Middle Tennessee Blue Raiders College Football Pregame Quote, 10/04/2021

We’ve got Liberty up there this weekend and I really believe, this isn’t coach speak, I think this is the best team we’ve played so far. They’re very athletic, very fast on both sides of the ball, they’ve got good skill players. Offensively it’s built around their quarterback, Malik Willis. He’s just a really, really good football player, he’s an Auburn transfer, he’s thrown 11 touchdown passes and no interceptions. He’s got close to 500 yards rushing‚Äìhe’s their leading rusher, obviously he’s their leading passer and just does a really good job. He’s a bigger guy, probably 225 pounds that breaks a lot of tackles. People get hands on him in the passing game and he breaks their tackles. So we’ve got to do a really good job of wrapping up when we get to him. He’s not a burner, but he’s got great vision, great change of direction and he is so strong that he breaks a lot of tackles. We’ve got to do a good job with him, they’ve got good running backs and good receivers also. It’s a very experienced offense ‚Äìtheir offensive line is older, but it starts with their quarterback, so we’ve got to do a good job there.

Defensively, [they’re] probably the fastest team defensively that we’ve faced this year. Their front is active, their defensive ends, their tackles, guys can run. Linebackers, secondary, they’re going to come after you, they’re going to blitz you, they’re going to play zones and all that. Again, we saw it last week against Marshall, [who] had two really special returners in the kicking game and Liberty’s got that this week also. They’ve got a really good punt returner, and defensively like I’ve said, I think they’re in the top-10 in total defense, top-10 scoring defense, so it’s a really good defense. We’ve got to have a great week of preparation and get ready to play a good football team.

On preparation for a tough road game and not being overwhelmed:

We’re not going to be overwhelmed, we weren’t overwhelmed any place we’ve been this year on the road, so I’m not worried about that. Five of our first seven games are on the road. We played one game [at] home in September, one game in October and now we’ll play one game to start November. It’s just the way the schedule fell this year and it’s like I say all the time, you go on the road, you better bring your toughness. You’ve got to be mentally tough, and it’s been a long time since I played at Liberty ‚Äì when I was at Central Florida we played there, but we were division two back then, so I know that place has changed a lot since then. It will be a great atmosphere and it’s a great challenge for us to go up there. It’s an earlier game, so we’ve got to be up there and ready to play. But we’re not going to be overwhelmed or anything like that. We’ve got to play better than what we have the last time we went on the road. Like I’ve said, I have got full confidence and belief in this team that we will.

On what Liberty does so well defensively, specifically with their front seven:

They’re very athletic, they’re very fast, they’ve got good quickness and they use their hands well to get off blocks. They time their blitzes really well, they’ll do a lot of different things, a lot of different stunts up front. Their linebackers are active and they’re involved in the blitz game. It’s just a very active, fast defense and like I said, in my opinion, this is the best team that we’ve played so far this year. Those guys can run on defense and we’ve got to do a good job of creating a new line of scrimmage. We can’t play the game in our backfield, we’ve got to get on their side of the line of scrimmage or it’s going to be a long day because they’re really athletic and really active up front. To me, we’ve got to do a good job of communicating up front to handle all of the different things we’re going to see.