Houston football coach Willie Fritz talks about spring practice, start of 2025 season
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Spring practices recently wrapped up for Willie Fritz, entering his second season as Houston’s head football coach.
During an on-campus press conference media availability this week, Fritz talked about how spring practices went, as well as an early outlook on the upcoming season.
Here are some of Fritz’s thoughts regarding spring practice and the upcoming 2025 season.
Fritz on Houston’s completion of spring workouts
“We had 15 really good practices for spring ball. We actually went live for a little bit in the spring game, including the quarterback. Not very many people do that, and we did that with our third, fourth and fifth-team quarterbacks, and saw some interesting things doing that.
“I thought the kids we added from the portal and also high school kids; I think we had 11 high school kids that came in early and graduated early, they really did a good job of embracing the University of Houston and what we’re looking for in our football program.
“We’re going to have quite a few new guys this season, not nearly as many as we had the year before, but we’re excited about it. I think we improved our depth, particularly on the offensive line, we’ve got some legitimate competition. There were some positions last year where guys were starting that was just, he was the best guy there. We didn’t have much competition, but we’re going to have competition, good competition, with the running backs, tight ends, wide receivers.
“(I’m) excited about our quarterbacks. Connor Weigman came in (a junior transfer from Texas A&M), and he’s been fantastic to work with, and a really good team guy. (Junior) Zeon Chriss was a little banged up at the beginning of the spring, but the last seven, eight practices he was super. Excited about the development of (true freshman) Austin Carlisle, also at the quarterback position.”
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Fritz on the impact made by his new offensive and defensive coordinators
“(New offensive coordinator) Slade Nagle, who was with me at Tulane and did a great job there and then went over to LSU last season. He wanted to be a coordinator again, and we’re fortunate enough to get him to come over here to Houston, and so there’s a lot of familiarity between Slade and I, what he does and I have complete confidence in him.
“And then Austin Armstrong came in as our new defensive coordinator; he was at Florida the last couple of years and before that, he was at Southern Miss. … He did a good job of working with the guys this spring.
“Just a very good spring; we got a lot of good work in (with) technique fundamentally, and then we also got a lot of work in schematically because we had two new coordinators, so we needed to do that.”
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Fritz on the Cougars’ revamped secondary
“We feel like we really added some good guys through the portal; a couple of outstanding corners, a couple of really good safeties and we needed to for depth purposes as well, and also for these guys to compete for starting positions. So we had a lot of good competition on the back end, so we’re very, very excited about that.
“A couple of guys from Wyoming (Wrook Brown and Kenny Parks), a young man coming from Sacramento State (Zelmar Vedder) and another DB who’s from Houston, went to Elkins High School, who’s from Louisiana Tech (Blake Thompson). So, some good guys to go along with the guys that are here.”
I’m Home!❤️🤍
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Fritz on if there are any positions that still have a need
“No, we’re done. We’re done. We’re excited about where we’re at right now. I think we did a good job of finding guys at the positions that we needed. And you know we want competition at positions, and we just didn’t have much of that last season.
“Had a difficult time playing some starters in the kicking game, because we just didn’t have anybody to back them up. … You know, there’s some guys we don’t have here that probably just didn’t fit our culture. You know, the portal works both ways, not just one way. So, we’re excited about the guys that we’ve added, and I think they’re really going to contribute to the University of Houston.”
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Fritz on how he assesses recruits, both from high school and the transfer portal
“Well, you’ve got to do it positionally. … To be a great recruiter, you’ve got to be a talent evaluator. Some guys do a good job of that; you can tell if that guy can play at your level, what he’s good at, what he’s not good at, etcetera. Then you’ve got to be a great information gatherer, and last year when I came in, I didn’t have much time to do that, my first December here.
“So, we were able to really get in the weeds and find guys that have the same belief system as us, so that’s very, very important, and I think we did an excellent job of talking to as many people as we possibly could about whether they would be a good fit here at the University of Houston and how I do things with our football program, so that was a huge advantage for us.
“You’ve got to have both, not one or the other; a guy that played Power 4 football but also wanting to win in this day and age. I want guys who play for the name on the front of your jersey, that the name on the back will prosper. So we want guys that want to play for the University of Houston to do the best job they possibly can.”
Fritz on how he thinks his offense will fare in 2025
“I’ve always been a 50/50 (run-pass balance) guy. You know, we had to kind of get away from that a little bit last year because we just didn’t do a great job of pass protection and sustaining our blocks and getting open out there on the perimeter and then hitting them when they were open, so we had to run the ball a little bit and play a little more ball-control style offense so that we could stay in the games, but we want to be a 50/50 team.
“One of the things I’m excited about with Coach Nagle is, he went over to LSU and they’re probably one of the better drop-back pass teams in the country, so he got an opportunity to get his feet wet in a different style of offense. We’re not going to be exclusively drop-back pass, we like to run 50 percent of the time and throw it 50 percent of the time.
“If we have 800 plays in the season, I would like 400 of each at all possible, because we’ve got some darn good running backs. But I’m excited that with the direction our offense is moving, I saw some really good things in the spring and the big difference to me was the offensive line; we’ve got competition there.
“We signed five guys (on the offensive line) that started at Division I schools and played well at Division I schools, and combining those guys with the guys we have returning, there’s going to be competition. That’s good. Competition makes us all better.”
