What Gerad Parker said ahead of Troy’s game at Utah State

Troy head coach Gerad Parker said the Trojans' 27-17 loss at No. 20 Missouri validated where his team is headed, then warned that Utah State will be a dangerous opponent in Logan this weekend.

Parker called Aggies head coach Bronco Mendenhall "a veteran head coach that'll have his team ready to go get their first win" and said Utah State plays a defense similar to Troy's — physical, edgy and sound. He noted a Georgia State slot receiver who transferred to the Aggies and "went off on us last year."

On the Missouri loss, Parker credited his defense for holding the Tigers to 230 total yards and 2-of-11 on third down but pointed to turnovers and field position as the difference. He praised quarterback Goose Crowder's resilience after back-to-back second-quarter turnovers and highlighted true freshman tight end Nick Hampton, who caught his first career pass a week after becoming a father.

Full transcript

On the Missouri loss and takeaways:

Gerad Parker: "I'll say this. I think both things can be true in our worlds and what I mean by that is am I very proud of the effort we made and our improvements of taking steps towards becoming a better football team and improving on the things we had shown the first two weeks? That answer is yes. Am I surprised by our success and the things we did to put ourselves in a position to make that a fourth quarter game? Absolutely not. Our football team and me as the head coach expected us to go play very well and go win a game. And I think also you can show great respect to Missouri, Coach Drinkwitz and their staff, their players and all those things. A large amount of reverence, respect for their players, their roster, their staff and all those things. This also too can be true though. We gave them the football on the 34-yard line, the 18-yard line, the 13-yard line and gave up a punt return for a touchdown, losing turnover margin by two, and lost by 10 points and missed a field goal to get it to seven. So, I'm not pleased by that. You can't win any game. Doesn't matter if it's an SEC opponent, a Pac-12 opponent, Sun Belt opponent. You can't win games losing turnover margin by two and giving teams that good a field position. And that's the difference in the game. They sustained one long drive for three points. Otherwise, that's how they got to 27. Those are the facts of the deal. That was the difference in the game."

On what needs to improve:

Gerad Parker: "We've got to be better. We got to punt the football better. We've got to cover punts better. We got to put ourselves in position to take care of our passer a little bit better and get some details and routes fixed. Things that all have to be adjusted and attacked with the same urgency as we did last week coming off the Alabama State game, which we will do. That's my job to make sure we do. But there are many things to take away from playing in that atmosphere in that moment towards better and that's what we have to get done this week."

On the defense holding Missouri to 2-of-11 on third down and three second-half points:

Gerad Parker: "It was an awesome environment. I thought that's as good as it gets as far as about 65,000 and a great setup. They do a great job out there. But situational football was a huge deal for us especially on third down and even our two-minute. We executed a big-time two-minute drive to end the half. Our third downs for our defense was massive. We sped up the passer, which was a huge schematic deal we attacked during the week. Dontae and the staff on defense did a great job schematically getting prepared for this week. And it paid off. And the biggest thing I said on the other one on our Sun Belt call too, you have to look at it. We also punted the football better. We flipped the field, made them go the long hard way, got ourselves in much better positions, and it led to us giving up three points to a team that certainly was playing at a very high level on offense going into that game."

On the team bonding on the road:

Gerad Parker: "The answer is like it was completely night and day. Even the things that I've got to make sure we see which is help from our staff. Like if you see us in between our first and second quarters and our third and fourth, we do our PAT, which is praise a teammate. And if you're not careful, that PAT turns into one of two things. It can be where you just kind of smack hands and you don't even talk to anybody and don't even really interact, but you act like you are. Or it can be a look over to the other side, the opposition's sideline, and it turns into things that don't need to. And for us, we were so much more present in exchanging real energy to each other and connecting. Well, the same thing happened in the hotel room. There's less going on. There's less people around. We gave us a chance to sit in a meal room and watch games on TV on Friday night and talk and be present with each other as a staff, too. And the same thing on Saturday. And when you travel that way, I think it's massive for your team. We needed — I said it last week — we needed these two weeks together to continue to grow and we're gonna have to do it even better to go on a two-hour-more flight this week. It was seen, it was more so felt. I think we really found a big piece of who we are on the road at Missouri last week. And that's always a great feeling as a head coach because you know where that is now. Now, sustaining it, that's the magic dust that I hope we continue to find."

