Herm Edwards previews the Sun Devils' matchup against Southern Utah in his press conference on Monday, August 30.
Opening statement
“I’d like to comment on Ralph Frias. He’s got a personal medical issue that he’s dealing with, and I’ll leave it at that. I don’t want anyone to think that he’s in any kind of trouble or suspended, it has nothing to do with that, but that’s where that’s at. As far as our team, for the most part we are pretty healthy, obviously (Jermayne) Lole is done for the year but he is still a big part of this program you’ll see him on the sideline. I think we are excited about playing football and I think you folks are excited about watching football. We watched some college football last week, it was fun to watch again. You can always anticipate a lot of excitement, it’s fun to see the fans in the stands too that was a unique deal. Southern Utah is a team when you look at them from last year, they played six games and won a lot of close games. Similar to how we played some games they just couldn’t finish at the end. The first game was on a roll against San Jose State, that was my first coaching career and first coaching opportunity against San Jose State. They are building a new facility down there and it’s going to be beautiful, but I can remember going there as a young coach. Coach (Warren) has done a really nice job with that program. They’ve got some good players and obviously they got a big lead early and it’s hard to play on the road like that against a good football team, so we anticipate a team that comes in here with a lot of veterans coming back. They play a style of defense where they bring some pressure. They put a lot of pressure on their corners, and they have some good corners that can cover. They've got a heck of a linebacker, number eight, that does a great job. They got a man, ninety-one, that can come off the edge, so their defense is one that is man to man coverage. You better beat man to man coverage and better be able to block them. Offensively the quarterback does a nice job of getting the ball out of his hands. He’s not a guy that turns the ball over at all, really. When you watch him throw the ball and they spread you out; They’ve got some good runners. They are running the ball a little bit different than they did last year. They’ll come in here, obviously, with a chip on their shoulder not playing up to their potential that they feel, in their first game, and now they have to come here and play us. We’re excited about playing a football game. Don’t know what to anticipate, opening day is always opening day. I know this, our guys are ready to play. It will just be fun to walk into the stadium, our crowd will be there to support these guys and just to watch them play. It’s going to be kind of fun for me personally, and I think for the players as well.”
On the team’s excitement to play for the first time this season, and keeping the guys motivated after seeing Southern Utah’s first game being a blowout:
"Well, I think we understand that when you play football, coach football you know sometimes the ball goes in a certain way and you just can’t get it to come back. So, when you watch these guys on tape and like I said last year they were in every game it went down to the fourth quarter. So, we just have to be us. I’ve always said that you always prepare for an opponent but it’s really about you. It’s , “What type of team do you want to be?”, and this is going to be our first test this year at home with some fans, which should be fun and I’m just looking forward to watching us play. At times it won’t look pretty, I get it, it’s the first day, it’s the first game so we have to deal with all of that and how the coaches intermingle with the players on the staff. We got a lot of young players and how they handle that on the sideline and all that stuff. You are going to find a lot about some things after the first game you say you know what we have to tweak this, and we have to do that so we will see where it goes."
On going back to the standard four game redshirt rule after the adjusted rules during the 2020 season, and freshman playing early in the season:
"You guys know us here, for some reason freshmen seem to find a way to play here. Sometimes not always starting but having significant back up rolls. There are some guys that obviously going into the season sit in that seat and there will be some other guys that we decide on but right now I think with that rule, it’s a great rule for college football that guys have the opportunity to play in four games and still have a redshirt year so we got some guys that we are looking at and we will just see where it’s at. We don’t have to make a decision right away, but I think it’s a great rule that college came up with."
