Mike Gundy held his weekly radio show on Monday with the great Dave Hunziker from Rib Crib as they looked back one final time on Boise State and looked ahead to the start of conference play this week with Kansas State coming to town. Here is what Gundy had to say.

• “Well sometimes I’m right on my philosophy on the message I give my team and the coaches, sometimes I’m not. My message to them was that Boise State is really good about starting fast, particularly at home and at night. Their schemes on offense and defense, their starters, their first 20 plays on offense, they’re really good at scheming, moving the ball and starting fast. My message was that they have to match the intensity in the first quarter.”
• “Andy Avalos, nice guy, in fact I think he forgot to come out and shake hands because he didn’t. First time in 17 years that I didn’t see the head coach before the game. I stood around forever and waited. It’s his first year. I’m sure he was wired up, he’s got his checklist. So I kind of waited around. Anyway, when the game was over, he said, ‘I forgot completely, I apologize.’ I was very complementary of him, and he was the same. But they were all wired up, and I mean this in a nice way. They had a night game at home. That place is a unique place in that there’s 370,000 people in the surrounding Boise area, but half those people probably drive in from remote areas, and they’re all fired up. I told the team that we needed to match their intensity in the first quarter, and we didn’t. We were fortunate that we are so mature on defense and experienced. My concern was the new guys and freshmen we were playing would be an adjustment. I wasn’t concerned about the defense. And offensively, we didn’t throw the ball effectively, but the young guys played pretty good from an MA and technique standpoint. They settled down midway in the second quarter, defense started playing better, offense made the big run. Broke the big run, got the big turnover and got the pass interference. … When I went in at halftime, I thought ‘how are we ahead?’ I felt like we were behind by two touchdowns. The defensive staff and players made good adjustments and continued to have pressure on the quarterback.”
• “We’ve learned to win in a way that people aren’t accustomed to around here. Special teams is crucial, defense is playing really well and offense isn’t throwing passes very good. That’s not we’ve been accustomed to.”
• “They [the refs] said they made a mistake [on the Brock Martin penalty]. I understand people make a mistake, but if that type of penalty is called that late in the game, it has got to be 100% for sure. That’s not a bang-bang. That’s a call that’s rare and hard to make. If there’s any doubt, in my opinion, you can’t make that call.”
• “It did kind of play out like I figured it would play out. I wish we would have had a better start, but sometimes that doesn’t happen. Then of course it’s a long flight home, long trip. I think we got to Stillwater a little after 6 [a.m.]. Coaches went to work, brought the players over at 4. I sent everybody home at 8, coaches too. Got to get your biological clock back in order.”
• “I feel pretty good. I was in bed by 11, and I didn’t wake up until 5:15, which is pretty good for me. Six hours is not bad.”
• “We didn’t have any wideouts practicing that had any experience with the exception of Brennan Presley and Rashod Owens. And then Birmingham didn’t practice until Thursday. Danny practiced a little on Thursday. Springfield was a little on Thursday. That was the first time that I’ve had more than one player at a position that didn’t practice all week and then played in a game. And we had three offensive lineman. I’ve never done that before. And you know what, they played pretty good.”
• “Our running game, we got hats on guys. And we got back into our scheme. We won the game rushing the football, playing good special teams and playing good defense. Hopefully those five guys on the offensive line will be back there Tuesday practicing. We’ll find out Wednesday if we get anyone else back at the receiver position. I thought Tay would’ve practiced late week and played, but he didn’t do anything in practice that amounted to anything. We didn’t even bring him with us [to Boise]. And then Jaden Bray, we’ll see what we can get out of him this week. He’s young. Rob Glass says these young players aren’t calloused. Lot of these kids aren’t calloused enough to overcome things they should be playing through. You can’t put ’em in that frame of mind. Some young men are different than others. But when they’re young, history will tell you they’re not going to be able to fight through much to play in a game.”
• “These athletes are so finely-tuned. They don’t have any body fat, they run, they do all this drill work. They train in the weight room. They just don’t have a lot of give and take in their body. We practice them, not like we used to, but we still practice them where we think it’s enough to get them ready to play in a game. The generation above, which would be my grandparents, they didn’t know anything about dieting. They grew up on a farm, they drank whole milk that came from the cow, they got the cream off the top, that milk they were drinking was cream basically. The fat content in that was probably through the roof. They made their own butter. That butter was probably high in fat and sodium and everything else. They fried their food. And of course they ate vegetables and stuff from their garden. Then they had pie, ice cream and stuff for desserts. They worked during the day, stayed healthy, lived in their 90s and whatever. Then the next generation starts to become aware of dieting, cholesterol, sugars, fats, so on and so forth. These things started coming out. Then now the next generation is even worse. I think the same thing is happening with these athletes. When I was finishing school, I went home for the summer, got a job, coached baseball. Then I went to the pool and chased girls. I wasn’t in the weight room wearing it out. I’d do a little conditioning, jogging and stuff. I just lived a normal life. Then I’d come back in August, showed up a day before two-a-days and you spent the next 10 days getting in shape. Then we started playing football. The athletes back then don’t look like they do now. Had more body fat. Their bodies were not as finely tuned physique-wise like these guys are now. So I’m not sure they carry more body weight than they should, based on their joints, they don’t have enough in their bodies for any extra if something happens. I think that’s what’s happening. I don’t know if there’s any science behind it.”
• “Their bodies, because of travel sports, they’ve had more reps by age 12 than I had at 18. I think there’s wear and tear on their bodies and mentally, they’re just worn out. There’s a lot of things that are contributing to these injuries. I just think they’re so finely tuned there’s not much room for error.”
• “I talked with four head coaches last week about how much they’re practicing, how much contact, how many lifts. Just that stuff. Two schools were Big Ten, physical football teams. Two schools were maybe more sleek and athletic like us. It was interesting. Every one of the coaches said they’ve been overworking the kids for years and everyone is cutting back. And two of them said their medical people have told them that the overlap from COVID from a year is causing more problems this year from injuries. There’s no science behind it. They are seeing overlap from COVID from a year ago and it’s still happening. It’s happening to their young players, the freshmen and redshirt freshmen, because they aren’t calloused. It was interesting they brought that up.”
• “Cal played TCU really good. Kansas State, they handily beat Stanford. Then Stanford turns around and thumps SC. Kansas State is better than what people think. They’re 3-0. They’ve lost their quarterback for awhile. They’re an option football team. They do a lot of different things where the quarterback is going to read it, keep it, whatever. Hurt us last year with a few naked plays. We’ll have to be really disciplined with that. It’s the same matchup. Defensively, they’ve gone to 3-down, what we’re more familiar with Tulsa and Iowa State does. They were 4 down forever. They’re playing in the back end some 4-robber, or quarters, then they’ll take the robber and play 3-deep.”

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