Nov. 16, 2009

Opening Statement
COACH WEST: We had three bad plays in coverage that really hurt us. The positives were that the special teams played pretty well. I was glad for Coach (John) Wozniak and the special teams because I have been pretty hard on them all year long.

We are a very beat up team, and probably when you get in the situation we are in the injuries hurt a little bit worse. Marcus Ball probably won't play against Houston. There is a good chance Greg Jackson won't play in this game. In the secondary, we're down to just about nothing. We have four safeties out and three left on the team. If we lose the three guys, I don't know what we will do.

I believe Houston has as fine of an offensive team as I have seen since I have been in the league. I think probably the other best one was Louisville in around 2004. I thought they had a great offense. I thought Stefan LeFors was a great quarterback.

Case Keenum is fabulous at quarterback. For this quarterback to not be on a Heisman list in ridiculous. It is unfair because he is great. He makes plays with his arm and he makes plays with his legs too. What he does throwing the ball is amazing; 500 yards passing in a game is nothing to him. That is incredible. He does it week after week no matter who they are playing.

They are four or five deep at wide receiver. They are two or three running backs deep. They are as good of an offensive team as I have seen in the nine years I have been in the league. We'll have to put together a good plan to give our guys a chance to compete. This isn't a very good match-up for us being the way we are in the secondary right now and with them being a passing team. We are going to go play and do the best that we can do.

About trying to stop the Houston offense
COACH WEST: I never figured out how to cover people without secondary people. We have worked some miracles through the years. I told our players how good they (Houston) are. But here is what we have to do to have a chance. We have to try to limit their big plays. We have to make them snap it again. We have to invite them to do some things and take them away. I have never been in a game where I've invited a team to run the ball, but this may be it. We will get the defense playing. We will see what we can do. It's a heck of a challenge, I will say that.

About scoring points offensively to take pressure off the defense
COACH WEST: If we can get our offense going and play well offensively... As beat up as we are defensively, we can't get in a shootout. We can't win that way. We have to try to control the tempo of the game with our offense. They love to control the tempo, and they are fast and really quick. They want all the snaps they can get, and I would too if I had the players they had. They are shooting to get 80-100 snaps in the game because they are going to score a bunch of points if they get them.

About blitzing the Houston quarterback
COACH WEST: We can't do that because I'm not sure we can cover their guys. They are going to give you four and five guys at a time. They never put a tight end in there. All four of them are going to be guys that can hurt you. Not many people play them using man coverage. Case Keenum gets rid of the ball real quickly. I'm not sure that blitz is the answer. You have to bring some people to control the running game. The structure of your defense has to be to stop the pass.

This is probably one of the first (offenses) I have seen that you really can't plan for. You know you have to do some things so they don't just hand it off, but your structure has to be to try and limit their passes.

State of the offense right now
COACH WEST: Curtis (Steele) is a really good player. I was disappointed we couldn't get in a good rhythm on Saturday. I thought we made a couple of nice adjustments to get it going in the second half. Passing game wise, I thought we labored going down the field on Saturday. We have got to be better going down the field than we were on Saturday. We didn't play well enough to win the game offensively on Saturday. A lot of that had to do with our offensive line. We played without Brad Paul and Dominik Riley on Saturday and played with our third center on Saturday.

Status of Brad Paul
COACH WEST: Brad has an elbow that he got injured on Thursday. It was kind of a freak deal. I am fairly optimistic that he could be back this week. He tried Saturday and got dressed but couldn't do it. Marcus Ball tried Saturday and played three or four plays and just couldn't go.

We are not going to get Dominik (Riley) back. You have Lionel Henderson and Michael Antonescu and with Malcom Rawls' situation, we really have to keep Michael Antonescu at guard. We really had six or seven guys in the rotation last week.

Jamie McCoy got sick Friday night, and we had to take him home. He is going to be a fine football player. He was literally ill, and I don't know how he made it through the game. I think it was shear toughness. I thought that was above and beyond.