Jax State Football Press Conference 2026--FIU
10/9/2026 9:36:00 PM | Football
Coach Charles Kelly:
Q: Overall, the fight at the end of the game on Wednesday had to make you proud.
A: I am proud of the resilience of our team. I do feel like our team has learned how not to look at the scoreboard because it makes no difference in how you should play. We made plays when we needed to make plays, but we really didn't win the ball game. We got the results that we wanted, but we didn't win the ball game, and there's a difference. And we got to learn how to do that. And you know, it takes a lot of different situations that come up to do that. But I think part of it's a mentality. Yeah, we've learned some things, and but we've got a long way to go to improve our team, and that that's what we're focused on right now. Is what we got to do to get better, and you know, from a discipline, execution, competitive character, all those things. That that's what we've got to do to improve our team.
Q: When you look at FIU, I think certainly the defense has to stand out to you first. But give us the overall sketch on Coach Simmons' squad.
A: I think this will be the best team that we played overall, top to bottom, Athletically, they take the personality of their coach. Coach Simmons is a really good coach. He's a good man. You know, they're probably playing as good as anybody in our conference right now. I mean, because they play the right way. They play with a mentality. They play with an edge, and you know that's impressive when you watch them on video.
Q: How good is it for the program to get that type of eyes from midweek games?
A: I think that our athletic program with football, that is one of the it's the one of the largest windows that we have for our university, and not only athletically but just for enrollment enrollments up for second consecutive year because Jax State gets exposure across the country, even when I was coaching at Auburn, I had people that worked there that would watch the midweek games and say, "Well, you know, I didn't know Jax State had this in their academic profile," but it does create exposure. Cedric (Kouemi) watched us play in Maryland last year. He watched us how we ran the football, did those things, so that attracted him to what we do. So, anytime you have a business or an organization, and you want to market, the more people that can see it, the more chances you got of being able to get those people in your program or get those students to our university, and not only for football, I'm sure on TV the other night they they showed the Southerners how impactful they were. I mean, I don't know what the numbers were, but it looked like we had more people there than they did. I mean, there was a lot more red to me, so I think those you know all that helps, and you know we want to market this university because we got something to be very proud of here.
Q: You touched a little bit on this after the game, Garrison hasn't missed since the miss at Ohio. Talk about what he's done to up his game.
A: Well, he did a book report. I'll let him talk about that, but he did it. First one in 36 years that I've ever assigned, but he did it, I'll let him talk about it later. But it's more of focusing. I don't care whether you're a kicker, whether you're a quarterback, whether you're a defensive back, whether you're a linebacker, whether you're a defensive lineman. It's pretty simple. There's a process that you have to go through to execute your job, and whatever that job is, you have to do it, and you can't worry about results, because when you worry about results, now all of a sudden you create anxiety, and I think he'll be the first to tell you in the Ohio game he was worried about the result. Am I right? (Correct) Other night, were you worried about a result? No, he just went through the process, and that's how you eliminate that. And it sounds simple. It is very simple. It's not easy, but it's simple.
Q: The game put a lot of national spotlight on Deondre Johnson, there's a lot of eyes on Jax State, and I saw a lot of social media buzz on Caden Creel as well. I saw him compared to Johnnie Manziel's creativity. What is your kind of your thoughts on that and this national spotlight?
A: A lot of our players have created value for themselves. The one thing I will tell you about Deondre, and I think his teammates will tell you, the difference in him right now, as opposed to a year ago, is he pays attention to the very little details of the game, and I'm not talking about anything extravagant. I mean catching the ball with your hands above your eyes, extending when you catch the ball, you have an advantage being six-eight, so use that advantage. But he has worked at that. There's no magic dust that we put on him. He's gone through that process and done that. We know that Caden could do a lot of things with his athletic ability, and he's very instinctive. He can see, he can process. I think he's made himself a more complete quarterback this year, making himself go through the reads and see those things. But he does, I love Caden, and sometimes you see things happen in the fight, and you say that's that's number 12 right there. Sometimes you got to live with the good, and sometimes you have to live with a little bit of bad. But I want him on my team when I'm going into a fight.
Q: Can you just talk a little bit about Luke and maybe something that we don't know about him?Â
A: Luke's very quiet. Doesn't say a whole lot. Takes care of his business. You know, when he first got here, he was so athletic. You know, I thought I can work this guy linebacker instead because I thought he could play both ways. I still think he can play both ways. He's that kind of athlete. But when we recruited him, the one thing that we and we believe this. We wanted to be able to have that tight end position to be an integral part of our offense, and we needed to get the ball in his hands. Anytime you have tight ends like himself, it creates matchups. Offensively, that's what you're looking for is the right matchups, and we do a lot of different things with him. He can process information. He executes very well, and he's a team guy. I don't know that I've known him since I've. I think he's one of the first guys I talked to when I got here in recruiting. I don't think I've ever heard the word "I" come out of his mouth. It's always we. It's always about the team.Â
Q: Â Last year you were 3-3 after your first six games, kicked a game-winning field goal to beat Sam Houston to get to 3-3. Now you're 4-2, just kicked a game-winning field goal. Is the team this year ahead of where you were this time last year.
