Luke Fickell Discusses Ryan Montgomery Injury, Loose Helmets, Areas to Improve

The coach had plenty to say in his first weekly regular-season press conference following a loss in nearly three years.

© Nelson Chenault-USA TODAY Sports

CINCINNATI — Luke Fickell just wrapped his weekly press conference and it followed a loss for the first time since 2019. 

The Bearcats' leader was ready to talk about the team's 31-24 stumble against Arkansas, along with some injury insight and what needs to change heading into week two.

"You can always find a silver lining in things," Fickell said about the loss. "First and foremost, the effort level, the physicality. I'm proud and excited about. The things that jump out that I put upon myself, maybe ... We weren't prepared for that moment at that time. Which we weren't. So there's definitely things to grow on."

Fickell hammered home that when you lose silver linings are hard to identify while acknowledging the fixable mistakes his team made in the contest.

"There's both," Fickell said when discussing how individual players fared on Saturday. "There's some that played really well. ... My mistake would be we didn't play as sound as we needed to play and that's in coaching more than anything. ... Young guys, they played hard, and they're going to play hard, but when it comes down to the moment you know it's about playing sound, and I don't know that our tackling (was good enough) defensively.

"I could put that on me and say, 'well we didn't tackle much in fall camp.' We weren't as clean offensively, especially in the second half when we had things going and moving. And that's every bit as much on me and the things that maybe we didn't play at that tempo and those kinds of things in fall camp and so, you know, yes, they played hard. Yes, they're going to be really good football players, but you saw some of the youth come out in our team."

The 2021 Blackcats defense hung its hat on making scoring drives as excruciating as possible for opposing offenses, and this year's version is still searching for that type of ceiling.

Fickell puts a lot of stock into stopping explosive plays, and Cincinnati is already over a quarter of the way to allowing last season's total after one game.

"So 13 of them defensively," Fickell said about the 15-plus yard plays UC allowed. "We had 11 on offense, which isn't bad. You know, we missed a few of them. But the reality is, you know, give up 40 last year and 13 in one game is very noticeable, and it was leverage. It's just the fundamental things, and it was tackling, and obviously, you're going to have more of those the better teams you play.

"I'm not saying that we didn't do some things really, really well. We tackled physically, but the bigger plays came with the fundamental things of leveraging the football. Even when you missed tackles, you missed tackles with leverage. If you missed tackles with leverage—then your effort overcomes all those things. I think that's where we came up a little bit short."

The UC head coach also updated the status of starting running back Ryan Montgomery, who missed a majority of the game with a rib injury.

"Not just yet," Fickell said about Montgomery getting cleared for this week. "He's got some rib issues. But, you know, it's still early in the week. He did not make it back into the game. It was significant enough that they couldn't get him back, and he didn't feel comfortable enough to do that. But we'll get him back whether he's able to go for this week or not. We won't know yet."

Last but not least in terms of the notable comments from Fickell has to do with those pesky helmets and how to keep them on players' heads.

"We're gonna put double-sided tape inside there and stick them on their heads and we are gonna those tighten those chinstraps a little bit," Fickell said. "That was something that was kind of out of the blue for us. I don't know if it's you don't tackle as much in fall camp you don't recognize those things, but it's probably a lot simpler than that. 

"You know, I think you just can't get comfortable with playing a little bit looser with the helmet. We got to strap them up a little bit tighter, and if that's not the case, they keep coming off then we've probably got a bigger issue. We got to dive in a little bit deeper, but I think just tightening them down. I would hope that's going to get the job done for us."

Catch the full press conference below.

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