WATCH: Baylor DC Phil Snow Sugar Bowl Press Conference

Baylor defensive coordinator meets with the media in advance of the Sugar Bowl on Wednesday.

DEFENSIVE COORDINATOR SNOW: Hi, everybody. Yeah, we're excited about being here at the Sugar Bowl. I have coached 43 years and not played in the Sugar Bowl and coached here. So it's been great. People have been terrific, taking good care of our football team. We've had a couple of good weeks of practice for this game, and we're excited about playing in it. I think you look at us two years ago, guys, we were 111. You wouldn't think we would be in the Sugar Bowl playing Georgia. This is a big game for our program and we're getting better. We're excited about playing in this game.

Q. Obviously Georgia is down a few offensive linemen. What do you see from those guys? A lot of their backups are going to have to step up.

DEFENSIVE COORDINATOR SNOW: Kirby [Smart] is really a good football coach, and he's been through the wars. It's like we lost our middle backer the sixth game of the season, and everybody thought that was really going to hurt us on defense. And Terrel Bernard came right in and really played well. So, guys, that's just part of football. Kirby has guys that he's trained, and they'll come right in and play Georgia football. I'm expecting whoever comes in to play at their level of football. There's a standard they have there and they play at it. And I expect their backups to do it, whoever plays. Q. You see so many players sitting out for Georgia. But you mentioned it, this is a big game for Baylor. What kind of opportunity does this stage present for this program?

DEFENSIVE COORDINATOR SNOW: Well, we are building a program. This is really the 2020 season we're playing. So it's the first game of 2020, right? So, really, what we do in this football game will be based on how we're ranked next year and a lot of different things, which is big for our program right now. We're in that stage. Georgia is in a different stage than we are. But for us, where we're ranked going into the season, how people perceive us, all those things are really important to our program. And so how we play in this football game and people watching the Baylor Bear will be important to us. And so we're looking forward to playing in the game.

Q. What do you tell your guys that are maybe thinking about coming out early? You got some guys. James Lynch will be one of them. What kind of feedback do you give them when they come to you and maybe discuss that with you?

DEFENSIVE COORDINATOR SNOW: Here's my deal, I'm not against the portal. I think if coaches can move, players can. If we have an underclassman that's ready to go play in the National Football League and when I say "ready to play," there's a standard that you have to have going into that league, if you want to stay in the league a long time.

I will give you an example. You know how strong you are, how big you are. Do you know how to be a pro? Do you take notes? Do you train the way you're supposed to? All those things lead up to playing seven, eight, nine years in the league. So it's just not whether or not you can play or not. Are you ready to go in there because once you get in the league, guys, you're not babysitted anymore. And so the first contract, you'll make some money. But the second one is when you make the big money. And so they've got to be ready to be able to play in that league for a while. And so that's my advice to them. We sit down and I talk to them. Are you ready for these things? And I know you can play three and four years in the league, but how about eight to ten? How do you do that? That's what I try to help them with. And then, you know, guys, there's a lot of guys not getting crafted that obviously have decent grades. I mean, I think over 100 guys didn't get drafted last year, right? So not everything is accurate. They can say fourth to fifth round and you don't get drafted. You have got to be real smart with everything. We break it down for them. If it's the right thing to do, we tell them to go do it, if it's the right thing to do. If they're going to get drafted where they're supposed to, if the money is right, all those things, and you're ready for it, go do it. If not, come back, let us get you a little bit tougher and bigger and stronger and let's work on some of the things that will allow you to play in that league for a long time.

Q. To go from 10 takeaways to 30 in a year, I know experience is part of that with your players. But what are the kind of things that you guys do in practice or the things you preach about being ball conscious to have those kind of results this year?

DEFENSIVE COORDINATOR SNOW: We all work I don't care, every defense in America works on turnovers, okay? But, like, we got Grayland Arnold back. And Grayland had been hurt the first two years for here, hadn't played too much. Grayland has the knack to get the football. That becomes contagious. He gets a pick. Now the next guy wants to get one. Pretty soon everybody is intercepting the football. I think it's more based on if you want to get turnovers, recruit people that create turnovers in high school. When I was in the National Football League, if guys didn't intercept the ball in college, you know what? They didn't intercept it in the National Football League either. And the same thing for us. I don't recruit a DB that doesn't intercept the football in high school. That's the first thing I watch. People bring me Oh, he can run, he can do all this. Here's a highlight tape, and there's not one interception on it. They're not going to get turnovers, are they?

So guys have a knack of stripping the football. They just do. Like Terrel Bernard has a knack to strip the football. We didn't teach him that. There's things that go into that. But the big thing is, is it contagious? If you get enough guys that like the turnover deal and have a knack for it, then the other guys start to really feed on it. You can go from 10 to 30. I'm proud of that. That's a big jump from one year to the next.

