Q&A with Brian Borland: Thoughts on TCU, getting pressure
Kansas defensive coordinator Brian Borland covered several topics in his weekly press conference. He talked about having to come up with the big play when called on and the challenges TCU brings on Saturday.
Here is more from Borland and his thoughts on the defense.
You guys put an emphasis on finishing game prior to last week, and it didn't work out for you. Just what can you do now…
We’ve got to keep going with it. Try to identify what's really going on. And put some specific work in addressing those things. I feel in a lot of ways where we're uptight in those situations. We're too nervous. We’ve got to relax more. We've got to trust our training more, take confidence in the fact that we've got a lot of guys that played a lot of football, been in those situations before and been successful.
I don't want it to become a thing. And just our level of execution just hasn't been what it needs to be in some of those clutch moments. It's not every down, it's clutch moments. So got to make good decisions when decisions are required.
We've got guys that do that with regularity and we just need to do it now. So again, I've just got to assume that every game is going to come down in situations like that. And honestly, we practice that stuff today and did successfully. I have to have confidence that we'll get the job done, but unfortunately, we just have not the last few weeks.
How do you think the defense handled Cornell Wheeler being out late in the game…
Cornell doesn't take every snap, so there's other guys that play in his spot every day. Quite honestly, I don't spend a minute worrying about if he's playing or not playing or who's playing. You’ve got to play with the guys that are in there, and you got to trust the guys that are in there. Anybody that would play other than Cornell, if Cornell happens not to play, they've taken plenty of snaps.
The running quarterbacks have given you some trouble. What do you expect from TCU’s quarterback…
Well, he has, but he doesn't. I don't think that's his game, like the last two guys. And I thought we did a decent job on the guy last week other than probably one specific play and a couple of scrambles. But the plays were most concerned about him running the ball on, we defended him pretty good. You know, those guys are on scholarship, too, once in a while, and they kind of have a way of making some plays.
But I think the TCU quarterback is a really good quarterback. But I would think that there's guys that look to run when they pass sometimes if things don't look quite right, and there's guys that hang in there and try to keep throwing the ball.
He's a keep my eyes down the field, slide around the pocket kind of a guy and give myself some space to throw the ball. And he's really good at that kind of stuff. I don't think they're calling a lot of designed runs for him. They have a huge RPO game, but it's largely I'm going to give the ball off or I'm going to throw it.
He throws the ball quite a bit. Probably throws the ball at a higher percentage of RPO throws than probably any guy that will likely face all year long. So really accomplished in that area and got some good guys to throw to.
When you face a wide receiver room like this how do you approach it as a coordinator…
We just have to, you know who they are. We study what they do, what kind of catches do they make, how do they release off the line? What kind of indicators do they have about breaking points and things like that. I think we have some awareness of all that kind of stuff. But quite honestly, at the end of the day, you have to keep yourself in good matchups. I feel good about anybody that's going to cover those guys back there, but they're good in their own right there. They've got good size. They look like strong, mature guys that run well. They're going to be a handful. I'm not predicting that we're going to keep zero yards passing.
They're probably going to get a couple on us, but we’ve got to hang in there and I think they do just such a really good job of just keeping moving to open windows and the quarter. We've certainly got our work cut out for us because they're a pretty good crew.
How have you felt about the play of your secondary to this point in the season…
I think we can play better. I think we've done a decent job. I sometimes feel like it's not every guy, every game, so I don't know that we've all together just put our best performance forward. You know, our players gotta get A's when it's test time and counting on those guys and they know they have high expectations of themselves. I'm not disappointed in any of those guys at all. We've just got to show up every week and really just play to the level we're capable of. If we can do that, we're fine.
and we kind of confer about sort of like we do at halftime and, you know, what's the game situation? What are we going to likely face?
What challenges do you have this week with a team that airs it out like TCU and getting pressure on the QB...
I think we got three sacks last week against a West Virginia team, which, that's most anybody has had on him, probably all of last year, so. They were really good up front last week and really good pass pro guys, and it was tough. I'm not saying it wasn't tough, but we got guys that they're pretty relentless. We haven't had that one guy that, like Austin Boston from last year. You know, he's going to put pressure on this guy six, seven, eight times a game. I don't know that we have that guy right now, and we're still developing, but we do have a lot of guys that have their moments.
It's not always getting sacks. It's containing the quarterback in the pocket, it's condensing the pocket. It's, making him throw and making him uncomfortable and making him throw before he's ready to throw.
I don't want to have to send maximum pressure every time, and this is the only way that we're going to get to him (the QB) because those don't always work either. So, we got to pick our spots with things that we do. And I feel we've got a number of guys that are capable past rushers now.