Head coach Kliff Kingsbury, offensive coordinator Eric Morris, defensive coordinator David Gibbs, CB Justis Nelson and C Jared Kaster are the participants in this week’s press conference. I won’t get into Kingsbury’s comments and Bret Bielema’s comments yesterday, although I will say that it took Bielema two days to think of those comebacks, I sorta thought they’d be much better than that. Truthfully though, there’s nothing that Bielema could have said that would have totally zinged Kingsbury the other way.

1. When asked what Kingsbury is concerned with as far as TCU is concerned, he said “everything”:

Yeah, everything. Their offense is as dynamic as I’ve seen when you talk about breaking down position by position. Very veteran offensive line. Most dynamic player in the country at quarterback, an NFL running back, couple of NFL senior wide receivers, young guys that can make plays. So it is very, very troublesome on offense. And on defense I’ve always thought Gary Patterson was one of the top minds in the country. I know they’ve had some injuries, but you watch the film, and he has guys that they can plug in and they’re making plays. They’re always coached to do what they’re supposed to do, so he’s got them rolling right along.

2. Kingsbury is also asked about the confidence of the team from week to week and how that’s trending up, which I think has definitely been true. We can all see that natural progression of how this team is making improvements:

I am. It’s been a steady progress and competition. Obviously went up quite a bit last week, but the clean play is what I’ve been most impressed by. We had more turnovers last week than I would have liked, but the penalties were way down. To play with that much effort throughout the game in a very physical game, to have that few penalties is saying something.

Oh, and although this isn’t anything new or ground-breaking, but how about this exchange:

Q. A win Saturday would give you as many wins as you had all last season.
COACH KINGSBURY: Thanks for pointing that out.

Q. It’s my math major. How do you guard against them letting down if that happens?
COACH KINGSBURY: Once again, going through what they went through last year, there won’t be any letdown. It was not fun. 18 of those guys started on that team and they don’t want to go through that again.

3. After the Arkansas game, Kingsbury mentioned that there were players last year that looked defeated after the end of the first half and today he was asked about if the TCU game was his low point, where Kingsbury said that it was all pretty much a low point:

Q. (No microphone) was that your low point, considering I think you were questioning some guys’ efforts?
COACH KINGSBURY: Yeah, the whole thing was a low point, the entire season. No moment sticks out more than others. I just remember watching some of those guys come out of the locker room at halftime already defeated, and that was what I was referring to in the postgame press conference.

The last thing mentioned is that Kingsbury said that depending on how Dylan Cantrell and NIgel Bethel II progress, they may end up redshirting both if they don’t progress.

4. Up next is Coach Gibbs and when asked about all of those halftime adjustments he’s making, he essentially says there ain’t any:

No, no adjustments. We play the same defense in the first half as we do in the second half. I think the kids get a feel for the game and realize we’re not going to make adjustments. But it’s like I told you from day one that I’ve been here, we’ll play the same technique, fundamentals and defenses. They’ll continue to get better at them. Obviously, the teams you playa tack you differently each and every week. I’m not sure we’re mature enough or understand enough to be able to adjust and adapt quicker, but coach is doing a great job on the sideline during the game making adjustments. So therefore halftime adjustments are already pretty much made before you go in at halftime. But you can twist it how you want to.

So, yes, essentially the adjustments are being made on the sidelines when the game is happening, not in the locker room at halftime.

5. Gibbs is also asked about making adjustments to playing a more up-tempo offense like TCU, and the proposition isn’t fun to consider:

You really don’t. The good news for us, and you know, which was a shocker in the opening game, was we go against our offense every day in practice. Even now we do two or three different team periods against them, so we see the tempo and the spread, and we see it all every day, even when we’re practicing against Arkansas. There are team periods where we go against our offense just to get speed on speed. So the bulk of the practice now will obviously be the spread instead of all the two-back power run game. But it’s a problem. It’s a problem coaching defense, playing defense. When you go back and forth from different styles of offenses, which is why college football is fun to watch every Saturday. You never know what’s going to happen.

This will be a track meet and the now lack of depth on the TCU defensive side of things could be incredibly critical. to the game.

6. Gibbs is asked again about how to just give yourselves a chance and I definitely thought that Gibbs did just that. Just give the team a chance, something that I wasn’t sure happened much at all last year:

Q. How did you feel about the opportunities that you made starting (Indiscernible) quarterbacks? How did those switches work for you?
COACH GIBBS: I think they worked well considering the style of game we were playing. We tried to get our tacklers out there, our bigger guys that can tackle against a power run game. Did it work? I don’t know. They held the ball for 45 minutes. But just tried to give ourselves a chance. It will change every week, week to week, depending on who we’re playing. Obviously, this week everybody’s going to play again. It will be more like Sam Houston where you’re out there so much that you have to rotate guys in. So you’ll see a lot more players this week.