A: It's hard to compare because teams are different, opponents are different. You know, everybody, especially nowadays in college football, everybody's team is different. I know, even talking to Jerry Mack the other night, they really didn't know what they had either, even through the first few games because of the transition. We have a little bit more consistency, but we have a lot of new guys too, and I don't think you can go off of records so much. You gotta just look at take it game by game, and you know focus on one game at a time, one play at a time. That's kind of where our mindset is.
Q: One less day to prepare this week as well. So your schedule, the team schedule, you just bump everything up?
A: Yeah. So we had this last year, and I think going through it, we plan this out months ahead of time. Once we get the schedule, we in fact, we have a meeting right when we get the conference schedule, and we kind of set our calendar. And no matter what the results of the game are, we're going to stick with that calendar. We were on short week versus Delaware, and we basically taken the same schedule. So what we did is we came back yesterday. Was a player's day off, coaches work, game plan. We had done some game planning in the off week. We took a day and spent on FIU, so we had a little bit of head start from a game plan. Now today will be like a Tuesday, so today's like a Tuesday practice. Tomorrow will be a Wednesday. Sunday will be a Thursday. Monday will be the home travel day, and then we play on Tuesday. So I think we try to structure it as much like a normal week, so our players can get comfortable with that. And when  we do that, I just I know myself. Maybe it's because I'm so OCD, but I like things being very consistent.Â
Â
TE Luke Gilbert & K Garrison Rippa
Q: Saw a lot of action on special teams last year. Worked your way into the rotation at tight end this year. Give us an idea on some of the focus you had in the off season and some of the areas you wanted to improve on to get on the field more.
LG: So when I got here, I had experience at quarterback and wide receiver, never really tight end. So when Coach Housewright brought me in last year as the tight end coach, I knew I was just going to have to put my head down and work on technique and try to get on the bus as a special teams guy, and I think that's really what I did. And then coming through the spring, I knew I was going to have a shot to play, and I just had to capitalize on that and just take the bend to that.
Q: Garrison, everybody wants to know, the book report.
GR: So we came in Sunday after the Ohio game, and that wasn't very fun for me. But Coach Kelly brought me in his office, and he told me that he wanted me to read a book, and he hands me Chop Wood, Carry Water, and I told him, I'm like, Coach, I've already read that book. I already read it last year. He's like, "Oh, we'll read it again." I read the book before, so I go home and I start reading. You know, it's a short book, probably about 150 pages, something like that, and it's a lot of anecdotes about a samurai archer or a kid trying to become a samurai archer and a sensei. So, I just kind of wrote out little nuggets that I picked up as I read along, and basically the main one that I got was that the more you focus on outcomes, the harder it is to do your job. So if you just surrender to what's going to happen, then you can just focus on what you have to do, and that's really just what I've been trying to do these last couple games. And you know, as you said I've kind of started to get on a streak. And in order to continue, in order to continue that, I'm going to have to just keep doing what I've been doing these last couple games.
Q: Having experience now three years kicking, did that help you to get through after not making the kicking?
GR: Oh, absolutely. You know, if I was a freshman, that happened. For a lot of guys, that might have been like a career ender. Like some guys wouldn't have been able to recover from that, and you know, like I think having experience and knowing that I've done it before and I've got lots of experience doing that, I think that definitely helped me because you know it's one kick and I had another kick in that game, so after that and being able to bounce back right away and having to do that, I thought that was big time.
Q: You were a pretty good multi-sport athlete in high school, why football? Why Jax State? What was that journey like here?
LG: Football has like been a part of my life. So my dad was my offensive coordinator in high school. He coached me all through my years. I knew it was going to be football for me. I played basketball and baseball as well in high school, and I enjoyed those. But nothing was ever like football.
Q: You just kind of become this big play guy in the tight end room. What has been that development like?
LG: I was talking about earlier and Coach Kelly said, like since I've been here, I just knew I had to put my head down and keep working. And you know, you can't look up. And when you get success, you can't go back to that success to fuel you. I mean, you can, but you also have to keep looking to the future, and you have to kind of keep going.
Q: Your dad was the OC, and he has he been to coaching all your life?
A: We moved around. We started at North Sand Mountain and moved to Arab, then Scottsboro, then Pisgah. He's been the head guy or the OC at all those schools, and him, like I kind of learned everything I knew about football from him, and he coached me when I was in flag football as a kid.Â
Q: Overall, the fight at the end of the game on Wednesday had to make you proud.
