FIU Panthers College Football Pregame Quote, 11/01/2022

On this week’s opponent, North Texas:

North Texas is a really solid good football team, beat Western Kentucky pretty good last Saturday. They’re very physical, excellent running attack. They got four really good running backs. They all can make plays. The quarterback Austin makes a lot of plays too and can run, but really makes a lot of plays with his arm.

Defensively, they are very physical. The inside backer is all over the field when you watch the film, making plays right and left. They are physical in the front, and they make a lot of plays and play aggressive. In the secondary, I think they’re an excellent football team. Seth has done a really good job there at North Texas for a while and it’s going to be a tough contest for us.

On North Texas starting QB Austin Aune:

Yeah, Austin’s a good player. He makes a lot of plays, does a lot of good things for them. They are a RPO football team. And he does a really good job of reading that. They’re also a very physical offensive line and there’s a lot of double teams at the point of attack and try to really knock you off the football and they do a good job of it.

Austin does a really good job of understanding RPOs. He’s an excellent thrower on the run. They do a lot of boots and stuff to get him out of the pocket and make plays that way. He does an excellent job, he’s a really good player and we’re going to have to be able to handle him.

On the improvement of the running and passing game coming off their win against LA Tech:

Yeah, they’re all improving. They’re doing a lot of good things. We definitely want to be able to run the ball better than we did last week. But Grayson (James) was able to take that and take advantage of the receivers making plays in that area and tight ends also. So, I thought that was good, you know, different times, not everything always clicks, you got to find what’s clicking and stick with it. But you like both of them, you’d like to be able to have a running game and a passing game at the same time. But last week, we didn’t have as good as a running game as we would like but the passing game did take up the slack and made some big plays for us. So, I do think that the receivers and the tight ends and I think Grayson has kept maturing as the year went along really has a good feel for a lot of things in the passing game.

On the progress of OL Phillip Houston:

Phillip is an excellent athlete that we got here this summer and has also put on some weight which is good. We’re trying to get him a little bit bigger, and I think in time he’ll be a pig powerful young man. He’s really physical now and played really well. He’s really excited how Phillip stepped up and played and he’s from the Dallas area too. So, he’s excited about going home and really excited about how he did, and we look to him playing well again.