Everything Kenny Dillingham said at his pre-Peach Bowl press conference

Here’s everything Arizona State head coach Kenny Dillingham said on Monday during a joint press conference with Texas’ Steve Sarkisian to preview the College Football Playoff quarterfinal at the Chick-Fil-A Peach Bowl.

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The transcription is provided by ASAP Sports.

Dillingham’s opening statement: “First things first. We’re excited as a football program to be going back to the Peach Bowl. Obviously one of eight teams left in college football, that speaks for itself, for everybody who’s left playing games when it comes around New Year’s time.

In terms of Coach Sarkisian, his program, it’s remarkable where he’s taken that program. From preseason being picked to win a national title to following up with playing National Championship level football throughout their transition to the SEC, they just had an incredible season.

He’s a guy that I think everybody on offense has studied, has watched, has learned from, either having the ability to go meet with him personally or from afar like myself. I don’t know many people, so I just kind of have to Google things and find things out different ways.

But I know our staff, our offensive coordinator and Coach Sarkisian have a great relationship, and there’s a lot of similarities that they do offensively that they do. I just have a lot of respect for their football program.

When you watch football teams and you see teams that are very creative but also simple, you have a lot of respect for that, and their guys play extremely hard. They have extremely good players that play extremely hard, which is not fun to play. You would like extremely good players to not play hard, but they have the combination of their players are very good and they play hard.

They’re very fundamentally sound across the board. This is going to be, like I told our guys this morning, this is going to be a great challenge for us to compete versus a team that has spent four years preparing to compete for a National Championship.

We’re in year two, and we’re excited for the opportunity to do it at the Chick-Fil-a Peach Bowl in Atlanta with eight teams left. Thank you.”

Q. For Kenny, Coach, you mentioned Google. I don’t think you needed to use it to remember Frank Kush, but I’m curious, there’s things from the Kush era when he started, was at that Peach Bowl in 1970, and if the influences from him at all and the legacy he left, is that something you’ve embraced a little bit into your own formula of success here as you get started?

“Yeah, obviously Frank Kush, he’s all over our walls. He is the history of this program. He’s a big piece of the history of this program, and he’s a big piece of the present of the program. His toughness that he instilled in the football teams that he coached here are something that those guys still live with. Those guys are better people because of how Frank Kush coached and how challenging it was to play for him and how much his guys loved him.

I would hope in 10, 15, 20 years from now, our guys have a very similar feeling about myself and my staff that we impacted the guys far beyond the game of football.”

Q. For Kenny, as you’ve kind of settled in and navigated for the first time as the head coach an extended season, how has it gone for you with balancing portal, prepping for this game specifically? Where are you at mentally? Obviously you’re dialed in and fired up, but mentally how has that been on you?

“Coach Sark, I too am watching “Judge Judy.” I see it as well. So no harm taken.

It’s absolute chaos. Anybody who says it’s not chaos is lying to you. That’s the world we live in right now is chaos, but you’re either going to embrace it and respond to what’s pitched to you or you’re not. Nobody is going to care. Nobody cares what happens to you. They care your response to what happens.

I think we’re over here — I mean, I couldn’t imagine playing in a game last week with what we were doing. We had it easy. I really couldn’t imagine what Coach Sarkisian had to go through last week with the portal and opening while also preparing for a gigantic football game.

But for us it’s been a great challenge balancing it all, and I have no clue if we’re doing it right. We’ll find out here in about six months, in a year if we did it right. We’ll find out in 10 days if we managed this three-and-a-half-week break right.

Regardless if it’s good or bad, we’ll learn from it, we’ll grow, we’ll get better, and we’ll respond.”

Q. For both Steve and Kenny, you guys would have ran into each other at the Iron Bowl, but what is something you observed about each other’s careers? You touched a little bit on it in your opening statements.

“Yeah, in regards to Coach Sark, I was a high school coach when he started his career as a head coach, and the way he’s evolved offensively. There’s a lot of good offensive schemes out there, and then there’s offensive coaches who change their scheme and are constantly getting better. I think that’s something that he’s done as good if not better than anybody in the country is if you turned on his tape from 10 years ago, it’s going to be unrecognizable to his tape right now.

That is very challenging to do when you’re successful. When you’re successful, you want to keep doing what got you successful. It’s very challenging to be, in my opinion, to be humble enough to constantly continually adapt to the current landscape to the rules. You can’t cut block on the perimeter, to RPOs and how they change the game in terms of substitution patterns, and now you can slow teams down that sub late. You couldn’t do that 15 years ago.

He has always adapted with the game and almost been ahead of the curve a little bit, and that’s really challenging to do. It’s a testament to, one, how hard he works because you can’t adapt unless you study. He’s always studied and I’ve always been able to kind of steal a few things from him.