On holding Missouri to 230 total yards and Justin Powe's 14-tackle game:

Gerad Parker: "First I'll say this and this is not being a pessimist, but I'll say too in the second quarter we limited some possessions and there was no yards to gain because we gave them such short fields. Now that being said, when they had to play from normal distances and you look at the efficiencies of those drive sheets from our defense, they played exceptional. And I think the biggest commitment was limit explosives, keep edges to our defense and run to the football with violence. We did that. If you go back and watch that game tape, I really would ask everybody if you could pull it up and see who was more physical that night. I thought Troy was the more physical football team for four quarters and I thought Missouri fought back and played physical, too. I'm not saying at all that they didn't. I just think that for four quarters we were at that party. And when you do that and play that connected, it gives you a chance to play high level defense and high level football. And we did most of the night. To Justin Powe, that's the fastest he has played in his career here. He played fast. Shot his shot. There was one rep he'd want back that he kind of stalled his feet on running an alley. Other than that, he played fast and ran around and played free. And it was awesome to see."

On sending a message to the country:

Gerad Parker: "I think I would be lying if I didn't tell you that the first message we want to send is how do we get to the standard we expect to play with to each other? That piece I think we check a box. Now, that box got to check every week, but we check that box. And then I do think it is important. There is a standard and an expectation to put on the shirt I have on right now that Troy's going to play a certain way and the perception of it to the country of college football and the people out there. I think there's a standard in which we're expected to play and people expected long before I got here. That was upheld on Saturday night. And that is a big shout out to our players who put it on the line and played in a certain way that would, if anybody got a chance to watch that game and saw what happened there, I think there should be a certain amount of respect given off what that film will show to them."

On the two-tight-end sets and Fabian Rogosch's injury:

Gerad Parker: "The answer to your first part is certainly yes. There were certain matchups that we did not want to participate in and the edges of their defense, I'm sure you saw on tape, was not an advantage at all for us. So scheming where we wanted to put the ball and who we wanted to stay away from getting involved and wrecking our game was critical pieces of that matchup. So that definitely had a lot to do with starting that way and protecting the way we did. Would be lying to you if I said Fabo going out was [not] a big factor. If you see in the game, which I think is a fair point as far as some decision-making at the end, we were out of calls. We were out of some of our 12 and 13 personnel runs for short yardage. We needed to make that field goal, but it's not just like, hey, do you do that? Do you not? Well, we were out of some calls and we had some personnel issues because of Fabo that forces you to do a couple things that you normally wouldn't have done. So it had an effect. I thought our guys were ready and we did what we had to do to keep on churning up yards and still get some runs called, but it affected us in some ways because of it."

On Nick Hampton's development and the tight end room:

Gerad Parker: "First off to Nick, guys come in here as a true freshman. He just played against an SEC team on the road and didn't even flinch. And oh, by the way, last Sunday he became a father. So, it's a little bit of a — call that your week. The stuff that people don't realize they go through and what's going on. Unbelievable what he's been able to do. He does not flinch. He is a confident kid, but not arrogant. He prepares well. I just can't believe where he's come from already since January till now to be playing in that atmosphere and he was prepared and ready, which is a shout out to the staff and Coach Ratliff to get him prepared. I don't feel great about our depth. Fabo's going to be working through it to get back and thank God that we've got him and he'll be available. How much we'll see, but glad we didn't lose him for the year. But that depth has certainly been affected through him and where he goes in day-to-day and then with Jackson Worley. So, we've got to build some depth and get some other guys to step up in there, which is kind of the law of a season and going through injuries."

On the improvement in penalties:

Gerad Parker: "It's a great question and I held up my end of the deal. I told you guys publicly and privately. There's nothing like a good ass-chewing and some punishment after practice on Monday to say don't do this. This is enough. And so the guys ultimately got to do it, but it's my job to get it fixed quicker. So that's exactly how it happened. And really I give us five for 55 yards. We took a delay on purpose on the punt to give Crenshaw more room, which I think he pinned it to the eight-yard line. So five from 12 to five is a massive improvement with really no selfish penalties. There was no selfish penalties made. Still some stuff we can clean up, but a huge step for our football team. We just weren't distracted either. We didn't fall in love with having to get all petty and get worried and take pride into our own hands and guys that we don't even know. We just played the game of football and moved on and it really was an improvement for us in the discipline category of penalty play."

On the 54-yard field goal decision:

Gerad Parker: "Full transparency, right before we're getting the call up, there was a little bit of hey, do we want to stay spread out because of our tight end issue or do we want to try to fix this on the run. So you can imagine when that comes up it's like do we need to kick a field goal, which I said on the headset prior to the timeout. Then when we're talking about not knowing, I used the timeout because we had to because we didn't have calls up that we'd have already repped to not use it. So then that leads to, okay, what's our best calls? Which then leads to, hey, do we want to try to put in an offensive lineman to sub in to keep our big personnel out there and put him in? You haven't practiced that. That's not good business. So as soon as that conversation starts and that's our best look at it or we don't have the calls out of our 11 personnel stuff, it then led to, hey, we've already burned our second timeout. Now look at the book real quick. What does it tell us to do based on now having one timeout, not two? And it pretty well made the decision for us because after you go down to one timeout, you got a kick. That being said, he's kicked from that distance in practice in those settings and been fine. We were in range and he can make that kick. He hadn't done one in a game, but it was certainly in his range to kick it and we had seen it from him. We didn't execute. He pulled the ball left and didn't put a good swing on it. But that's kind of the full scope of how we got there."