A: I am proud of the resilience of our team. I do feel like our team has learned how not to look at the scoreboard because it makes no difference in how you should play. We made plays when we needed to make plays, but we really didn't win the ball game. We got the results that we wanted, but we didn't win the ball game, and there's a difference. And we got to learn how to do that. And you know, it takes a lot of different situations that come up to do that. But I think part of it's a mentality. Yeah, we've learned some things, and but we've got a long way to go to improve our team, and that that's what we're focused on right now. Is what we got to do to get better, and you know, from a discipline, execution, competitive character, all those things. That that's what we've got to do to improve our team.
Q: When you look at FIU, I think certainly the defense has to stand out to you first. But give us the overall sketch on Coach Simmons' squad.
A: I think this will be the best team that we played overall, top to bottom, Athletically, they take the personality of their coach. Coach Simmons is a really good coach. He's a good man. You know, they're probably playing as good as anybody in our conference right now. I mean, because they play the right way. They play with a mentality. They play with an edge, and you know that's impressive when you watch them on video.
Q: How good is it for the program to get that type of eyes from midweek games?
A: I think that our athletic program with football, that is one of the it's the one of the largest windows that we have for our university, and not only athletically but just for enrollment enrollments up for second consecutive year because Jax State gets exposure across the country, even when I was coaching at Auburn, I had people that worked there that would watch the midweek games and say, "Well, you know, I didn't know Jax State had this in their academic profile," but it does create exposure. Cedric (Kouemi) watched us play in Maryland last year. He watched us how we ran the football, did those things, so that attracted him to what we do. So, anytime you have a business or an organization, and you want to market, the more people that can see it, the more chances you got of being able to get those people in your program or get those students to our university, and not only for football, I'm sure on TV the other night they they showed the Southerners how impactful they were. I mean, I don't know what the numbers were, but it looked like we had more people there than they did. I mean, there was a lot more red to me, so I think those you know all that helps, and you know we want to market this university because we got something to be very proud of here.
Q: You touched a little bit on this after the game, Garrison hasn't missed since the miss at Ohio. Talk about what he's done to up his game.
A: Well, he did a book report. I'll let him talk about that, but he did it. First one in 36 years that I've ever assigned, but he did it, I'll let him talk about it later. But it's more of focusing. I don't care whether you're a kicker, whether you're a quarterback, whether you're a defensive back, whether you're a linebacker, whether you're a defensive lineman. It's pretty simple. There's a process that you have to go through to execute your job, and whatever that job is, you have to do it, and you can't worry about results, because when you worry about results, now all of a sudden you create anxiety, and I think he'll be the first to tell you in the Ohio game he was worried about the result. Am I right? (Correct) Other night, were you worried about a result? No, he just went through the process, and that's how you eliminate that. And it sounds simple. It is very simple. It's not easy, but it's simple.
Q: The game put a lot of national spotlight on Deondre Johnson, there's a lot of eyes on Jax State, and I saw a lot of social media buzz on Caden Creel as well. I saw him compared to Johnnie Manziel's creativity. What is your kind of your thoughts on that and this national spotlight?
A: A lot of our players have created value for themselves. The one thing I will tell you about Deondre, and I think his teammates will tell you, the difference in him right now, as opposed to a year ago, is he pays attention to the very little details of the game, and I'm not talking about anything extravagant. I mean catching the ball with your hands above your eyes, extending when you catch the ball, you have an advantage being six-eight, so use that advantage. But he has worked at that. There's no magic dust that we put on him. He's gone through that process and done that. We know that Caden could do a lot of things with his athletic ability, and he's very instinctive. He can see, he can process. I think he's made himself a more complete quarterback this year, making himself go through the reads and see those things. But he does, I love Caden, and sometimes you see things happen in the fight, and you say that's that's number 12 right there. Sometimes you got to live with the good, and sometimes you have to live with a little bit of bad. But I want him on my team when I'm going into a fight.
Q: Can you just talk a little bit about Luke and maybe something that we don't know about him?Â
A: Luke's very quiet. Doesn't say a whole lot. Takes care of his business. You know, when he first got here, he was so athletic. You know, I thought I can work this guy linebacker instead because I thought he could play both ways. I still think he can play both ways. He's that kind of athlete. But when we recruited him, the one thing that we and we believe this. We wanted to be able to have that tight end position to be an integral part of our offense, and we needed to get the ball in his hands. Anytime you have tight ends like himself, it creates matchups. Offensively, that's what you're looking for is the right matchups, and we do a lot of different things with him. He can process information. He executes very well, and he's a team guy. I don't know that I've known him since I've. I think he's one of the first guys I talked to when I got here in recruiting. I don't think I've ever heard the word "I" come out of his mouth. It's always we. It's always about the team.Â
Q: Â Last year you were 3-3 after your first six games, kicked a game-winning field goal to beat Sam Houston to get to 3-3. Now you're 4-2, just kicked a game-winning field goal. Is the team this year ahead of where you were this time last year.
