HAFFnHAFF

"Rahim is the self proclaimed greatest and I don't think anyone wants to argue with him" lol! I'll be interested to see how accurate your recruiting predictions play out. You hit a few of my thoughts and expectations on the head but there were a few things you said that I didn't expect. Great stuff. Always enjoy stuff like this.

Danger was a good interview!

Neal Davis: Good morning and welcome back to 94.1 WIP radio. We have a special segment for you this morning as we preview the other side of Thursday night's game in a segment we call, Know Your Foe. Joining us today we have the the head coach and legendary recruiter of TCU, @DangerZoneh. Welcome to the Wildcat Den coach! DangerZoneh: Very glad to be here! I love any chance I get to talk about my team, and it's a great opportunity to get a look at my upcoming game. Neal: Freshman QB Sam Milner has had an up and down start to the year. But last week against Rice he posted his first positive TD:INT ratio in a game. What did you do to set him up for success in that game? DZ: Honestly? The biggest thing we did to set him up for success was not playing in Death Valley or in Dallas. Clemson and SMU are pretty stout teams and he was in a tough place to start as a true freshman. He's young but I've already seen definite improvements in his game from week one to now. The biggest key is to keep the game plan simple for him and to get the ball in the hands of the playmakers around him - unfortunately they're just as young! [laughs] Neal: Speaking of that, you have become synonymous nationwide with the youth movement for the amazing amount of underclassmen in your starting lineup every season. How do you approach coaching such a young team to maximize development and potential but minimize mistakes? DZ: With young guys, mistakes are going to happen. It's hard to take the approach of trying to limit them. Rather, let them happen and show the players WHY they happened and how they can learn from it. If they're too worried about making mistakes, they'll play cautiously and that will hamper their development. As far as maximizing development, I've seen some different approaches to this. If you look across the state at the Jayhawks and Christian Graham or in Tennessee with Adrian Golson, both of their coaches have placed some incredible support around their young guns to help them develop and play well early in their career. With Milner this year, I tried to take as many young guys as I could and put them on the field together. It's a struggle now, but I think we should be seeing dividends 2-3 years from now. Neal: Who have you seen stepping up both in the locker room and on the field as the leaders of this team? DZ: I'm gonna be honest, the biggest influence was a guy I didn't expect - Shamar Burroughs. As a coach, you always have faith in your players, but sometimes you need to look at other options. Burroughs took it as a personal insult with how heavily I tried to recruit Solomon McLaughlin, and he's stepped up as a result. Over the offseason, I saw an incredible change in his demeanor and how he handled himself. He had been really down since his fumble in the Big XII championship game. He thought he cost the team that game, and I'll admit that I didn't do enough to help him get through it. He's definitely proved himself on the field, though. Defensively, it's gotta be Adriel Sierra. Dude is a monster and his play helps the entire defense out. He's quiet, but a leader on the field and makes great plays. He's going to play on Sundays. Neal: So you enter conference play at 1-2 with both losses to very good teams as you pointed out. What are your expectations for the rest of this season as you face off against Big XII opponents? DZ: I'm very optimistic for the rest of the season. Then again, have you known me to ever be anything but optimistic? The Big XII is incredibly wide open this year and I think my guys have as good of a chance to win it as anyone else. That being said, with young guys, you're playing with fire. I don't think there's a team in the conference that we can't beat, I also don't think that there's a team in the conference that we can't lose to. I'm not going to make a record prediction, but I do think we'll make a bowl this year, which will be an incredible step forward in the