On Utah State and Bronco Mendenhall:

Gerad Parker: "This reminds me of the last year I was at Notre Dame and even those two years when you go west coast and back and all the night games we had in a row that year in '23. It's real. And then the other piece of it is like this is the job. This is our standards, how do we recover better and just talk to our guys about sleep and all the things. I think for us that is what we see as how do we just keep on preaching to them about how they can take care of their bodies and minds better. Coaches included, I kicked everybody out of the office last night by 9:15. Everybody go home, get a good night's rest, come in there early as possible, and let's get to work because you got to be of sound mind to them. Utah State — Coach Mendenhall's done this for a long time. Sound football coach. Really great at his job. Put championship football teams on the field his entire career. What do they do? They play great defense. They're sound. They run to the football. Play team defense. Mostly a zone team, but still plays man. Eight pairs of eyes on the ball that trigger and run to the football very well. Struggling on offense, finding ways to still find yards and figuring it out with two quarterbacks. I think their starter from the start of the year will probably be back, it looks like, for us. So, we'll have to plan for both quarterbacks and be ready for that. They've got a wide out that transferred from Georgia State that's a slot that went off on us last year if I'm being honest. So, they're good enough in the skill positions once they get going and they play sound in special teams. So, we know what this is. We know what we're expecting. We're going to expect a very edgy group that plays with an edge. They play defense similar to us and how edgy they are and play through the whistle. It's a product you can tell that's a veteran head coach that'll have his team ready to go get their first win."

On Howard Kinchen's debut at Missouri:

Gerad Parker: "If we're being honest, you'd love to have seen that again if he plays his first game on the road at Missouri to get going. Would have rather played him prior, but that's kind of where he was in health and they've done a great job in getting him right. If he continues to up the details and things that it's going to take to be special, he can be special. And there's others in the room that can be as well. But you saw a glimpse of what he can do in beating man coverage and what we can be and how explosive we can be if we continue to grow. We've got a chance to be explosive there."

On Goose Crowder's resilience after back-to-back turnovers:

Gerad Parker: "My job to challenge him because I know he can take it. He handles success and adversity the same way. I think it's fair to say too without being disrespectful in any way to our players because it's always on me. But Goose threw a ball correctly on the interception. If you go back and watch the tape, our wide out should have shaved the route. That's what we had talked about all week. He bled upfield. So everybody thinks Goose made a poor throw and that wasn't the case. But so goes the life of playing quarterback. The pocket stuff, we've got to protect him better, but at the same time, Goose has got to have stronger hands, and we got to make sure he keeps those elbows webbed. He tucks the football when he feels pressure and we don't get the ball knocked out. He's got to do a better job there. And with that being said, I think him being able to kind of stay in the eye of the storm, face adversity through — he's been through his entire career — and just treat everything, every play is an individual piece of itself, and he comes back out and throws a complete dot to Howard and puts us right back in the game. And that's who he is. He's playing poised, he's confident, he's smiling, he makes me better during games and God knows I need all the help I can get to keep my composure, but he does a great job. Makes everybody poised on the sideline and love where he's at right now."

On Crowder's scrambling ability:

Gerad Parker: "He has. He's escaped really well. I think he got out of at least two sacks on Saturday night from a really great defense. He's just confident and he's certainly healthy. I think he's been able to escape for those two reasons and his body's in — I think his feet are better. Matter of fact, I know they are. He's just — his lower half's stronger and his body's moving looser, if you will. And it's just given him confidence to be able to escape when he can and be smart about how he's doing it. And I think that's why we've seen him be able to get away a lot better than he has."

On avoiding a letdown after the competitive SEC loss:

Gerad Parker: "That's a good question. First off, I think the number one lesson of all of it is one, we expected to win that game and we should have won the football game. And I think that's okay to say, and I don't mean that in any disrespectful way to Missouri or anyone else we play. You got to be able to tell the truth. And I think when our guys understand and what this looks like on tape, when we're able to watch as a team, you can look at the tape and say, 'All right, those things all may feel good in certain ways, but here's what we got to improve on to take steps.' If we continue to make this about process and standards and how we continue to prepare, I think we go into this week and perform at a way to where we set a baseline and continue to make it better in this game. And the more we can return to process and standards and hey, this is the expectation in which we now have to play because of last week and keep climbing the ladder — it puts us in a position to now play to that standard instead of worrying about a scoreboard or what's next in the next game. We need to play well because that's what's expected and that's how we practice. And as quick as we can get the team back to that this week in practice, the better off we'll be."