On the impact of fans being able to attend games:
"Well, I didn’t miss the fact that I could holler to the players and tell them what was ready to happen and they could hear me right, I mean they could actually hear me. You sit there as a defensive guy, and I would tell them, “hey, they are getting ready to do this and they would turn around and look and say yeah they’re going to do it just listen to what I’m telling you they’re going to do this,” and 90% of the time I was right. So, I think what I’m going to like the most is the energy that fans bring to the stadium. There’s a certain energy that you feel when you walk in stadiums, this stadium has that. We have a nice fan base and playing at night, I’m a night guy, I played all my high school games at night, so I like night games. I used to like Monday Night Football you know and we used to play on Monday nights. You always dreamed of Howard Cosell saying your name. I can remember my first Monday night, I made a play and all I wanted to know, “did he said who I was?” I just think night games to me, they’re fun and our crowd has all day to get ready for those games too. They know how to do that as well so it’s going to be fun."
On his message to the 942 Crew and the marching band to bring the energy:
"I don’t have to worry about them, I love them. They’re good. That’s one about college football that’s different than pro football. There’s a group of young people that are engaged and doing this. This is their deal. They wait all season for this, and they missed a whole year so now; I can’t imagine all the planning they have done. They have had a whole year of missing football and what they are going to come up with. When you go to other games and you see them, I just watch them all the time, “what are they going to do at this game?”, whether it’s at basketball or wherever they always got something, and you just sit there and go, “how think how did they of that stuff?” but they do. It’ll be a lot of fun."
On his interest in any specific position group:
"I like our receivers. They now have another year under their belt and how that comes together with Jayden I think is important. We’ve got some young secondary guys that are very talented. It will be interesting if some of those guys are able to get in the game and see how they play. Those are the groups that I kind of look at as a whole because there are so many of them. You know offensive lineman there are a couple of kids that will have an opportunity. (Daniyel) Ngata didn’t play a lot last year. He’s kind of been a guy with our backs, he gets kind of lost in his shuffle for some reason and rightfully so, we had those other two young ones that played last year. We will see if he gets an opportunity to go in a game that would be nice to watch him play. So that’s how I kind of look at it as far as our team."
On teaching his young players to control their pregame adrenaline:
"Well, you talk about emotional, and I always say passion verses emotion. Just the sideline conduct, that’s why I don’t dress 110 guys. I just think it’s a lot of guys. First game or whatever, everyone doesn’t know how to act on the sideline. Sometimes you get so many guys it can be a distraction and I don’t want that. I’d love to dress all of my guys they generally dress for the Arizona game; we do that. I’m dressing more guys on the sideline than I’ve ever had going into opening day because they deserve it and they worked hard. But I just think you know, last Friday or whatever day it was when we had our walk through, just the sideline procedure of where you sit on the bench, offense over here defense over there, for all the young guys. But then more than that is how we conduct ourselves on the sideline if we’re not in the game. There will be some guys dressed in black clothes that are injured or whatever they will be on the sideline. There will be some other guys dressed because they’ve done a good job of practicing and giving us some good looks and they will be dressed in full uniform. How do all of these intermingle with the guys that are playing? With the ones and the twos, right? We don’t want those guys sitting on the bench and the guys coming off the field they’re drinking all the Gatorade and no guys were on the bench. You know all of that sounds silly, but it is really not because that stuff happens, and you see it. Like look man, “don’t you see these guys are playing?”, you don’t need to drink all the Gatorade or sit on the top of the bench or let people know you’re sitting on the sideline, and you don’t need to start coaching your buddy, let the coach coach him. This coaching thing is way overrated ladies and gentlemen. Just to deal with all of that because my back is turned, I can’t look on the bench I have to look on the field. Every once and a while, a time out, I kind of look back there to make sure, you’re trying to tell them, “hey man when they come together as a team now, we don’t need 50 guys. The offensive guys go over there the defensive goes there.” Sunday was a long day. You’re try to tell everybody where to go and you have so many young guys, you know I don’t know where they sat in high school. I don’t know if the guys are sitting on water coolers, I don’t know all that, but you have to tell them they can’t do that. I mean some things you just take for granted…I’ve learned that, and you better tell them because if you don’t tell them they don’t know and they look at you like “Coach?” and like, “no you can’t wear Nike sitting on the sideline. We are an Adidas school.” I get a headache thinking about all that stuff. We’re trying to play a game and I’m looking behind me and I’m like “what does that guy have on he’s got a hoodie on but what are we doing?” Right, so, you guys think this it’s easy but it’s hard."