development of this team. Neal: Kansas State enters conference play undefeated for the first time in school history, but hasn't really faced a team of power 5 quality. What do you make of this Kansas State team? DZ: Kansas State has a lot to like, but there's still some questions to be answered. I talked about them a bit on the Big XII podcast, but their pass defense has been incredibly impressive. I didn't expect that, but even against tougher opponents, I can see it keeping up. I'm not excited about having to face this defense! On the other side of the ball, Rahim Murrell might already be one of the top 3 quarterbacks in the conference. Watching their game, he can make any throw he needs to, just needs someone to catch it! He's definitely the best quarterback Kansas State has had since that Fagan fellow. This team is obviously not without it's faults, but they're harder to see with their current slate of games. Neal: I played against Harvey Fagan myself and never looked forward to best on best practices. He made me look like a fool more then a couple of times. So what do you expect to see happen on Saturday? DZ: I expect to see a much lower scoring game than I think either team has been used to this season. I think Murrell has his work cut out for him with this secondary, though the QBs we've faced so far have had some good days. I think the same holds true for Milner and I can see him struggling pretty significantly throughout the game. I think in the end, it'll come down to who can run the ball better and grind out the first downs when they need to. I'm not going to make a prediction, but it's definitely a game the whole conference should have their eye on. Neal: I would be remiss if I didn't ask you for a comment on your recruiting class thus far. Have you been able to speak with your signees yet? And what are your goals for the rest of the class? DZ: Hah, I'm incredibly excited about this group of guys! We had 6 guys take advantage of the early signing period and put their name on paper for us this week. I called each one of them up when the news came in, even though we've known a few of them were coming for a while. We sealed up our defensive line in the future. Kwon Shaw was our top guy, and the top DT in the country. Once we got him on board, he turned out to be an incredible recruiter. He met Hooker Jackson at a camp and was in his ear the whole time. Jackson is probably the 3rd or 4th best defensive tackle in the country, so the two of them are gonna be exciting to see gum up the middle. Matteo Cates and FT Grady are going to be incredible options in our offense, and they'll be in their redshirt sophomore year when the current group are seniors, so they'll be able to make an impact with these current guys. We also managed to get an immediate starter on the offensive line with Kaplan and another big hitter in the secondary with Worley. Moving forward, we still need a linebacker, and more bodies along the OL. Always need big guys. Neal: Coach HAFFnHAFF was on yesterday and he expressed a lot of frustration with his recruiting efforts. Then we look at guys like you that make it look so easy year after year. How do you do it? DZ: I remember talking to HAFF about this. Part of it is simply being in Texas and having studs playing at every high school down the street. Outside of that, you have to have everyone on board. The players, the coaches, the trainers - everyone. Make the program a place that high schoolers want to be a part of. Even if we're not winning a ton that year for one reason or another, guys will see where the team is going and know they can be a part of something special. It also helps when we play so many young guys, telling someone they can contribute early is not an empty promise - guys can come in and immediately challenge the starters if they're good enough and we've seen guys do this time and time again. Neal: Thats great stuff. Thanks for taking the time out of your busy schedule to stop by and chat with us today. We never know what to expect when an opposing coach stops by, but this was a fascinating interview. Best of luck to you tomorrow night. [laughing] I hope you guys have a great showing that you feel good about and lose an epic game by 3. DZ: [laughing] Thanks a lot for the opportunity to be here Neal! And go Frogs!