Q. You see coordinators being fired and hired and all this change. Is it more difficult the time it takes for a defensive coach to take hold than it is an offensive coach? And if yes, why?

DEFENSIVE COORDINATOR SNOW: Okay. Sean Payton came and talked to our football team a couple of days ago. You know what he talked to the guys about? Tackling, blocking, doing what you're supposed to, being detailed. That's still the game. So I don't think one side is harder than the other. They said we could not play defense in the Big 12. Well, you can play defense in the Big 12. I mean, the head guy at TCU, every time you say that, he gets madder than heck because they played good defense. You can play. And the better players you get, the better you play. Now, we did tweak our system a little bit to play in the Big 12 and I think it helped us. There's some things we did schematically. Put guys in the right spots and did some things. And Georgia will try to take advantage of that, too. They'll probably try to run the football against us because we have eight guys in a twopoint stance that aren't real big. So we'll see if that holds up against Georgia's offensive line. But, no, I think you need good players. You need to put them in the right spot. Guys, look at LSU. Offensively, they have been struggling forever, right? And then all of a sudden, they get the mixture of coaches and players together this year and look what they've done. So it happens at every level. You got to have the right people, the right process, and then the right coaches and the thing can come together. Does it always come together? No. I've been places where we never got it changed. But I've been in a lot of places where we have. So it depends. Q. Coach, you talked about Clay [Johnston] being out or losing him in that sixth game. But for the most part, that was really it. How big was that to keep this defense healthy? I know y'all have that "next man up" mentality. But you have done a good job of keeping those guys healthy this year.

DEFENSIVE COORDINATOR SNOW: Yeah, we have.

I will give you an example. Grayland Arnold missed two games. And JT Woods came in and played good for him. Chris Miller was targeting, missed a game. So we've had guys that have stepped up. So not everybody has played the 21 out of 21 starts, we say we have had 21 guys not get hurt and only Clay has been hurt. That's not true. We have had some guys miss some games for various reasons and guys step up. Again, it is vital you keep as many of your starters as healthy as possible. The three starters that have really helped us are the threedown guys. Those three guys are [Bravvion] Roy and [James] Lockhart and [James] Lynch. Those three staying healthy have really helped us. And one of the reasons is, the guys behind them, a lot of them are freshmen that are playing. We have one sophomore. I think those three staying healthy has really helped us.

Q. You touched on those three. You guys set a goal for sacks this season. You guys achieved it. But why have guys been so successful with just threedown linemen? Those guys are maulers up front, and you guys have been getting to the quarterback pretty often.

DEFENSIVE COORDINATOR SNOW: A lot of threemanfront teams are real conservative with the threedown guys. They're too gapping and all that. That's not really our style of football. So we're a little bit more aggressive with the threedown guys. But it's a great tribute to Frank Okam and Joey McGuire, the two that coach our Dline that we have over I think it's 23 or 4 sacks with the down line in a threeman front, which is a lot. The goal of 40, our players a year ago looked at how many sacks we had and said, Coach, we'll never get to 40. Now, they didn't tell me that until we got to 40, right? We said, Coach, we thought you were nuts. But I think we're the only team in college football right now that have played 13 games that had 40 sacks and 30 turnovers. I don't think anybody else in college football did that in FBS. We have had some other guys get sacks, too, with a pressure out of a threeman front. It's been fun to watch. We dropped eight which gives us more time to rush. But, again, you got to get there, too, with eight with three. But it's been fun to watch.

Q. Coach, first of all, another report coming out today that Matt Rhule is being considered for an NFL job. What communication has there been among the staff with that? And playing a team like Georgia that plays so much up front, tries to run the ball a whole lot, is there any sort of thought or what's sort of the game plan in terms of do you stay with three, do you bring down the fourth? How exactly are you guys planning to attack that?

DEFENSIVE COORDINATOR SNOW: The deal with Coach [Matt] Rhule, I prefer not to talk about that. You can talk with him about that. And just stay with the football game we're about to play.

If you want to stop the run, we all try to outnumber you in the box, whether you are in a threeman, a fourman. They do it. We do it. Everybody does it. We'll have more guys in the box sometimes, and hopefully they can block. And so will they, their defense. Now, when you do that, you better be able to playactionpass and hold up outside. So we both have those problems. That's why we play the game. That's a chess match. The big thing is can you disguise what you do so they don't know. [Jake] Fromm calls the whole game at the line of scrimmage. They put a lot on him. I even think he calls the protections. So they put a lot on their quarterback. He's really a bright guy. He's fun to watch play quarterback. So we've got our hands full.