The Matt Thomas Show with Ross - UH Willie Fritz Joins The Show Before Colorado Match Up

Episode Date: September 10, 2025

UH Willie Fritz Joins The Show Before Colorado Match Up

The joint chiropractic is the official chiropractor of University of Houston Athletics. And the help us bring Willie Fritz to you every week before the big game, two days before the big game, which will be Friday night at TDC Stadium against the Colorado Buffaloes. Willie, I didn't realize you and Deanne were so tight. He said some very nice things about you earlier this week. Oh, I would not say that. you know he seems like a heck of a guy what he had to go through you know these last few months just been so positive and a remote roll bottle for everyone you know battling cancer and just

I've met him a few times and always heard a lot of good things about him can you willie talk nil with your fellow coaches or is that somewhat of a taboo conversation piece because everybody's got to do it a little bit differently oh you know you talk a little bit about it but different, you know, no question about it. You'll talk to, you know, different schools, and, you know, I've been doing this a long time, so I know a lot of coaches, you know, across the country and not just in the Big 12, but in other leagues as well, and you'll compare notes a little bit and see how they're doing things.

Well, first things for us, before we get to the game, let's recap what happened last Saturday. First of all, to hold a two football teams in two different games, so a total of one different defensive touchdown. You can't be more pleased their defense right now. Yeah, they've really done a great job. You know, Austin Armstrong or defensive coordinator and all the guys on the defensive staff. That's a lot of them. And then obviously the players, I mean, they bought into, we're running something different than what we did last year. We were good defensively last year. But running something different. But the main thing that we do, I think, an excellent job of is

tackling, takeaways, you know, playing with great land. leverage. We tackled it real good again this past week. We tackle great week one. And that's just, you know, the scheme's very important, but it's not as important as the fundamentals, especially the tackling component. And, you know, Coach Armstrong and the staff really does a great job of emphasizing them, teaching it to the guys every single day. It was seven to three at the half. You get the touchdown late to take the lead at the intermission. Was there any sense of maybe we should let things lose a little bit more in the second because that Wegman 75-yard touchdown throw was very impressive.

Yeah, you know, we had a lot of opportunities. You know, it's just, you know, like I've said, the first few weeks, we're just trying to get everybody together on the same page. There's a, you know, sometimes you run some deep routes, and the receiver doesn't run it exactly the way he needed to run it, or path protection, you know, wasn't firm for just, another split second or count. But on that long touchdown pass to

Stefan Johnson, you know, just great protection and fabulous throw by Connor and obviously great catch and run by Stefan. And, you know, we want to be able to stretch the field vertically and have a pretty good job of

stretching it horizontally, but we need to get more shots down the field. And the run game opens up the past game and the past game opens up the run game. And, you know, we're still getting better and we wouldn't take another step forward this week. Well, you took

the words right on my mouth about the run game opens up the passing game. Dean Conner's had a breakout game for you. Clearly playing against his old team had to be something special but you want to see that obviously through the course of the year. What attracted you to getting him to your campus and obviously the breakout game against

the Owls was something thing but you wanted to do some things obviously during the course of the season as well. Well, you know, I'd seen him when he was at Rice when I was at Tulane and then also, obviously last year when we played Rice. And when we got in the portal, that was, you know, we had good backs. We've got good backs. But we got, you know, there's a chance to have another guy.

And that's a position, you know, where there's a lot of wear and tear on those guys. And, you know, thank goodness we grabbed him and got him because, you know, Rashad is now out for, Rashon Sanford is now out for the season. and we were able to, you know, bring Dean in, and we still got good depth there. Stacey Steed and DJ Butler, and hopefully we're going to get Jamarie and Burnett back in a hurry. But, you know, he just does everything well. He's a good pass receiver. He does a good job running in the core between the tackles.

He does a good job running out on the perimeter. He's a good blocker. But the main thing is he just doesn't make very many mistakes. He lines up right and does his assignment properly. It's so, so important, you know, all positions, but particularly on the offensive side of the ball with running backs, make sure that they know exactly what they're doing because they're involved in protection.

They're involved in, you know, pass-row concepts, obviously running the ball as well. Well, all that is good and looking forward for the win coming up here against Colorado. They went with three quarterbacks against Delaware last week, earlier this week. Obviously, Coach Prime decided to go with one of the young men and tell you who the starter was. I don't think he was doing it for your benefit, maybe just for the kids' benefit. But even with that being said, my assumption is your scout team and your defense will be preparing for more than one quarterback that may not play on this game against the Buffaloes. Yeah, you know, they're all probably a little bit different.

But they've got an offensive system that they run. And it's similar, irregardless of who's. back there playing quarterback for them. Same thing with us. You know, we're going to, you know, there'll be a little bit things we do different if we played another quarterback, but, you know, by and large,

it's going to be the same offense, you know, whether they play, the guy's been playing quite a bit, you know, the first couple games or a young freshman or this guy that they're saying is going to start. So, you know, we're just preparing for the offense and then understanding, you know,

There really hasn't been enough plays to be able to, you know, in this season to see the difference, you know, with all three. You know, playing, you know, two games and really splitting duty, the second game, you don't have a real large body of work. But we'll see who's playing when we get out there and the ball's kicked off at 635 Friday night. 635 should be a real nice balmy night for those people in Denver who like the thin air. I'm sure that I don't know how Coach Prima get ready for that, but I don't care if they do or not. I hope your guys are ready for it. Cramping hasn't been too bad so far, but man, this weather has not been conducive for fall football yet, has it? Yeah, you know, it has been the last couple days, but, you know, two days ago, heck, I think by the end of practice it's about 70, 77, 78 degrees.

Not bad. It's starting to cool down a little bit, but, you know, you just got to play, you know, regardless of what's going on. And, you know, we're really lucky and fortunate that we've got a, you know, a beautiful indoor facility where we can go in for part of practice. And we've got two really, really nice grass practice fields. And then we can always go out to the stadium as well, which we did today. You know, you want to get work and, you know, the venue that you're going to be playing in. And so we're fortunate. We've got just unbelievable facilities here.

Congratulations, Coach. On this nice start. Looking forward to a big crowd on Friday and another victory. open up Big 12 league competition with a victory. Thank you for the time and we'll see you on Friday. Thank you very much. Go Coogs.