The Matt Thomas Show with Ross - UH Willie Fritz Joins Before Week 4 Match up vs Oregon State

Episode Date: September 24, 2025

.UH Willie Fritz Joins Before Week 4 Match up vs Oregon State

The joint chiropractic. They've got Houston's back to the official chiropractor University of Houston Athletics. Brings you Willie Fritz here on the program. And let's say hi to coach. And coach, first of all, congratulations on the win against Colorado and the time off. Let me ask you, first and foremost, I'm assuming you and your coaches had a chance to go check out a lot of high school talent over the last week or so. Yeah, it was a lot of fun. When a really good game on Thursday, 9.

real good game on Friday night. So enjoyed going out. You know, you see a little bit more in person, you know, the interaction, student-athletes, you know, with their teammates and, you know, different things like that, how they compete. And it's fun to go out. We went out and watched kids that were committed to us. So it was, I think we got a lot out of it. Pardon my ignorance on this, but I'm curious.

Do you want to tell them you're coming? Do you want them to not know? And does it matter whether they're committed or not? You like them knowing, you know, you don't want to get it set up. And, you know, you tell the high school coach, and I like standing down on the sideline where I can really get a good bird's eye view of what's happening going on. And so, yeah, they know that we're coming to the fall game. Well, you had a chance to see a lot of that while celebrate the victory against Colorado.

Coach off to a 3-0 start. Not only are you one of the few undefeated teams still in college football, but your squad has not turned the ball over. That's always a focus for every coach. but what has made it especially more satisfying over the first three weeks? Well, we didn't do a great job of it last year. You know, it's something we really emphasized last year

and we emphasized a big time during the spring in the summer and preseason camp and guys just did a nice job. Part of his play calling, you know, part of it's a little bit of good luck where you don't have to, you know, put the ball in arms away. You know, I think our offensive coordinator, Coach Nagel does a good job with making sure their plays that you have minimal risk

to them as far as a turnover is concerned. And then we're doing a good job of taking the ball away. You know, call them takeaways, not giveaways. And our defense might have done a pretty darn good job. We've been close to having four or five in each of the games. And I think we're plus six right now in the turnover takeaway category. So we just got to continue to keep doing that throughout the whole season. And my career is head coach.

And we've been plus one or better, we've been 91% of our games. at a lot of different levels that I've coached at. So that's something that, you know, helps your success is making sure that you want to that turnover takeaway. Now, I know you had to mentally and physically prepare for three different quarterbacks. I know Coach Sanders did not announce Dobb until the very last second. But was, I'm going to assume your kids were not surprised because there was some game tape

on him. Yeah, there's game tape on him. And, you know, unless it's just completely and totally, different, you know, skill sets with the core backs. You're going to get the same offense. Maybe you might run one guy a little bit more than the other

or maybe there's a certain pass the guy's a little bit better than the other guys at. But, you know, by large, you're going to get the, you know, the same style offense. So we just worked on what they've done the first two games and had an idea that this dog kid might start.

And he did. And, you know, our kids did a good job adapting to him. Connor gave you 222 yards to the air, 83 on the ground. The 83 has a career high for him. Is that something you want to see more of? Not necessarily the yards, but just the ability to say, you know what, I can take off if needed. Yeah, we're going to run the quarterback every week.

You know, I've talked about it many times. It's just when you play 11 on 11 football, you've got a better chance of being successful in the run game. When you're handing it off his back, you know, it's a little bit more difficult. and, you know, we're fortunate that Connor can run. He's got good speed, good movement. And then there's some times where, you know, everybody's covered,

and you see a crease and the protection. And he did that one time as well. He took it and ran with it and scored a touchdown. So, yeah, we're very fortunate. We have a, you know, a true due for a quarterback. Now, are we going to run them 20 times a game, no? But we're going to run them five to ten times a ballgame. is that under his circumstances or are those specific play calls what do you think it would be more of that?

Probably three or four of them are going to be you know where he tucks it and runs or you know he's got pressure you know and there's not a clear receiver to throw to but the other ones will be called quarterback runs or option place where you know you're reading somebody and it's either you know give the ball the back or pull it so you know but yeah we're fortunate we've got a guy back back there that can move around well. You got 209 yards on the ground, 222 through the air. If I've talked to one coach, they all said the same thing. We love balanced offense and you got that against the Buffaloes. Yeah, we want to be a 50-50 team. You know, the pass opens up the run and vice versa. And, you know, if you make them, you know, have to defend the whole field horizontally

and vertically got a much better chance of being successful. We think we've got some good backs and got good receivers and tight ends. and we're going to try to utilize all of them. You get into a game sometimes. You have more success in one thing or the other, and you're smart to stick with that plan of attack. But we'd like to be a 50-50 team. I sometimes tease my radio audience about not being able to trust college kickers.

You and I earlier this season talked about the fact that we were seeing more and more successful ones. Your guy, five out of six. If you can get 15 points a game from your college kicker like that, you're going to be in a really good spot this year. Yeah, and a bunch of more long ones, too. You know, he was 10 of 11 at Old Dominion last year, and his one miss was 50 plus yards. So that's the reason why we got him here. We want to be able to, you know, get the automatic three points when it's going to be hard to convert on a fourth and six or seven, whatever the case may be.

You're in that little in-between fringe area, you know, right around the plus 25, plus 35-yard line. And you still got an opportunity to get points, even though they're down a double. distance is a good for you by kicking the field goal. So even Sanchez did a really nice job of, you know, kicking the last, well, I guess it was two weeks ago, right? Yep. And the best. I know.

It's two months ago. You know, it does feel like that. How do you like the early off week? You had a chance to rest up some guys and nicks and bruises are always going to be a part of a college football season. But how do you feel at least health-wise going to this game against Oregon State? Much better. We were banged up, particularly on the offensive line.

We've got a few of those guys back now, and they're healthy. You know, we took a couple days off with the student athletes, and we came back on Monday, and we just really lifted during that bi-week and practiced Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and getting Friday, Saturday off and came back and started working again on Sunday because we're actually flying out tomorrow to head out to Oregon State. So as far as Oregon State is concerned, a really rough goal of things for them.

They are in a full rebuild. It feels like they also are trying to get established back in a new conference, which will be next year. I don't know if the travel is going to be a huge consideration. Guys have been on plane rides before, but just a thought or two about seeing them having already one conference game in the books, and this being your last non-conference game coming up here on Friday. Yeah, we just, you know, I've really had an opportunity to study these guys.

We would have in the buy week. And, you know, like I tell these guys all the time, this game counts as one, just like last week, just like next week. El count one, New York year-round for these 12 guaranteed opportunities. And, you know, having this time off, we want to be able to play the best we can. We should be healthy. I think we've had an opportunity to, you know, figure out our squad a little bit, what guys do well. Maybe some things they don't do quite so well. and we try to stay away from that.

You know, and we've been able to do that in all three phases during this time off. And do you want the depth chart fluid every week, or do you like the things settle down by this time of the year? I would like it to be, you know, pretty close to settle down. There's always guys that, you know, continue to keep improving during a year. Maybe they're playing five snaps a game, and another two, three weeks are playing, you know, 30 snaps a game. You know, sometimes that's based on injury as well.

A guy comes in and shows what he can do and they beat the guy out. We want competition. We want depth. And we want to know, though, what are the guys that are going to be playing? You know, not just on defense or offense, but, you know, who are the best 11 guys on kickoff team? We're the best 11 guys on kickoff return. Who's the best 11 guys on third long defensively?

So you're always trying to figure your squad out and make sure you got the right Jimmy's and Joe's and the places where you need to have them.