I really remember when he was at Washington way back when, he was a big FIB guy, and he was one of the first people to really dive into FIB and challenge people with how they played the big nickel and what to do, and I was like, what is he doing, this makes no sense. I couldn’t process it. I was trying to learn it.

But all of that stuff that he’s done, he’s just constantly evolved and evolved and evolved to get to where he’s at right now, which is one of the best offenses in college football, and I think that same philosophy he carries over as a head coach in terms of there’s no stagnant. People aren’t stagnant in that program, and I think you can see that.

His offensive philosophy is becoming the program philosophy, which is pretty impressive when you are young, innovative, and you continue to evolve throughout your entire career. Just got a lot of respect for him.”

Q. For Kenny, similar thing, a lot of guys in burnt orange are now playing for your team in Tempe. What will that be like for those players?

“Yeah, I couldn’t agree more. That’s the nature of the beast right now is people will be moving around. You’ll be playing your former teammates.

At the end of the day, we’re playing in the Peach Bowl with eight teams left. If that is more energy, then something is wrong with you. If you need external factors to get excited to play in this game, you’re at the wrong program here. We want people who are competitive. There’s eight teams left in college football. This is about competing versus one of the best teams in the country in the Peach Bowl and all 120 of our guys get to go, all 120 of their guys get to go and experience what college football is about, and that’s competing in one of the biggest bowl games.”

Q. Talk about Gunnar’s role, his ability in your offense as a safety blanket for Quinn, and for Coach Dillingham, just thoughts on Gunnar as a player?

“Yeah, I think he just described his game play pretty good right there. Overall a really good player. They do a good job getting him open in the middle of the field with the play action game, the screen game, and then they use the width of the field so well that the middle of the field opens ups for his game, and his length and size and the fact that he is a good C-area blocker sets everything up in between the hashes for him, whether it’s vertically down the field, whether it’s over-the-ball spacing concepts, or whether it’s screens at the line of scrimmage. The way they set up their offense really allows a tight end to dominate in between the hashes on early downs.

I think he does a phenomenal job of that with his catch radius and his physicality. Then he’s dynamic. Catching the ball, he has great contact balance when he catches the ball. He’s not a tight end that’s clumsy and catches it and falls. He catches it and extends completions, which is something that you never like to see when you’re going versus a tight end. You want those guys to catch it and fall. You don’t want them to catch it and run. That’s something that he does really well.”

Q. For Kenny, I’m curious, obviously you’ve got an elite running back going up against an elite defensive line. What’s the key to setting him up for success in that match-up?

“Yeah, and obviously we’ve got to get Cam going in some way shape or form. Everybody knows that. You’ve got to get your best players the ball. They know that. It’s not a secret.

They do such a good job being fundamentally sound and just defeating blocks. That’s going to be a great challenge for us and our offensive staff is creating angles, creating leverage to give our guys an advantage to get Cam started and at least get him to second and third levels of players where he can win one-on-ones and not getting stuck at the line of scrimmage, obviously.

But they do such a good job fundamentally moving D-linemen around, not big tweaks but minor tweaks throughout a game plan to take advantage of your running game, and like I said, I think that’s why they do a good job defensively is small changes are what good coordinators do, not big changes, and they’re a team that’s filled with small changes within a game plan.

We’ve got to find ways to get into the second and third level. It’s going to be a great challenge.”

Q. For both Steve and Kenny, Steve, you kind of started off giving some praise for Cam Skattebo. If you can further expand on what he does well and how that’s going to challenge your defense. For Kenny, you’ve coached some elite quarterbacks in the past. What are your thoughts on Quinn Ewers and the threats he poses as a quarterback?

“Yeah, and Quinn, obviously I recruited Quinn a little bit out of high school, so I got to watch him. He doesn’t even know I recruited him because I had no chance to sign him, so I never really talked to him but I watched him.

He’s a phenomenal player. He’s accurate, can extend plays, super intelligent. You can tell when he gets to the line of scrimmage — one of the things that I don’t think gets praised enough is smart quarterbacks that get you into good plays. When you watch him play, you see him getting them into good plays consistently, and those are the dangerous guys, the guys that when there’s nine seconds left on the clock checks you into a touchdown. He does that consistently.

I know Coach Sark even alluded to it after their game, checked them into two runs, you can see that and you can see that the power and confidence that creates for a quarterback is huge. He throws the ball downfield very accurately, and like I said, he makes people miss. In the pocket he’s hard to bring down. His pocket awareness is really high.

Then when you can throw versus one-I teams outside the field numbers as a quarterback, that’s a complete eraser. When you can throw the ball and you have confidence throwing the ball outside the numbers of the field in single-I defense, that erases single-I defense for the most part. He has a lot of confidence in that, and they do a lot of things to get the ball out there, which puts stress on the defense, so kudos to him.”