On the offensive line depth:
"Well, we always have been depth wise if that’s what your concerned with. Offensively and defensively beyond the lines but I think we’ve got some young players that obviously that we are looking at and saying hey they are going to have to play. We’ve got some guys that have been here for 2 years, and coach has done a nice job with some of these young guys. So, it’s always, when you’re building a football team, everyone reads about the skilled people that you build. Your building blocks on your lines and we have to continue to build it there, but we’ve got some young players on both sides of the ball that can help us they just happen to be really young and that’s just kind of where we are at. I think if we can stay healthy with our offensive line, our offensive line is pretty good. I really believe that. They have played together now for a little while. Last year helped them so coming back let’s just stay healthy, and we got a chance to have a pretty nice offensive line."
On his excitement level:
"Well, we haven’t really had a lot of stuff happen off the field to be quite honest. We’ve been practicing football since the spring, so we just want to play football like everybody else does. That’s been our mindset from the beginning from last spring to right now, it’s we’ve been talking about football. All the other stuff I wouldn’t know... I just coach football, the players have been dialed in and knowing that we feel like we have a pretty good football team and now we got to go do it. We can talk about it all we want but now we actually have to go play. I think your first game kind of tells you ok, this is kind of what we look like… “where do we go from here?” First game is always one of those games where you go out there and you see some things and you see some players. You see some players all of the sudden get in the spotlight and practice he was a pretty good player but now… “are the lights a little too big for him? Is he ready? Is he not ready?” It is kind of interesting the first game. You kind of watch some players that you hadn’t played a lot and they might get to play because now they’ve earned the right to play and how do they react to that and to me that’s the fun of it."
On the Sun Devils’ run defense capability:
"That’s something that you always are concerned with opening day. Tackling. I’ve always said this, even in pro football that tackling is not very good the first four weeks, it’s just not. Because of the way you practice anymore. In pro football you don’t have as many players but in college football you do and even in college football, we don’t have enough players where we can have tackling live all the time, we pick our spots. We work on it obviously but now we really got to go do it. There will be some missed tackles there’s no doubt. You kind of anticipate that but I think as it goes on you get better. That’s football and more the way you practice. You don’t practice live tackling anymore to protect the players and I agree with that. There’s something to be said about protecting the players."
On overall run stopping:
"Well, you know, hopefully you can stop it with a regular front you don’t have to add a guy in the box but if you have to, we have the ability to do that. We have different looks upfront where we feel like we got some pretty good linebackers and guys inside that can play pretty well. You have to stop the run. It’s football and it all starts there; you have to stop the run. When people can run the ball on you, man, it’s just hard to look at. They control the clock. When you run the ball you control the clock, you control the game. You can dictate how you want the game being played when you can run the football. “Do I want to go fast this series of plays or do I want to go slow?” If I want to lead going into the middle of the third quarter, according to what the lead is, I look at the clock and I’m up a couple scores I’m taking that clock all the way down to the one second before I hike it and then I’m going to run two out of three times, and you’re just playing against the clock now. You still got to run the ball because when you don’t run the ball in practice, and you don’t practice against the run you become soft on defense. That’s what I believe and now we live in a world where people want to score 45 points… “where’s the balance to that?” Where you can still run the football especially when this field shrinks and when you need to make a first down. Fourth and one fourth and two can you run to make it? Or, are you going to throw it?” That’s the running part you can’t lose side of so that’s football still in my opinion."
