The Matt Thomas Show with Ross - Willie Fritz Joins Before Saturdays Match Up vs ASU

Episode Date: October 23, 2025

Willie Fritz Joins Before Saturdays Match Up vs ASU 

133 on the Matt Thomas show at Ross. Houston Cougars knocking off Arizona to secure a six-in-one start of the season. A bowl eligibility that's awesome news for the head coach of the Houston Cougars. Willie Fritz joining us. And he's courtesy of our friends, the joint chiropractor, the official chiropractor of the Houston Cougars. First of all, Willie, I love the shirt you wore at the postgame get-together. Bowl-bound is cool, but it felt like the kids to a man after the game said they've got more to accomplishes. Is it the sense you got from the guys after the win on Saturday?

You bet you that's, you know, that's always one of your goals. You know, playing a bowl game, I've played in a bunch of them. I've been lucky, fortunate to do that, and they're all good ones, every single one of them. But, yeah, there's a lot of other things to accomplish this season. I just wanted to make sure we put it out there and let the kids know about it. Obviously, other people are going to talk to them about and tell them that we are bowl eligible. And there are very many teams in the country that are bowl eligible right now, so we're proud of that. we sure do want to accomplish a lot more than that.

You know, Willie, there's so many folks that will criticize final two minutes, use of timeouts, to even the best coaches in the country. I thought what your squad did in the execution in the final two against Arizona was perfection. How much do you work on that? And even if you do a lot during the course of the week, is there just something different about having to try to run a two-minute in a game and a tight game as compared to doing it on a rando practice day? Well, you know, we just did it practice this morning.

We did a little bit in the game situation. I agree with 37 seconds. They had the ball, the minus 48, one time out on each side. We do a lot of it sometimes with seven on seven, where we just use the linebackers, the defensive backs, the wide receivers, tight-ins, running backs, quarterbacks. You know, we have guys that play the part of officials, and, you know, we have it up on the stadium scoreboard.

So you work on it a ton. But, you know, that one was a lot. little different because you went, you know, kind of from a four-minute situation where you're trying to run the clock into a two-minute situation. And that's why it's so valuable to be able to save your timeouts. We had to blow one earlier, about a half, you know, and you always want to have if possible. But we had two of them. We had plenty of time on the drive. I thought Coach Nagel did a good job of tempo going slow and then had to go a little bit faster at there at the end.

You know, we had some timeouts in our back pocket to be able to, you know, kind of get the clock down to where we wanted it. Where it was either going to be a make and we win or, you know, they don't have an opportunity to answer less overtime. So kids did a good job. They kept their composure and, you know, everybody did a very nice job with it. Do you talk to kickers in your life when plays like that come up where they got to go win it or do you try to leave them alone?

I really pretty much leave them along. We do a whole bunch of it during practice. We do what we call a clock field goal. You know, we did that on Tuesday, where we get done with stretch. We all get together, and boom, we just go tack the ball. We'll do it tomorrow during our script. We'll do what we call a whistle field goal. If officials are looking at a replay, we can actually stamp the ball on the whistle and kick the ball.

and then we've got some other times I'll have guys staying around in the kicker and kind of egg them all a little bit and put a little pressure on him and stuff and you know our guy really you know does a super job of not worrying about any of that stuff Ethan Sanchez and he's done a good job

he's done a good job I've had two game winners for so far this season I've asked you this before in the past but it's worthy again because Ethan has been such a big part of this team are you I don't know what scholarship situations are and you've obviously got some money that now schools can pay but

the kicker role to me with so many kickers making such a big difference, not only making kicks, Willie, but kicking them of 50, 55 yards that maybe 10 or 15 years ago you weren't trying. Are we seeing collectively coaches putting more of a priority in recruiting in that particular position? Well, we always have. I've always had a kicker, snapper, and a punter on scholarship. One time I was one of the few guys who did that.

They'd always try to get people who try to get walk-ons. to come in and do that. But we want to have a quality person because I can help you win games. You know, the snapper, Jacob Garza, is our snapper. It is an excellent job. You know, on that particular play,

you have to have an accurate snap. You got to have great protection with the guards, the tackles, the tight ends, the wings. And then Jake Sok is our holder. And he does a super job holding. And, you know, if you got a good snap, you got a good hold, you know, now the kicker's got an opportunity

to have a great kick. So it's the whole operation, but obviously everything is kind of like I talk about with quarterbacks, right? You know, when things are going good, quarterback gets too much credit. When things aren't going so good, they get too much play. Same thing with the kicker in those situations. There's an operation that's got to be smooth, and all those guys do a fabulous job. I know Bougie Johnson's injury status is not what you want a reporter,

have talked about this week. But collectively as a group, how is that room? depth-wise, and how do you feel right now at the midway point of this season in terms of your overall depth on both offense and defense? Well, Stefan Johnson's had a great career here, and hopefully we'll be able to get him to keep playing here at the University of Houston, Bogey Johnson, obviously. You know, but we've got a little bit of depth there, and we need it. Harvey Bursar has come on over the last couple of weeks.

Marty Thomas is playing extremely well. Kobe Young, doing a good job, McCoy News. Jakee's Martin, true freshman. That's playing a bunch for us. you know, we've had the ability to throw the ball in the backs coming out of the back field. We've got some good tight ends. You know, Tanner's played extremely well for us and Treville Frederick. And so it's one of the things, this is a tough, you know, sport.

And you've got to make sure you have depth. That's one of the things coming in the season. I was excited about it is that we had more depth than certainly what we had last season. Lastly, Willie, it was nice to get the game over with it. a good amount of time. He got to go home and watch the Arizona State game. Let's talk a little bit about Sam Levitt. First of all, great quarterback.

He's been there a couple of years. Some fourth down throws he made late in that game, helping them pull off the win last week. You're going from one great quarterback in Fafita, another one here, this time on the road in Tempe. Yeah, he's a really, really good quarterback. He's a little similar to the kid last week. He's a bigger guy, obviously,

but really strong on him. make all the throws. And, you know, he is going to run downhill. He's got to go up with the intention of tackling him because sometimes he'll try to load it to the shoulder, run you over. And he's great in the pocket extending place. So, you know, he's one of the top quarterbacks in America. So we've got to do a good job of trying to limit his effectiveness.

Thanks for the time, as always. Congratulations. It's so fun to see the big victory the way things turned out. And we'll surprise some folks in Tempe this weekend. What do you say? Sounds great. Go cooques.