Middle Tennessee Blue Raiders College Football Pregame Quote, 09/26/2022

We start conference play this week. It’s a short week, so we’ve got a lot of work to do in a short period of time. San Antonio, obviously, is a very good football team. They’re the defending conference champions. Not probably, but they have the best quarterback that we’ve faced so far this year. He’s very dynamic, very athletic. He can run, he can throw. They’ve thrown the ball more this year that what they did last year.

They’re a very experienced team. They’ve got seven senior starters on offense. They’ve got eight senior starters on defense. So it’s a very senior oriented team. A lot experience, got a lot of guys that have played a lot of snaps for them. It’s a really good team. They’ve got good skill guys, they can run. They’re attempting (passes) 40, 41 times a game, so they’re throwing it an awful lot, a lot more than they did last year. And like I said, their quarterback is special, he’s a really good player. We’ve got our work cut out for us on that side of the ball.

Defensively, the things that stands out the most is just how fast they are at every position. Their defensive line is big and athletic, they can run. Their linebackers and DBs are really fast guys also. It’s a really talented team. They were picked the win the conference again this year in preseason stuff, it’s their first conference game as well as ours. They’re 2-2 right now, had an overtime with Houston, Texas, their two losses, and they beat Army and Texas Southern here last week. Very explosive team and we’ve got to have a great week of practice and get ready to roll.

On the quick turnaround from Miami to UTSA and if UTSA is the toughest opponent thus far:

As a coach, you start thinking about, start studying, start watching a little bit of it probably before the players do. When the players got here yesterday, the Miami game was over. We had to turn our focus over completely to San Antonio, especially when you lose a day, playing on Friday night. It expedites everything. So we put that one to bed yesterday, and we’ve moving on and have moved on to San Antonio.

Your next game is always the most important game. This is a really talented team. They’re really good. It’s as talented as any team we’ve faced this year.

On UTSA’s three senior wideouts and their roles in the offense:

They’re getting more opportunities this year than they did last year because they are throwing the ball more than did last year. They are all catching quick screens, fast screens, they’re all catching that. They’re all throwing deeper balls down the field. You can’t look at one and say he’s this guy, this guy is their screen guy or this guy is their intermediate guy. They’re all involved in the offense. They’re all do the same thing. They’re all fantastic receivers and they’ve got a fantastic quarterback giving them the ball.

On changes to the schedule for a Friday night kick:

You try to keep it as normal as possible, but that’s hard to do. Yesterday, we were going to go about 15-20 minutes longer than a normal Sunday practice. But we got lightning’d out, so we had to come off the field about half way through practice. We watched film, then we went back out, tried to get a little bit more done. But then the four hour rule starts creeping up on you. We got about an hour’s work in yesterday.

Today, the class schedules are just so scattered all over the place. Monday is our normal day off. So today, we won’t practice, but each individual position group is finding time to meet. We’ll meet with our players today around our class schedules. Tuesday will be a normal day. Wednesday will be similar to the a Thursday, we’ll go a little bit longer than a Thursday. And Thursday will be similar to a Friday, but a little bit longer. Just trying to make sure we’ve got everything covered and ready to go for Friday night.