7. Eric Morris is asked about game planning for TCU and he doesn’t answer it really other than to mention how good that second to last drive was from an offensive standpoint:

Q. What’s the plan for Saturday?
COACH MORRIS: Yeah, just keep executing. We’re going to have to put a lot of plays together. Our drives have been pretty efficient. I think we only had nine drives last week which is crazy, 58 plays or something. We’re extremely efficient. I think we average almost nine yards a play, and that’s with that long drive we had there at the end. I think we got the ball back with 8 minutes. That was the biggest drive of the game, in my opinion. That’ssomething that we’ve struggled with in the past is kind of being able to run it, milk a little clock. So we’re a little unorthodox in what we did. We ran some speed sweeps and stuff. We didn’t think we could lineup and get in big sets and play power football with them. Kind of use our strengths to our advantage. We got that challenge, which was huge, in my opinion. Won us the game there at the end. It allowed us to get three or four more minutes off the clock. So proud of the way they finished. We had a lot of just routine plays that we made over and over, which we’re going to have to do the same thing this week.

8. Morris is also asked about playing TCU and thinking about what happened last year and, just like everyone else, he’s done with talking about last year:

Yeah, we’re not going to talk about that. We’re done talking about last year. These kids are motivated right now. There doesn’t need to be anything said. This is a great football team we’re playing. They’ve got a couple guys down on defense, but Gary’s probably the best defensive mind in the whole entire nation. When these guys were on film last week in the right spot at the right time, gap sound football. They trigger on things, and they’re a swarming defense. So we have our hands full. The one thing we’ve been doing these past couple weeks is I thought our preparation has been better throughout the week. You can see guys working through practice and playing really hard on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and it’s carrying over for us right now. So we’ve just got to keep our head down and keep worrying about what our individual jobs are. The kids are doing a great job at communicating on the field and getting their jobs done, and that puts together a good product out there. I don’t think these kids need anymore motivation. I think Jones Stadium will be as loud as it’s been in seven or eight years for this game. So I think they’ll be balling naturally.

9. I also enjoyed the thought about how Patrick Mahomes has the ability to pretty much check out of every play and he’s got control to do that:

Q. You talked about some of Mahomes different checks. How much control have you given him at the line to change based on what he sees in the defense?
COACH MORRIS: Yeah, he has a hundred percent at all time. He has certain looks he needs to get out of certain things. At the end of the game, we worked on a four-minute offense the past couple weeks now. So there will be certain plays at that time that he knows are locked in. He did a great job of slowing the game down, letting it run. With us not huddling, it’s kind of hard for the O-linemen to sit in there so long, but did a great job. Let it get down to under five seconds every time before he snapped the ball. He knows some of those plays are locked in, depending on what the situation of the game is. But throughout the course of the game, he has a hundred percent ability to get in and out of stuff that he likes.

10. Justis Nelson talked about the mentality that he has in making sure he’s ready for each and every play and it is a play and clear attitude:

Q. What kind of mentality do you have to have as a cornerback playing in such a prolific offense like this where you’re probably going to be on an island a couple times against very talented receivers?
JUSTIS NELSON: Just a hard-nosed, one-snap and clear. That’s one thing we say all the time. You give up a big play and you’ve got to let it go because they’re coming right back at you. So just a hard mentality, just be willing to go a hundred percent every play

And Jared Kaster was asked about keeping the pedal to the metal this week:

Q. How do you avoid the letdown going from last week to this week?
JARED KASTER: You don’t. You keep on it. You keep adding to it. You keep the momentum going into this week. Coach is going to have a great, great game plan for us. It’s fun. I mean, you really don’t need — the energy’s not going to be let down. It’s the first conference game against a great TCU team in the Jones, Saturday, on television. It’s fun. What more do you want?

News, News, News, News, News, News

There’s just too many notes not to touch on them this morning.

• Congrats to S Jah’Shawn Johnson for being named the Big 12 Defensive Player of the Week!
• Via College Football Talk, Big 12 Commissioner Bob Bowlsby says that you can’t play football on Tuesday and pretend to care about education.
• Via ESPN’s Jake Trotter, two TCU football players were arrested on Monday, DE Mike Tuaua and WR Andre Petties-Wilson, for beating up another TCU student and stealing a case of Keystone Light. Tuaua is in the two-deep and I’ve never heard of Petties-Wilson. A TCU spokesman said that Tuaua has been suspended from the program.
• Via ESPN’s Jake Trotter, Baylor assistant coach Jeff Lebby was on the field during the Oklahoma vs. Tulsa game. Briles said that the situation is unfortunate and Lebby is Briles’ son-in-law and was in Norman attending a wedding.
• Texas Tech and Baylor will kickoff at 2:30 pm in Arlington on October 3rd in the Texas Farm Bureau Shootout.