On his coaching philosophy shifting towards spread offenses and short passes:
"You have got to be able to play man coverage and if you’re not playing a lot of man you got to make sure you get the ball turned back to the people in pursuit where they can hit the guy. More people that hit the guy with the ball, you got a chance it comes out, and you steal possessions when you can take the ball away. When you can steal two or three possessions that’s a good thing and now the offense has to capitalize on it but you’re right they spread you out because you have to have people that can tackle in space. But, with that being said, you still have to run to the ball. You have to turn the ball back to the defense. If you are able to do that you get more hats on the ball you get more hats on the guy that’s carrying the ball but that’s college football. You have got to be able to tackle and you have got to take the short game away because people now are five yards, and they methodically go on a 10 play drive and the biggest pass might have been 10 so eventually you have to be able to get up on people, don’t let them have the short pass and when you can take the ball away, take it away. I’ve always said this: when you start throwing it around the yard or lot it all looks good and it’s all fun and games until someone takes it from you and then it’s not a lot of fun."
On a run-heavy offensive scheme:
"I think this, when you go into a game, there’s always a game plan of what you want to try to do. You’re going to try and expose your opponent’s weaknesses and you want to play to your strengths. We’ve got two good runners, three. We will find a way to run the ball. We ran it last year I think for okay. It was pretty good running it. You better be able to stop it and if you don’t then okay but we’re going to run the ball. We are going to try to be balanced. You want to try and get 70 plus plays offensively. I think that’s what most offenses try to get it’s kind of their goal. “Where do the numbers lie? I think the game dictates that. How many did you throw? How many did you run?” We got to be able to run the ball and we’ve got three really good players that can run so we’ve got to give them the ball."
On the specific strengths of the team this season:
"I would hope a little bit of our strength is our guys coming back on defense because this is guys that have played together. Your strength is always with experience, and we have some experience on the offensive line, but we have some experience on the defense too. (Jermayne) Lole is a guy we are missing but everybody else has played a little bit. AP is calling the defense that will be interesting on how he calls defense compared to how Marvin did it, but there are some similarities there. I just think that we want to put our players in a position where they are going to be successful that’s what you do as a coach and that’s the bottom line. I think we will find a little bit about this Thursday night kind of some things we want to do defensively and see if we can do them. If we can then we’re good if not, it we have to change some things and make changes we are willing to do that, but you don’t know. You really don’t know, and it takes a game or two to play to figure out okay, this is what we’re doing pretty good and then you build on that."
Opening statement
“I’d like to comment on Ralph Frias. He’s got a personal medical issue that he’s dealing with, and I’ll leave it at that. I don’t want anyone to think that he’s in any kind of trouble or suspended, it has nothing to do with that, but that’s where that’s at. As far as our team, for the most part we are pretty healthy, obviously (Jermayne) Lole is done for the year but he is still a big part of this program you’ll see him on the sideline. I think we are excited about playing football and I think you folks are excited about watching football. We watched some college football last week, it was fun to watch again. You can always anticipate a lot of excitement, it’s fun to see the fans in the stands too that was a unique deal. Southern Utah is a team when you look at them from last year, they played six games and won a lot of close games. Similar to how we played some games they just couldn’t finish at the end. The first game was on a roll against San Jose State, that was my first coaching career and first coaching opportunity against San Jose State. They are building a new facility down there and it’s going to be beautiful, but I can remember going there as a young coach. Coach (Warren) has done a really nice job with that program. They’ve got some good players and obviously they got a big lead early and it’s hard to play on the road like that against a good football team, so we anticipate a team that comes in here with a lot of veterans coming back. They play a style of defense where they bring some pressure. They put a lot of pressure on their corners, and they have some good corners that can cover. They've got a heck of a linebacker, number eight, that does a great job. They got a man, ninety-one, that can come off the edge, so their defense is one that is man to man coverage. You better beat man to man coverage and better be able to block them. Offensively the quarterback does a nice job of getting the ball out of his hands. He’s not a guy that turns the ball over at all, really. When you watch him throw the ball and they spread you out; They’ve got some good runners. They are running the ball a little bit different than they did last year. They’ll come in here, obviously, with a chip on their shoulder not playing up to their potential that they feel, in their first game, and now they have to come here and play us. We’re excited about playing a football game. Don’t know what to anticipate, opening day is always opening day. I know this, our guys are ready to play. It will just be fun to walk into the stadium, our crowd will be there to support these guys and just to watch them play. It’s going to be kind of fun for me personally, and I think for the players as well.”
