Longo breaks down defensive miscues vs. Wake Forest, praises Howell and previews Appalachian State

The offensive coordinator says focus was the issue on Friday at Wake Forest

Phil Longo met with the media on Monday morning, and largely, his comments reflected that of his players after Friday night's loss in Winston-Salem, pointing to energy and focus as the reason for North Carolina's poor offensive performance.

Highlights from his press conference:

On what went wrong offensively in the first half vs. Wake Forest

Our guys, we executed better. We took too long to get going. It’s important for any offense to have some early-down success. The first two games, we had a lot more success on first down and that got drives going and got Sam confident, the rest of the guys confident.

Wake Forest did a great job of winning the down in the first half, and we got behind the chains in the first half and that affected us.

Was that a problem with the offensive line?

I would say that we were not happy overall, Coach (Stacy) Searels probably would tell you we weren’t happy overall with our performance up front. It’s an offensive unit deal and that falls back on me; we weren’t ready to play early on.

We’ve got all the excuses: two emotional games and we’re beat up and the quarterback looked like a freshman and we have all that stuff, and that’s not the deal. WE just weren’t ready to perform at a high level and match the energy that Wake Forest came out with in the first half and that’s really what affected our execution.

What’s the main issue with the offensive line that you can change or stuck out to you on Friday?

Again, it’s not just the offensive line. For us to do well with App State or any game we play for the rest of the season, we’ve got to have a greater focus from an energy standpoint and a focus standpoint starting the game. We’ve got to do a better job executing on first down so we have positive plays.

I’m very used to dictating on first down and getting six, seven, eight yards on first down. Being in 2 and 9 is obviously not where we want to be offensively. We want to be in that 2 and 4-6 range and we didn’t do a good job of that in the first half, and it wasn’t a schematic issue and I wouldn’t blame the players. I’ve got to do a better job, our staff has got to do a better job of getting our players ready to play early and I think that’s going to be the biggest challenge for this week against App State.

What’d you talk to Sam about after the game about his first-half performance and what he did well?

It’s business with Sam, and that’s what I like about him; it’s not an emotional roller-coaster up and down. When things weren’t going well, he was pretty stoic and very professional. Jace was right there and the three of us had our conversation about mistakes that were made or things that we have to do different or different things we want to look at, we have to see or expect when we go back out on the next drive.

Halftime was the same; we made our adjustments. I thought we did a good job of making some adjustments at halftime and things started to click there in the fourth quarter, but really it was momentum and emotion in the fourth quarter. We’re running the same offense, we’re running the same plays; we just executed at a higher level against the same defense. It was just too little, too late.

It tells you what kind of kid he is when he sits in front of the media Friday night and takes the blame himself. It was not Sam Howell. It was our entire offense and we’ve got issues at every position that we want to continue to improve on.

Is there a common thread with the first-down struggles that have led to third-down struggles?

When you’re going to do a better job on third down, when we are in a third-and-long situation — which, in football, is the worst situation to be in offensively — we still have to make sure we’re directing the ball toward the strengths that we have offensively, schematically and we’re still trying to get our better players the football.

There’s kind of an emphasis this week on some higher-percentage plays on third downs to try to help our guys in what I think is the toughest situation in football. I still say, and you know I’m going to tell you this, is the best way to handle third-and-long is to stay out of it and that goes back to our first- and second- down production. As we can minimize those negative type situations like third and long, we’ll do better overall offensively.

When did the connection with Dyami develop for Sam?

Dyami has had some of the bigger plays so far. I think the relationship with Sam and Jace with the receivers and just the receiver-unit as a whole — not just Dyami, but as an entire unit — started to jell toward the end of August. We’re young there — we’re athletic — but we’re really young. It was probably a little bit more of a concern in early August, the continuity we had, the route integrity that we had in the pass game and they did a really good job

Coach (Lonnie) Galloway did a good job of them progressing daily, so by the time we took the field at South Carolina, we felt pretty good about our receiving corps. Dyami, right now, is leading that group, obviously, production-wise.