Wow. I didn't expect to be ranked #6. The fans are pretty stoked about the game against TCU tomorrow night. It will give a lot of validity to our team if we can pull off the win.

Neal Davis: Good morning, and welcome to this edition of The Wildcat Den on 94.1 WIP radio. Today we have caught up with coach HAFFnHAFF to talk about the victory over Wyoming as well as the upcoming conference opener against TCU. Welcome to the show coach! Coach HAFFnHAFF: Happy to be here Neal. Let's get into it shall we? Neal: First of all, that is my line. And second of all, lets do it! So the Wyoming Cowboys rolled into town last week and your boys delivered up their biggest win of the season so far with a 31-10 victory. What stood out to you this game? Coach HAFFnHAFF: Our offensive line continues to improve and to open up holes for Elijah Humphrey. And when Humph gets holes, he makes plays. He has looked better in each game this year and against Wyoming he averaged 4.7 yards per carry with 2 TDs. He is the heart and soul of our offense. Neal: Devon Tillman's 100 yard streak ended in this game as he went 3 catches for 50 yards and a TD. Not a bad game by any measure, but not what fans have grown accustom to seeing from him this season. What did Wyoming do to slow him down? HAFF: I don't know that it was what Wyoming did necessarily. We only threw for 180 yards. We were up the whole game and Humph was playing well so we really just kept feeding him the ball. Don't you worry about Devon. I have a feeling that he is going to be gunning to make up for lost time this week. Neal: Defensively who impressed you? HAFF: Well I can't answer that question without poking a little fun at Javier Tovar. He reeled in his first interception of his career. Now I haven't seen many DE's catch a pick, but when they do it is always funny to watch. We had a good laugh watching film on Monday when he tried to juke the QB and tripped and fell down. But on a more serious note Freshman OLB Shawn Reyes has really impressed me. He leads our team in interceptions and is #2 in tackles. ILB Albert Wyatt has stepped in nicely for Julien Daley and leads the team in tackles. Both of those guys have really anchored the middle of our defense. Neal: So preseason you said you needed to be 3-0 going into conference play to have a chance to go bowling. Do you still think that is a realistic goal? HAFF: Absolutely. We are right where we want to be right now. I mean I would love if we had won every game by 35 points but all that matters is that 0 in the loss column right now. Neal: So lets talk a little bit of recruiting now. HAFF: (noticeably annoyed) How about we don't. Neal: The first signing date has come and gone. While there were a lot of signings nationwide, KSU appears to have stuck out. HAFF: Yeah it appears that way doesn't it? Listen, I'm not interested in recruiting. It obviously didn't play out like we wanted it to this weekend and now we are scrambling a little bit. I don't know how this class is going to turn out, but what I do know is that we are 3-0 for the first time in school history. So how about we focus on that, and let the coaching staff handle the recruiting. There is still plenty of season left to right the wrongs. Neal: Ok, fair enough coach. So TCU comes to town next. What do you think of this matchup? HAFF: TCU is going to be a terrifying team in 2 years. They are such a young team and @DangerZoneh does a great job recruiting and developing players. That doesn't mean they aren't a scary team right now, but I am thankful these guys aren't all seniors this year. It is really tough to tell what will happen. They have more talent across the board then we do, but we have a little more experience. Best case scenario is we can jump on them early and get their young guys a little rattled. I think if we let them settle into their game and get into a rhythm we are going to be in for a long night. So we need our fans out in full force to get loud and help us bring home a victory. Neal: I think we can all get on board with that. Well thanks for you time and good luck on Saturday. HAFF: Thanks Neal. Neal: Well that is all the time we have today folks. Join us tomorrow when the head coach of the TCU Toads joins us to preview the matchup from his perspective.

I know and I agree with that logic. I'm just saying most teams won't do that. They don't want to "chase points" too early in the game.

Yeah but if it's with 10 minutes left in the game you kick the pat to get it to 4 so if you give up a fg it's a 1 score game. I mean im an advocate of being more aggressive then teams are in real life. But given that situation in real life they probably kick the pat

Td was probably scored before the FG and pretty early in the 4th?

#BestOfTheBest

I was neutral... Maybe my guys just commit more penalties bc they aren't very good lol

I'm pretty sure I can punt farther then my punter can... so does anyone have tips for how to get my penalties down?

This is fantastic! I love the ticker at the top! I would be happy to help with it if needed as well.

I'm nervous as always. I had a pretty good idea what GK was going to do. I have no idea what the computer will do. I'm hoping my team being in the same scheme and his changing will swing it in my favor though.

"Ari Kern is a future NFL player. The rest of the o-line is going D-1 in something other then sports..." HAHAHA You guys are great. Thanks for doing this! I got to watch about half. I'll finish the other half tomorrow.

I might be an idiot... or maybe I missed it somewhere in the past. But could I get a description of what all of these mean? I think I have general ideas, but still. I guess really just elo... what is elo and elo change?