On the team’s excitement to play for the first time this season, and keeping the guys motivated after seeing Southern Utah’s first game being a blowout:
"Well, I think we understand that when you play football, coach football you know sometimes the ball goes in a certain way and you just can’t get it to come back. So, when you watch these guys on tape and like I said last year they were in every game it went down to the fourth quarter. So, we just have to be us. I’ve always said that you always prepare for an opponent but it’s really about you. It’s , “What type of team do you want to be?”, and this is going to be our first test this year at home with some fans, which should be fun and I’m just looking forward to watching us play. At times it won’t look pretty, I get it, it’s the first day, it’s the first game so we have to deal with all of that and how the coaches intermingle with the players on the staff. We got a lot of young players and how they handle that on the sideline and all that stuff. You are going to find a lot about some things after the first game you say you know what we have to tweak this, and we have to do that so we will see where it goes."
On going back to the standard four game redshirt rule after the adjusted rules during the 2020 season, and freshman playing early in the season:
"You guys know us here, for some reason freshmen seem to find a way to play here. Sometimes not always starting but having significant back up rolls. There are some guys that obviously going into the season sit in that seat and there will be some other guys that we decide on but right now I think with that rule, it’s a great rule for college football that guys have the opportunity to play in four games and still have a redshirt year so we got some guys that we are looking at and we will just see where it’s at. We don’t have to make a decision right away, but I think it’s a great rule that college came up with."
On the impact of fans being able to attend games:
"Well, I didn’t miss the fact that I could holler to the players and tell them what was ready to happen and they could hear me right, I mean they could actually hear me. You sit there as a defensive guy, and I would tell them, “hey, they are getting ready to do this and they would turn around and look and say yeah they’re going to do it just listen to what I’m telling you they’re going to do this,” and 90% of the time I was right. So, I think what I’m going to like the most is the energy that fans bring to the stadium. There’s a certain energy that you feel when you walk in stadiums, this stadium has that. We have a nice fan base and playing at night, I’m a night guy, I played all my high school games at night, so I like night games. I used to like Monday Night Football you know and we used to play on Monday nights. You always dreamed of Howard Cosell saying your name. I can remember my first Monday night, I made a play and all I wanted to know, “did he said who I was?” I just think night games to me, they’re fun and our crowd has all day to get ready for those games too. They know how to do that as well so it’s going to be fun."
On his message to the 942 Crew and the marching band to bring the energy:
"I don’t have to worry about them, I love them. They’re good. That’s one about college football that’s different than pro football. There’s a group of young people that are engaged and doing this. This is their deal. They wait all season for this, and they missed a whole year so now; I can’t imagine all the planning they have done. They have had a whole year of missing football and what they are going to come up with. When you go to other games and you see them, I just watch them all the time, “what are they going to do at this game?”, whether it’s at basketball or wherever they always got something, and you just sit there and go, “how think how did they of that stuff?” but they do. It’ll be a lot of fun."
On his interest in any specific position group:
"I like our receivers. They now have another year under their belt and how that comes together with Jayden I think is important. We’ve got some young secondary guys that are very talented. It will be interesting if some of those guys are able to get in the game and see how they play. Those are the groups that I kind of look at as a whole because there are so many of them. You know offensive lineman there are a couple of kids that will have an opportunity. (Daniyel) Ngata didn’t play a lot last year. He’s kind of been a guy with our backs, he gets kind of lost in his shuffle for some reason and rightfully so, we had those other two young ones that played last year. We will see if he gets an opportunity to go in a game that would be nice to watch him play. So that’s how I kind of look at it as far as our team."