How do you get the run game going earlier?

I think we have to do a better job being physical at the line of scrimmage, that’s where it starts. There are probably some decisions we have to make; do we need to pull and throw on every run, do we want to block some things? At the end of the day, it falls back on, and I hate to be generic about it, but our beginning of the game focus has to be where it has to be for us to get started in a game the way we want to. That really changes everything for us.

Technique-wise, we probably weren’t as clean as we wanted to be in the run-game early on. You get a TFL for two yards and you’re in 2 and 12 and it changes the whole outlook for you offensively, so I’d say we have to match energy and we have to match the focus we had in the first two games and we’ve got to be more physical on first down when we start the game against App State.

Is there a plan to get Jace Ruder more involved moving forward?

That’s our plan … it’s really dictated by situation. There are some things we want to do with Jace; he did a great job of getting us off the goal line last week and pulled one for whatever the gain was and got us out of the hole, got the drive going a little bit.

He’s always in the plan and if the game situation presents itself, then you’ll see Jace out there. There’s really no game where we’re going into it without the intention of using Jace, but what happens in the game will dictate whether we do it or not.

How did Brian Anderson fare in his first start?

It was his first start. I think we’d like Brian to have played better, just like the rest of the guys. For a guy that started his first game at center, he fought, and really, I can make that comment about our whole team. The one thing, and I think I tweeted it, one thing I left the game with knowing a little more about our team is there is no quit in our team at all; they fought for four quarters.

Brian’s game, it wasn’t a perfect game, it wasn’t great technically, we had some errant snaps, he had two snap infractions, but Brian played hard for the entire game and he actually made some really good blocks in the fourth quarter to protect Sam and we got some big plays off that stuff. That’s the stuff we’re going to build on. The approach with improving Brian this week is going to be the (whole offense): better focus early on, got to be more physical and we’ve got to play cleaner football.

What have you seen from App’s defense?

24 (Akeem Davis-Gaither) is a really good football player, he’s productive. No. 7 (Josh Thomas) in the back end is really, really good and up front, 48 (Demetrius Taylor) is a physical kid with some twitch. Those are three of the stronger players that we’ve identified at App State. We’ve got to know where they are and we’ve got to be able to handle them.

App is a little blend of a number of the opponents we’ve seen. They’re going to use a good mix of man and zone coverage, they’ll cloud the corner sometime and try to get two over Dyami, I’m sure. They’re going to stack the box and they’re going to try to stop the run and force you to beat them with the throw, at least, that’s what they’ve shown in the first two games. They do a really good job stacking the box and gapping off the run game.

For us to establish the run game that we want and we intend to get established, we’re going to have to do a good job physically and technically early on.

On Antonio Williams' role

Make no mistake about it, he is a weapon and he’s a running back that’s in the rotation for us. He’s kind of in the same boat as Jace; there’s an intention to use him every week, it’s just going to be dictated by situation. Coach Gillespie will handle our roll through the three running backs. Sometimes, we use a guy based on how fresh they are, as I said last week, we’re going to use a guy based on how well they’re playing. Occasionally, it’s by situation.

Antonio is always in the plan, and I think before long, you’ll see him out on the field again. It’s hard to tell you when, because it’s going to be based on how the game goes.

Why have you had so much success in the fourth quarter?

It was most drastic this last week.

South Carolina, we had some success throughout the game and moved the ball pretty much for the entire game. Miami, we got off to the fast start then struggled a little bit in the middle then we came alive at the end again. This game, we were virtually non-existent in the first half and that doesn’t help you win football games.

I thought the defense did a fantastic job of keeping us in the ballgame and gave us an opportunity to make a run at it at the end of the game. We’ve got a greater responsibility to the team offensively than what we performed this last week. Really, when you get into a groove offensively — it’s just happened later at times — your confidence goes up, your energy goes up. That’s why I keep harping on this focus we have to have at the start of the game. It’s imperative, because the sooner we get going, the better we play over the course of the four quarters.