Q. It’s been mentioned a couple times that the Sun Devil offense has the second fewest turnovers in the country with eight and the Longhorn defense has forced the most turnovers with 29. Kenny, when turning on the tape, what has made the Longhorn defense so effective at creating havoc for opposing offenses, and then for Steve, what has made it so difficult for opposing defenses to turn the Sun Devils over on offense?

“Yeah, it all starts with pass rush. They get pass rush, they get tipped balls. Their defensive line gets in throwing windows. Then their back end, obviously the versatility, they’ll drop eight, they’ll rush four, they’ll rush five, they’ll mix it up a little bit, and then the corners are sticky. They’re sticky players. There’s not much space. It really sounds like a boring answer, but they’re good. They’re coached well. When the ball hits their hands, they catch it.

Then the pass rush, like I said, everything starts with impacting the quarterback. When you talk about turnovers, they impact the quarterback enough and they get enough tipped balls to create some bonus turnovers I would call them, which are the tipped-ball turnovers. Those are like additional.

Yeah, they’re just well-coached. They’re where they’re supposed to be. They’re talented. Then those guys play hard, so they’re around the football. That’s a good combination to create takeaways.”

Q. For both guys, Coach Sark, you talked about being proud to get to this moment. You’ve always talked about how much you love this team. How much confidence do you have going into this game? And for Coach Dillingham, you say you’re going against one of the best teams. Do you like your chances going into this one?

“Yeah, obviously our guys are excited to go be able to compete versus one of the bluebloods and compete versus one of the best teams in the country. Like I said at the start, you turn on the tape, and the way they’ve recruited, the way they’ve coached this football team, it’s a team that preseason can win a National Championship, last year could have won a National Championship, this year can win a National Championship. All you want is the opportunity to compete versus the best.

I think any competitor regardless of what you do, you want a chance to compete versus the very best, and if you don’t want to do that, then you’re not a competitor. I think that’s what our guys are excited for is that opportunity.

I’m excited to see our guys get out there and be able to do just that. We’re 14-point underdogs, and rightfully so. We’re playing a really good football team. But at the same token, I’m excited to see our guys go compete as hard as they can compete for as long as they can compete, play smart and tough football, take care of the ball and be about the team for 60 minutes and see what happens.”

Q. Kenny, on the transfer portal, you have so many ex-Longhorns. Is your philosophy just to call Steve and say, hey, I need a D-lineman or safety or wide receiver, or is it just happenstance you target so many Texas players? Steve, do you think Kenny owes you a player like Cam Skattebo for all these loaners?

“Yeah, that is 100 percent or philosophy. He’s actually going to give us Quinn and a few other guys this week, so I’m fired up about that. He said he was going to give us about six or seven dudes for this game. He’s just going to let me know it on game day. I’m excited for that.

But in all seriousness, we knew we were joining the Big 12, and I had a strategy and we had a strategy as a staff when we were joining the Big 12 that we were going to play games in Texas so we wanted to recruit Texas at a higher rate, and we felt like where we were as a program kind of being in between Hawai’i, Utah, Southern California and then Texas, that within two hours a kid from Dallas or Houston can fly to us and that would kind of be our niche is be a school that recruits both California, Utah, Hawai’i and also have a big state in Texas.

That was kind of our plan all along, and I will say this, the guys we’ve gotten from Texas and Coach Sark’s program have been unbelievable. That may be why we’re going back — we’ve gone back to the well when some of their guys have hit the portal is we know what we’re getting when we’re getting a guy from that program, and that’s a guy who has worked really hard, competed and been pushed. Those are the things that we like to bring in.”

Q. For both of y’all, you look back on the regular season a bit, and what were some of the biggest challenges competing in a new conference, but also what were some of the benefits of being the new kid on the block?

“I think one of the challenges were the environments. We were not used to getting tortillas thrown at us at Texas Tech. You’re not used to some of these environments. When you’re in the Pac-12 you’re playing in Seattle, you’re playing in LA, you’re playing in Salt Lake City, you’re playing in different environments. We got to face a lot more small college town football with really, really great environments.

Some of the advantages were people didn’t know much about us. People hadn’t played us in the past, so we were a little bit different, and obviously I think that’s part of we have 16 new guys on our team from last year. Even if we would have been in the league, we would have been a different team.

It was definitely fun to join a new league, a league as passionate as the Big 12 is for football, a league whose roots are in the state of Texas, which everybody knows Texas high school football is some of the best high school football in the country, and to be able to create a footprint in the state or try to create a footprint as much as we can in the state is something that I truly believe in.”