, in how we ended up. It was good to have that conversation, brainstorm how we can get better.”
On schematic changes on defense: “That’s going to be a topic of conversation. We already play some 3-4 but there are some things I know I would like to do, now that I’ve been through three college seasons, that I see going on out there from a schematic standpoint. I don’t want to get into details, but things like press corners and boundary corners, things in that regard, that I see being done that I like. Larry (Kerr) and I of course will visit on that.”
On players that won’t return: “Nico Ranieri has indicated that he will transfer, which we actually visited and are going to help him. I like Nico. I think he can help us, but I certainly understand. You want to talk about a good kid, and a good team player. He supported Pete Thomas in every way, shape and form. So I was very proud of him, the way he handled things. You’re talking about a kid that was the (Florida) 5A Player of the Year at a pretty good level of high-school football and he thinks he needs a chance to play and I don’t blame him.”
On how CSU will help Ranieri: “I’m releasing him (from his scholarship commitment). We made a highlight tape for him. I’ll get on the phone and help him, within the rules, anyway I can. I love the kid. I’ll do whatever I can to help Nico Ranieri.”
On the early departure of QB Klay Kubiak: “He is graduating. Klay, we had the greatest conversation. We had a chance to interact with his parents. He wants to pursue a degree in English, a graduate degree. It’s the most important thing to him right now. His brother (former CSU player Klint Kubiak) wants to coach, and he’s a GA at (Texas) A&M. I said, ‘Don’t you want to coach?’ I think Klay would be an excellent coach. You know Klay, along with Daren (Wilkinson) and I, helped Pete. Klay helped Pete as much as anybody. He’s got such an aptitude for (coaching), with the family, but he wants to get into the best graduate school he can, post-graduate English. We had a nice visit and that’s what he wants to do.”
On the quarterback situation entering 2011: “Garrett Grayson was one of the top 25 passers in the country. He grayshirted to get some separation. He’ll be here shortly, this next semester. He’s been working out with Ty Detmer. His sister teaches down in the San Antonio school district. I’m very confident he’s going to come in and have a tremendous spring. We’ll try to do the same thing we did with Pete last year, get him ready to play, because he’s one play from playing. Matt Yemm could go there in a pinch. T.J. Borcky could go in there in a pinch. At least this spring we know we’ll have a guy coming back (Thomas) that knows the cadence. It’ll be fun to coach this spring because of that. M.J. McPeek injured his shoulder (during the ’10 season); he is going to be available in the spring. Really, I like his chances of being able to go in and do something, so we’ll see where he’s at. It’s about time. He’s physically ready.”
On having enough quarterbacks to take reps: “You struggle in the spring sometimes with that. You have this group off the top that graduates and goes but you don’t have the new group in yet. It seems like you’re always limping in on the 14th, 15th practice trying to have enough guys to run a full two hours out there.”
On why the team collapsed in its final two games: “I think we were a very, very under-confident team down the stretch. That’s my job to get us more emotionally ready, and to have us more confident in what we’re doing. I could see it those last couple games. Without getting off to a good start, we were very under-confident.”
On how much those last two games changed the overall perception of the 2010 season: “It changes it. We obviously didn’t perform up to expectations. That’s my job. Division I football is very high-profile and when we don’t meet expectations, it’s very visible. There’s a lot of people within the university, within the community that are disappointed, and they should be. It does change how we look at last year (2010).
“We’re disappointed. I realize it. I realize there’s fans out there that are (ticked) off. I’m glad they’re (ticked) off. I’m mad. We need to perform much better. We should’ve performed much better.”
On, considering that he’s ultimately judged on wins and losses, whether it’s fair to say he’s on the hot seat in 2011: “No question. There’s no question we’ve got to perform much better than we have. I don’t want to sit here and put anything out there like I think we’re going to win the league next year. But we need to take a step forward. We need to look like a much better football team. Myself, personally, I would expect us to be in a bowl game next year.”
On whether he would hold himself accountable if CSU is not in a bowl next year: “I’m always accountable. I hold myself accountable after every season.”
