COACH HERM EDWARDS QUOTES PREVIEWING NORTHERN ARIZONA
OPENING STATEMENT:
“I think everyone is excited to start your football season off watching the games this week. But now we get to start it off Thursday night at home against a really good opponent, NAU. You watch how they play offensively and defensively, coach Ball has done a good job there. They beat Arizona last year, I know they’ll be excited about playing the Sun Devils. In 2016, I think they played them here and the score was like 13-7 in the first quarter or something like that. We anticipate there will be a lot of energy, there will be some new players as well. Offensively, they settled down, they have a really outstanding football player in their running back. Defense, their corners are good and their safety is very active and they have some good linebackers as well, so they’re coached very well. We anticipate coming into this game, what we can’t get into is what we got into last year, games where we were marred by penalties. I mentioned to the team that last year we got ourselves in a bad wave of penalties and we would turn the ball over. There’s a lot of anxiety in this team right now on wanting to play a football game. There’s some new coaches, they have anxiety as well, so I think it’s a unique situation for all of us to come home and play in our stadium. But we’re going to have to play good and it starts as soon as the ball’s kicked, but we got to play good and have the mindset we’re going to have to play four quarters.
ON WHAT EDWARDS SAID ON IMPROVEMENTS ON RECEIVING PENALTIES:
“I’ll let you know after the game. When the freshman goes through them, don’t start. Just don’t go down that path, it’s a bad path to go down. There’s so many new players that are going to be a part of this, we don’t know how they act under the lights, so I’m going to find out. Fans want to know, so I want to know too. I know how they practice, I don’t know how their anxiety levels will be. It’ll be interesting, but we got to stay away from that– the turnovers and the fouls– they just extend the game to put yourself in a bad way.”
ON THE ANXIETY GOING INTO THE GAME:
“Anxiety is always good, I wake up with it every morning. If you don’t have anxiety then you should to start the day off. I wake up with the personality of every day starting off deserving of being a good day, that’s how I live my life, every day. It deserves to be a good day and that’s how I think of life. If you got anxiety it keeps you alive, if you got no anxiety then it’s like ‘okay what am I doing here?’ so It’s good to have it, you have to control it, you have to know what keeps you going. That’s part of it with your adrenaline that everyone has and I think with football you can’t use it in a way that it’ll hurt you because it’s a competitive game and a competitive balance at the highest level. Within the framework of the rules, you can’t get out of that box.”
ON TELLING STORIES OR GIVING SPEECHES TO THE TEAM THIS WEEK:
“Not really. Every team is a little bit different. I kind of know what I’m going to say; some things I’m going to touch up on.
ON OPPORTUNITIES FOR DJ TAYLOR, ED WOODS AND OTHERS FOR WEEK ONE:
“They will play a lot and we have seven, eight guys in the secondary. We have a lot of guys with talent that will get some playing time and we’ll just anticipate that the whole season, but not set like we were last year. Every once in a while it will change and it’s been good to watch these guys and anticipate that all season and we said we got eight guys.”
ON THE OFFENSE AND WHAT TO EXPECT:
“It’s easy to do it in the warmups and now we gotta do it for real now. I’m going to enjoy this, I’m gonna enjoy every moment watching these guys so as soon as we kick the ball off, it’s like ‘Okay, I’m going to watch our offense, I’m going to watch our quarterback watch a couple running backs, tight ends, receivers.’ The object is the score, but defenses don’t let you score, you’ve got to earn it. That’s one thing about football, no one wants to watch a 10-7 game unless if you win. It’s hard to watch. We used to play that way back in the day. 9-6, no one wants to watch that, we live in a world where everything is fast, you want to see something going on. I hope we have some opportunities and if we do we need to cash in on them.”
ON OPENING UP THE PLAYBOOK IN THE FIRST WEEK:
“I think sometimes less is more. And I believe that throughout the season regardless of who we play. It has nothing to do with the players, it’s about us (coaching staff). I want our players to play fast. I don't want them to think, I want them to be dialed in and say, ‘this is what we're doing, let's go and then we can adjust from there.’ And I think when you can do that they can play. I don't want to smoke on that guy's helmet. Just play the game and play fast. Use our speed. Historically, we’ve been a fast football team. Those are the guys we’re trying to recruit, so I want that to show on the football field.”
ON THE DEFENSIVE LINE DEPTH:
I do (like the depth of the defensive line). We have to rotate because we have so many guys and then that just gives them the ability to play hard. There’s a good group up there. Some newcomers, some guys that haven’t played yet… but we’re going to get them all out there.”
ON EMORY JONES AND WHAT FANS SHOULD EXPECT:
“A very energetic guy, he has some talent, he has a really great arm with velocity and can throw the ball from different slots. He can get into spots and he just has to be careful. The key to that sometimes is just falling in love with the arm and the other team gets it. So you have to make sure you’re throwing it to the right spot. His anxiety will be up too, he’s never played in front of this crowd, he’s played in SEC games but he’s never been here. He’s a star quarterback here now, we’ve had some conversations and we’ll continue to have some before the game. We’ll just tell him to go play free and don’t worry about making mistakes. Just be you. Just go be who you are. We'll be fine.”
ON THE OFFENSIVE LINE DEPTH:
“There’s a rotation there too. We’ve got some guys. It’s a good thing because you always need some offensive linemen. That’s how you build your team. You build it with the foundation of your offensive and defensive linemen. That's important.”
ON THE WIDE RECEIVERS GETTING TARGETS:
“It'll be interesting that you asked that question... The veteran guys, it's obviously 22. There’s a bunch of young talented ones there that haven't played a lot. I think it's going to be interesting for me too to watch Glenn call the game. I am going to be in communication with him obviously, but how he calls the game. We have some interesting stuff. It'll be interesting how we size... I think it's like anything else when you get a hot player, you get it to them. For me to sit here and say 'I know'... like you."
ON OPENING THE PLAYBOOK UP IN THE FIRST GAME:
"I think the key is 'what does it take for us to win?' That's you having a plan going in and then obviously things happen in the course of the game. Score can dictate that, a lot of things can dictate that and from there, you go. But that's kind of how we play. That's how I think anyway. Whatever it takes for us to win that's what we have to do. That's what we're going to do. Bottom line. I'll leave it at that."