A: It's hard to compare because teams are different, opponents are different. You know, everybody, especially nowadays in college football, everybody's team is different. I know, even talking to Jerry Mack the other night, they really didn't know what they had either, even through the first few games because of the transition. We have a little bit more consistency, but we have a lot of new guys too, and I don't think you can go off of records so much. You gotta just look at take it game by game, and you know focus on one game at a time, one play at a time. That's kind of where our mindset is.
Q: One less day to prepare this week as well. So your schedule, the team schedule, you just bump everything up?
A: Yeah. So we had this last year, and I think going through it, we plan this out months ahead of time. Once we get the schedule, we in fact, we have a meeting right when we get the conference schedule, and we kind of set our calendar. And no matter what the results of the game are, we're going to stick with that calendar. We were on short week versus Delaware, and we basically taken the same schedule. So what we did is we came back yesterday. Was a player's day off, coaches work, game plan. We had done some game planning in the off week. We took a day and spent on FIU, so we had a little bit of head start from a game plan. Now today will be like a Tuesday, so today's like a Tuesday practice. Tomorrow will be a Wednesday. Sunday will be a Thursday. Monday will be the home travel day, and then we play on Tuesday. So I think we try to structure it as much like a normal week, so our players can get comfortable with that. And when  we do that, I just I know myself. Maybe it's because I'm so OCD, but I like things being very consistent.Â
Â
TE Luke Gilbert & K Garrison Rippa
Q: Saw a lot of action on special teams last year. Worked your way into the rotation at tight end this year. Give us an idea on some of the focus you had in the off season and some of the areas you wanted to improve on to get on the field more.
LG: So when I got here, I had experience at quarterback and wide receiver, never really tight end. So when Coach Housewright brought me in last year as the tight end coach, I knew I was just going to have to put my head down and work on technique and try to get on the bus as a special teams guy, and I think that's really what I did. And then coming through the spring, I knew I was going to have a shot to play, and I just had to capitalize on that and just take the bend to that.
Q: Garrison, everybody wants to know, the book report.
GR: So we came in Sunday after the Ohio game, and that wasn't very fun for me. But Coach Kelly brought me in his office, and he told me that he wanted me to read a book, and he hands me Chop Wood, Carry Water, and I told him, I'm like, Coach, I've already read that book. I already read it last year. He's like, "Oh, we'll read it again." I read the book before, so I go home and I start reading. You know, it's a short book, probably about 150 pages, something like that, and it's a lot of anecdotes about a samurai archer or a kid trying to become a samurai archer and a sensei. So, I just kind of wrote out little nuggets that I picked up as I read along, and basically the main one that I got was that the more you focus on outcomes, the harder it is to do your job. So if you just surrender to what's going to happen, then you can just focus on what you have to do, and that's really just what I've been trying to do these last couple games. And you know, as you said I've kind of started to get on a streak. And in order to continue, in order to continue that, I'm going to have to just keep doing what I've been doing these last couple games.
Q: Having experience now three years kicking, did that help you to get through after not making the kicking?
GR: Oh, absolutely. You know, if I was a freshman, that happened. For a lot of guys, that might have been like a career ender. Like some guys wouldn't have been able to recover from that, and you know, like I think having experience and knowing that I've done it before and I've got lots of experience doing that, I think that definitely helped me because you know it's one kick and I had another kick in that game, so after that and being able to bounce back right away and having to do that, I thought that was big time.
Q: You were a pretty good multi-sport athlete in high school, why football? Why Jax State? What was that journey like here?
LG: Football has like been a part of my life. So my dad was my offensive coordinator in high school. He coached me all through my years. I knew it was going to be football for me. I played basketball and baseball as well in high school, and I enjoyed those. But nothing was ever like football.
Q: You just kind of become this big play guy in the tight end room. What has been that development like?
LG: I was talking about earlier and Coach Kelly said, like since I've been here, I just knew I had to put my head down and keep working. And you know, you can't look up. And when you get success, you can't go back to that success to fuel you. I mean, you can, but you also have to keep looking to the future, and you have to kind of keep going.
Q: Your dad was the OC, and he has he been to coaching all your life?
A: We moved around. We started at North Sand Mountain and moved to Arab, then Scottsboro, then Pisgah. He's been the head guy or the OC at all those schools, and him, like I kind of learned everything I knew about football from him, and he coached me when I was in flag football as a kid.Â
Players Mentioned
Friday, October 09
Friday, October 02
Sunday, September 27
Tuesday, September 22