On whether it’s fair to say that since all the ingredients are in place for success, 2011 is the year to fine-tune the program and make it successful: “You put it well. Yeah, it is. There’ve been some good things. Obviously, some of those haven’t shown up on the field as often as we would’ve liked. I realize people are (ticked) off. They should be (ticked) off. I want our players to be (ticked) off. I want our coaches to be (ticked) off. We are in a high-profile, results business. I realize that. So, let’s go do it.”
On whether players are (ticked) off: “Yeah. When you look at what we do, it’s a complicated equation. For us, we have to have ability. I think we’re getting there. We’ve got to work very, very hard, for which I’ll take responsibility, for myself and my staff to make sure that gets done. And then it’s that elusive third thing: How important is it to everybody, how to we gel as a team? How unselfish we are. And each team’s different. You can have a whole lot of all-conference guys coming back but if you don’t have that third thing in place, you’re going to struggle. If you’ve got some good football players and that third thing’s in place, you’re going to have a good team.”
On how he felt when opponents got off to a fast start in 2010 games, that the Rams didn’t respond: “That shocked me. I saw it in our defense’s face at the BYU game. It caught me off guard. Wherever we open next year, whatever game next year, somebody’s going to three-and-out us, somebody’s going to go down and score, and we’ve got to get the wide-eyed look out of our face and we’ve got to punch somebody in the mouth. That’s how good football teams respond. We did not do that down the stretch. Are we capable? We are.”
On the team’s mindset after losing to San Diego State, eliminating CSU from bowl contention, and how that loss affected the team in its final two games: “it coincided with a very emotional, very well-played road trip to San Diego State. I’ve been on teams in the NFL, where you’re sitting there at 4-6 and you’re right in the middle of a playoff hunt, but eventually, you get to those last couple of weeks and all of a sudden you’re not, and that’s tough duty. As good as kids as you have, there’s still something missing. I don’t want to adhere to that theory. I don’t want to admit that as being the case. I said this to you guys, and sometimes you think I’m (kidding) you, and I’m not, but we come off that San Diego State game and we had the best Wednesday practice we’ve had since I’ve been here. I meant that, in all sincerity. That was a hell of a practice. And everybody asks me, ‘Do you think the team quit?’ (in those last two games) and I don’t think the players quit. I think there was just an expectation that things were going to go wrong, and we didn’t know how to respond very well to that down the stretch. We played some poor defense down the stretch and you do that long enough, you’re going to expect not to stop people, and that’s got to change. We’ve got to rise up and be able to stop them.”
On the health of the team entering the spring: “Jake Gdowski has a shoulder; he will be limited. Elijah-Blu (Smith) had a shoulder; he’ll be limited. Cameron Moss has a knee that may not be 100 percent. I’m very anxious to see Kivon Cartwright. He should be back. Very, very talented kid that I’m excited about. Thomas Coffman should be back; I’m very excited about what he brings to the table. We’ve got some guys that had some stuff cleaned up that should be 100 percent even by mat drills (in early February).
“The way I view (injuries) is I want to make sure everything that has to be done is done. The first year I got here, all of a sudden we’re having surgeries in January. That’s ridiculous. We want to evaluate, address, get to it before (winter) break. We’ve done that. It’s a little early now to be commenting. When they’ve gone through their rehab and all of a sudden we’re at the end of January, we’re getting ready for mat drills, it’s kind of easy to tell at that point who’s come along and so forth.”
On offensive changes in store: “My gut feeling is always to pound you running the football. I think we didn’t do a good enough job with that this year. We need to improve at running back, the way we finish runs. The offensive line has the potential to be good; it’s still a work in progress. But having said all that, anything we can do to become more explosive on that side of the ball, we have to look at. We have to look at that in terms of recruiting, in terms of personnel, we have to look at it in terms of scheme. Anything we can do to create an explosive run or an explosive pass, we need to spend some time on. I’m not naïve. We did not play as well as we thought we could. I’m not hard-headed. We’ll take a serious look at it. I know, though, defensively, there’s going to be some changes.”
