Middle Tennessee Blue Raiders College Football Pregame Quote, 11/01/2021

We’ll be headed up to Western Kentucky this weekend and looking forward to it. They have a really good football team. They’re 4-4like we are [and] they’ve won their last three games ‚Äìthree of their last four. We’ve won our last two of our last four. We’re excited about going up there, it’s going to be a great challenge for us. They’ve probably got one of the best, most prolific offenses in the country. They’re leading the conference in every passing category out there. So very prolific, they’ve got some good skill guys, receivers ‚Äìquarterback is special, can make the throws. They run it enough to keep you honest. You can’t ignore the run, so we got to do a good job of stopping the run and not just stopping the pass because their running backs are talented also. But we have to do a good job of keeping the ball in front of us and they’re going to make their plays. They’re really good players, they’ve got a good offensive scheme, they score a lot of points, so it’s going to be a great challenge for our defense and offensively same for us. We have to make sure that we’re scoring touchdowns, you know, you’re not going to beat this team scoring field goals. So, we have to take advantage of every opportunity that we get in the red zone, we have to score touchdowns. We’ve been pretty good at that until last week. We had that one fumble against Southern Miss, towards the end of the game, and we were just basically running out the clock. But we’ve been pretty good other than last week with that and we have to continue to do that. Games like this, rivalry games, you have to be disciplined, we have to be good in the kicking game, you can’t give up anything in the kicking game because they’re talented enough already offensively. [We] have to be really good and efficient in the run game. A really good football team we’re playing, but we’re looking forward to going up there and playing it.

On how to prepare for WKU QB Bailey Zappe:

I think the biggest difference is they’re going to throw it if they get 80, 90 plays a game ‚Äìthey’re going to throw it 60 times. They’re going to throw it ‚Äì they throw to set up the run and they’re going to try and get 75 to 100 rushing yards a game, but they want to throw 400-plus. He’s done that on a regular basis. He’s very talented, got a quick release, he’s been in this offense for several years now because Tyson hired his offensive coordinator there and a couple other coaches off that staff. So, he’s been in this offense for a while and understands it. The big thing though is the amount of times they’re going to throw it and we’ve played good quarterbacks, but this guy is special.

On playing an Air Raid team like WKU:

What they do is they spread you out, they’re going to run four verticals, they’re going to run the screen game, they’re going to run motion a guy behind the quarterback and throw the bubble screens to him, they’re going to toss it to him in the front of the quarterback for jet sweeps, they’re going to throw the quick game, but they try to spread you out and get you into space ‚Äìmiss a tackle here and a five-yard completion turns into a 20-yard completion. That’s the premise behind what a lot of people do in college football today is try and make it a space game. They’re going to be a four wide, they’re going to be empty and they will get into some tight end sets. But they’re mainly a four wide, empty set team that tries to get you in space and let their playmakers make plays.