CHAPEL HILL – North Carolina offensive coordinator Phil Longo met with the media Monday to discuss what happened with his unit during a 45-22 loss at Georgia Tech on Saturday night, what he learned, and how he will go about fixing what didn’t work.
UNC allowed eight sacks versus the Yellow Jackets, and in two road games the Tar Heels have allowed 14 sacks, plus turnovers, Sam Howell, and many other things came up in his time with the media.
Above is video of Longo’s Q&A session, and below is the full transcript of what he had to say:
Q: What’s your level of concern with the number of sacks?
LONGO: "Way too many obviously, we looked it over. We went through this year; anytime you can go back and do a sack reduction study, you want to ID: Is it the quarterback? Is it the offensive line? The immediate thought is always it's the offensive line, and we've had some issues up front with protection, but it's not all the offensive line.
“Some of it is about us creating separation with wide receivers so Sam can trigger the football. Some of it is Sam holding the ball too long; it's a cumulative deal. It's the same issue we faced in year one; it's gotta be addressed. It ultimately falls on me; we talk about having emphasis every week. That will obviously be one of them going into this week's preparation for the Duke game."
Q: With Sam's experience, is there something to the duress he’s under and maybe something he can do differently?
LONGO: "Sam is a competitor just like everybody else on our offense and on our team. He's trying to make plays. I think there are areas in the game where we can pass pro better. There are areas of the game we pull the trigger better. There are areas in the game where we've got to separate. It's all the things that I just talked about, but ultimately I've gotta do a better job of moving Sam. I've gotta do a better job of calling some quick hitters getting the ball out of his hands.
“If a quarterback just, in general, his problem is holding the football, one of the easiest ways to get him out of that is to call some quick hits. Because those are plays that only work if you trigger the ball right away, and so now you're forcing him to trigger the ball quickly. If I have to do that to train a guy to get rid of the football, we do. Sam, he's really good with our quick hitters, and he does a good job down the field. I think if we emphasize press pro this week and I do a better job of setting him and our guys up on some of those downs, we will be fine."
Q: Is Sam still adjusting to his receivers and is he still working on gaining trust in them?
LONGO: "I think he trusts who's out there, but you have guys with different skill sets. You have wide receivers that do different things than the wide receivers last year. You have a slot, even though Dazz (Newsome) was prolific, and Josh Downs is prolific, they're really very different. We're in week four here, we've gone through four games and we have a young group of skill guys. So that consistency and that continuity is going to get better every week. We've seen some major improvements in some things at our skill positions with the younger guys, from game one to game four.
“I think we have to be more well prepared for these away trips, with regards to playing well early. I think in both the games, we didn't get off to good starts. Those games didn't go well for us, and so the emphasis for us is be more productive on 1st down, and get off to better starts early on in the game. That's going to be absolutely pivotal against Duke because they're going to try and limit the number of touches that we get by limiting the number of drives that we have in the game."
Q: What is the offensive identity?
LONGO: "When people ask me, I've always felt like the identity is taking what they give us. If there are eleven guys in the b gap, we are not going to bang our heads on the wall to run the ball in the b gap. And if they're dropping eight, we're not gonna insist on throwing the football. The whole system is designed to put us in a position where the odds are in our favor, and there are many different ways of doing that. I think we've got one of the best approaches, and it really just comes down to execution.
“I'm not as concerned with what people are doing defensively. I'm more concerned with us making good decisions and being more consistent, and that's probably the number one priority for us right now is to be more consistent. We're hurting ourselves more than defense is hurting us. That's no disrespect to anybody we're playing by any stretch, and we played some good football teams in good players.
“But turnovers hurt you, penalties at bad times really hurt you, not establishing the run game early on that hurt you. Those are things that were not used to doing. We need to react better when some of those things happen, and we need to minimize those things early in the game. But I think as we do that, our production will get back to normal."
Q: What were the reasons for so many sacks?
LONGO: "We had one that you could probably hang on the RB (running back), we had one that you could probably hang on the tight end, and we had one that you could hang on an offensive lineman. I agree with what Coach Brown said, you ought to get one yard a high percentage of the time. We haven't had a series like that since I've been here, I don't plan on having another one. It was a bad series for us, but it goes back to our consistency. These are plays that we've run for two and a half years now.
“We've run them at a high level ,and on each of those plays we had one player, at least one player not quite as consistent as they needed to be; and it affected us. It made it hard to get that one yard, and I think we put our team in a tough spot by not converting. As soon as we work on it, and as soon as we improve being more consistent, I think that's gonna have a positive effect in all the phases of our offensive game.
"Here's what we do after every game. We look at all the negative plays, and you want to determine: Is it something that we did or didn't do? Did we have poor technique? Was it a poorly schemed play? Was it a bad execution by our quarterback or one of our skill players? Is it something that we can improve on, and we should be doing well? Is it something we need to scrap because we're just not good at it? Or is it just something that they schemed up defensively?
“But all of those are different. There are different approaches and different solutions to those. If we don't technique something, we are not going to scrap it; we are going to get better at it; that's our job. And if schematically it's not a great call or great play or great against what we're looking at, you would hope during the week that we're probably gonna cut it out of the game plan before we reach Saturday.
“I think our staff who does a great job has done a really good job of keeping us out of bad calls. I usually don't worry about making bad calls because the staff does such a good job of prepping our game plan. We have very, very high confidence in what we call, and I think what it is going to come down to is we have to play more consistently. We will eliminate bad scheme plays , we're going to improve technique when that's the reason why we weren't successful in a particular play. It just depends on what is the issue. When we take the negative plays from the two losses out, and we watch them in a cut-up, it is frustrating to see for the players and the staff that it's more about things that we did or didn't do.
“The good news on the flip side is that. It's like I would say, 'if you need to recruit to be 6-5 and he's 5-11, it's never going to happen' you can't improve, but if the 5-11 kid needs to improve a little bit of speed or get stronger, those are all things that he can affect or change. When technique or minimizing mistakes, not committing the penalty, or having better ball security, those are all things that have everything to do with how we handle things, not necessarily what the defense did. The bad part of that means we're not consistent, and we haven't executed in certain series or downs. The good part is it's all correctable, and we need to do I; we need to do that now and again I say that stuff falls on me, and that's going to be the emphasis for this week."
Q: What was the difference between UVA and GT defense with the way they used the three-safety looks?
LONGO: "So against this three safety defense a 4, 5, 6-yard run is a really good run. We watched or played against that defense the last two weeks, and we told our guys. We're so used to popping a play that goes for 18 or 20 (yards) you get spoiled. Then you've got to understand that when we knock something down for four or five or six yards, that's a great run. It's easy to call plays on 2nd and 4, 2nd and 5, 2nd and 6, and that's the world that we live in here, that we want to live in. It goes back to my comment earlier about being more productive on first down, particularly earlier in the game. And as we improve our first down production and minimize mistakes, I think you'll see the run game improve and look a little bit more like it did last week.
“I think we rely on Sam when they give it. If it's a pull and there's some space, and he can run it, go get some yards. I think he needs to do that. I think when we have to give it, we give it and let the running backs handle that job. And then there's enough of a run game away from read zone it's not the only play we run. We want to get to a point where we can rely on our backs, but quarterback as well as a run weapon, we always want that to be a piece of our offense. We're just thankful that we're able to utilize that aspect of the system this year because of the depth that we have in the quarterback room.”