On comparing CSU’s offensive scheme to that of San Diego State: “I think they are what we are. They do everything they can to be balanced, like we do, and they want you to pick your poison. If you play with two safeties, then Ronnie Hillman’s going to run, or we handed it to Gartrell (Johnson) as soon as you close the middle. What made them so dangerous (in 2010) is that they’re just so good out there (at wide receiver). I told Larry Kerr going into that game that if Ronnie Hillman beats us, they’re going to score in the 20s. If you close the middle and let those receivers go, it’s in the 50s. Those guys were both all-conference. That to me, when you play a pro-style offense and you have those two guys, my Lord. We need to get there, obviously. We need to get more explosive, but really, we’re the same scheme. You can say they throw to set up the run. We do the same thing, but we’re going to line up with a run threat.
“What they do is very similar to us. We’re not the gun-run team.”
On whether he’s worried about changing too much: “No. I don’t want to say we’re not doing the right thing. I like how we train. I’m tweaking some things, like the Tuesday-Thursday (morning practices). I just see very clearly on the defensive side of the ball some things that I want to do differently. Then, the rest of it will be the normal postseason ‘What do we need to do?’ We gave up a lot of sacks last year. I don’t think it was all the line. I think it was miscommunication with Pete Thomas, I think it was youth, some of it was the line. We’ll evaluate it and try to fix it. That goes on every year. We’ve got to get more aggressive in the red zone throwing the football. I know that. Now, we’ve got a quarterback back and hopefully we’ll get better in that area. We’re not going to sit and just let anything that was not good just be status quo. But I also don’t want to do anything knee-jerk. I want to investigate it and do what I think is best.”
On defensive changes, whether they have more to do with what other teams are doing offensively, or what he thinks he has personnel-wise: “Both. And, what I think trends are in college football, what seems to be working.”
On other players that will transfer: “Chris Gipson is going to transfer.”
On other position changes and personnel changes: “I’d rather wait and go through the whole roster (individual meetings with each player), which I’ll have done by next Saturday, visiting with people. Then, there are some ones I know are going to happen right now; I’d just rather not say it because I want a chance to pull our staff off the road (recruiting), talk about ‘This is what we’re thinking,’ that sort of thing. There’s a number of things going through my head that we’d at least like to talk to kids about.
“We moved Crockett Gillmore to defensive end (in late August). He’d probably start at tight end if I moved him back, but I’m not sure I want to do that, because I want to bolster our defensive line and leave him where he’s at. He may be an all-conference tight end two years from now, but those guys are so young that you just got to let it play out a little bit. And there are some upperclass guys that I’m going to visit with. A lot of it depends on whether we commit totally to a 3-4 or not. That’ll have a lot to do with some things.”
On whether it’s possible the team will shift to a 3-4 base defense: “It is. Exclusively. But again, the things I’m talking about on defense have less to do with 3-4 or 4-3 as they do with technique and how we’re playing at some of those spots. How much upfield are we? How much pressure do we bring? How much do we roll corners? How much two-deep are we in? How much press do we do? All those things, they’re kind of technique slash scheme. I can say we’re going to switch to a 3-4 or stay in a 4-3, but that’s so elementary compared to what solves problems.”
On whether these changes are the result of other teams’ successful defenses and their schemes: “Yes. Scheme, personnel, and yes, that’s when I made the comment about what I see going on in college football, what’s being played well in college football. Yes, to answer your question.”
On the effect of the team’s record on the 2011 signing class: “With regard to recruiting, most of that is done before the outcome of the season. But I think in visiting with parents, people understand the situation. I think it’s about people and when they meet our staff and see the belief we have. I’ve been pleased with what we’ve done. The bulk of the reason that we’ve had back-to-back good recruiting classes, and we’re going to have a third one, is the staff I hired.”
On reported new CU head coach Jon Embree: “I’ve met Jon. I don’t know Jon, but I know anytime that you hire somebody that went there, like I feel about this place, I’m sure he’s got a real passion for CU in his heart. That’s probably a good thing for them.”