On teaching his young players to control their pregame adrenaline:
"Well, you talk about emotional, and I always say passion verses emotion. Just the sideline conduct, that’s why I don’t dress 110 guys. I just think it’s a lot of guys. First game or whatever, everyone doesn’t know how to act on the sideline. Sometimes you get so many guys it can be a distraction and I don’t want that. I’d love to dress all of my guys they generally dress for the Arizona game; we do that. I’m dressing more guys on the sideline than I’ve ever had going into opening day because they deserve it and they worked hard. But I just think you know, last Friday or whatever day it was when we had our walk through, just the sideline procedure of where you sit on the bench, offense over here defense over there, for all the young guys. But then more than that is how we conduct ourselves on the sideline if we’re not in the game. There will be some guys dressed in black clothes that are injured or whatever they will be on the sideline. There will be some other guys dressed because they’ve done a good job of practicing and giving us some good looks and they will be dressed in full uniform. How do all of these intermingle with the guys that are playing? With the ones and the twos, right? We don’t want those guys sitting on the bench and the guys coming off the field they’re drinking all the Gatorade and no guys were on the bench. You know all of that sounds silly, but it is really not because that stuff happens, and you see it. Like look man, “don’t you see these guys are playing?”, you don’t need to drink all the Gatorade or sit on the top of the bench or let people know you’re sitting on the sideline, and you don’t need to start coaching your buddy, let the coach coach him. This coaching thing is way overrated ladies and gentlemen. Just to deal with all of that because my back is turned, I can’t look on the bench I have to look on the field. Every once and a while, a time out, I kind of look back there to make sure, you’re trying to tell them, “hey man when they come together as a team now, we don’t need 50 guys. The offensive guys go over there the defensive goes there.” Sunday was a long day. You’re try to tell everybody where to go and you have so many young guys, you know I don’t know where they sat in high school. I don’t know if the guys are sitting on water coolers, I don’t know all that, but you have to tell them they can’t do that. I mean some things you just take for granted…I’ve learned that, and you better tell them because if you don’t tell them they don’t know and they look at you like “Coach?” and like, “no you can’t wear Nike sitting on the sideline. We are an Adidas school.” I get a headache thinking about all that stuff. We’re trying to play a game and I’m looking behind me and I’m like “what does that guy have on he’s got a hoodie on but what are we doing?” Right, so, you guys think this it’s easy but it’s hard."
On the offensive line depth:
"Well, we always have been depth wise if that’s what your concerned with. Offensively and defensively beyond the lines but I think we’ve got some young players that obviously that we are looking at and saying hey they are going to have to play. We’ve got some guys that have been here for 2 years, and coach has done a nice job with some of these young guys. So, it’s always, when you’re building a football team, everyone reads about the skilled people that you build. Your building blocks on your lines and we have to continue to build it there, but we’ve got some young players on both sides of the ball that can help us they just happen to be really young and that’s just kind of where we are at. I think if we can stay healthy with our offensive line, our offensive line is pretty good. I really believe that. They have played together now for a little while. Last year helped them so coming back let’s just stay healthy, and we got a chance to have a pretty nice offensive line."
On his excitement level:
"Well, we haven’t really had a lot of stuff happen off the field to be quite honest. We’ve been practicing football since the spring, so we just want to play football like everybody else does. That’s been our mindset from the beginning from last spring to right now, it’s we’ve been talking about football. All the other stuff I wouldn’t know... I just coach football, the players have been dialed in and knowing that we feel like we have a pretty good football team and now we got to go do it. We can talk about it all we want but now we actually have to go play. I think your first game kind of tells you ok, this is kind of what we look like… “where do we go from here?” First game is always one of those games where you go out there and you see some things and you see some players. You see some players all of the sudden get in the spotlight and practice he was a pretty good player but now… “are the lights a little too big for him? Is he ready? Is he not ready?” It is kind of interesting the first game. You kind of watch some players that you hadn’t played a lot and they might get to play because now they’ve earned the right to play and how do they react to that and to me that’s the fun of it."
On the Sun Devils’ run defense capability:
"That’s something that you always are concerned with opening day. Tackling. I’ve always said this, even in pro football that tackling is not very good the first four weeks, it’s just not. Because of the way you practice anymore. In pro football you don’t have as many players but in college football you do and even in college football, we don’t have enough players where we can have tackling live all the time, we pick our spots. We work on it obviously but now we really got to go do it. There will be some missed tackles there’s no doubt. You kind of anticipate that but I think as it goes on you get better. That’s football and more the way you practice. You don’t practice live tackling anymore to protect the players and I agree with that. There’s something to be said about protecting the players."
On overall run stopping:
"Well, you know, hopefully you can stop it with a regular front you don’t have to add a guy in the box but if you have to, we have the ability to do that. We have different looks upfront where we feel like we got some pretty good linebackers and guys inside that can play pretty well. You have to stop the run. It’s football and it all starts there; you have to stop the run. When people can run the ball on you, man, it’s just hard to look at. They control the clock. When you run the ball you control the clock, you control the game. You can dictate how you want the game being played when you can run the football. “Do I want to go fast this series of plays or do I want to go slow?” If I want to lead going into the middle of the third quarter, according to what the lead is, I look at the clock and I’m up a couple scores I’m taking that clock all the way down to the one second before I hike it and then I’m going to run two out of three times, and you’re just playing against the clock now. You still got to run the ball because when you don’t run the ball in practice, and you don’t practice against the run you become soft on defense. That’s what I believe and now we live in a world where people want to score 45 points… “where’s the balance to that?” Where you can still run the football especially when this field shrinks and when you need to make a first down. Fourth and one fourth and two can you run to make it? Or, are you going to throw it?” That’s the running part you can’t lose side of so that’s football still in my opinion."
On his coaching philosophy shifting towards spread offenses and short passes:
"You have got to be able to play man coverage and if you’re not playing a lot of man you got to make sure you get the ball turned back to the people in pursuit where they can hit the guy. More people that hit the guy with the ball, you got a chance it comes out, and you steal possessions when you can take the ball away. When you can steal two or three possessions that’s a good thing and now the offense has to capitalize on it but you’re right they spread you out because you have to have people that can tackle in space. But, with that being said, you still have to run to the ball. You have to turn the ball back to the defense. If you are able to do that you get more hats on the ball you get more hats on the guy that’s carrying the ball but that’s college football. You have got to be able to tackle and you have got to take the short game away because people now are five yards, and they methodically go on a 10 play drive and the biggest pass might have been 10 so eventually you have to be able to get up on people, don’t let them have the short pass and when you can take the ball away, take it away. I’ve always said this: when you start throwing it around the yard or lot it all looks good and it’s all fun and games until someone takes it from you and then it’s not a lot of fun."
On a run-heavy offensive scheme:
"I think this, when you go into a game, there’s always a game plan of what you want to try to do. You’re going to try and expose your opponent’s weaknesses and you want to play to your strengths. We’ve got two good runners, three. We will find a way to run the ball. We ran it last year I think for okay. It was pretty good running it. You better be able to stop it and if you don’t then okay but we’re going to run the ball. We are going to try to be balanced. You want to try and get 70 plus plays offensively. I think that’s what most offenses try to get it’s kind of their goal. “Where do the numbers lie? I think the game dictates that. How many did you throw? How many did you run?” We got to be able to run the ball and we’ve got three really good players that can run so we’ve got to give them the ball."
On the specific strengths of the team this season:
"I would hope a little bit of our strength is our guys coming back on defense because this is guys that have played together. Your strength is always with experience, and we have some experience on the offensive line, but we have some experience on the defense too. (Jermayne) Lole is a guy we are missing but everybody else has played a little bit. AP is calling the defense that will be interesting on how he calls defense compared to how Marvin did it, but there are some similarities there. I just think that we want to put our players in a position where they are going to be successful that’s what you do as a coach and that’s the bottom line. I think we will find a little bit about this Thursday night kind of some things we want to do defensively and see if we can do them. If we can then we’re good if not, it we have to change some things and make changes we are willing to do that, but you don’t know. You really don’t know, and it takes a game or two to play to figure out okay, this is what we’re doing pretty good and then you build on that."