Marshall Thundering Herd College Football Pregame Quote, 10/05/2021

I want to first start by sending our prayers and well-wishes to a member of our family, Chuck Landon. I know he’s going through some medical things right now, so Chuck, we’ve got our prayers out to you, hope you [have] a speedy recovery and hope to get you back really soon.

Obviously homecoming is coming up this week, which is an opportunity for our family to get back together, an opportunity for alumni, fans, family all to spend time together and come back and watch the Herd play. I do want to kind of mention to make sure everybody gets the opportunity to head to the Hal Greer ceremony that’s going on at 10a.m. on Saturday. I think that’s a great start to the entire day on Saturday, the great legend, I’ll say, that played here, is getting recognized with a statue. Before you head to Thunder Street, head on over and take advantage of the opportunity to recognize a legend, his family, and all he’s done for this university. I really appreciate that.

And then the other thing ‚Äì I know this month is breast cancer awareness month. I know in the past alot of schools around the country symbolize breast cancer awareness with pink socks, or pink jerseys or pink stickers. I don’t believe in that ‚Äì hear me out ‚Äì I think breast cancer has enough awareness. I think when you start wearing pink socks and pink stickers, I think you are being an individual, and where does it stop? Who’s got on pink socks, who’s got pink shoestrings. I believe in the uniform being a uniform and not a costume. I believe in our players all looking the same. We believe in individualism, but not when it affects the team. I had a meeting with the leadership committee and my belief is that breast cancer does not need any more awareness. What it needs is resources and/or volunteering. So what we’re going to do as a program, [is] we’re going to ‚Äì all of our players get per diem for games, part of the NCAA rule. So what our players are going to do, is they are going to donate one dollar of their per diem for every weekend of this month. What I’m going to do as a coach, I’m going to match and double whatever they come up with, and then we’re going to donate that to the local breast cancer society research in the great state of West Virginia. Because I think that is more important or impactful than running out in pink socks on.

I believe in being a servant leader, I believe in action and I believe in helping, so that’s what we’re going to do. I don’t know what the number will be, but let’s just say they come up with $100, just a number for example. I will put $200 to that and we will donate $300 to the local West Virginia breast cancer association for research and resources to try and do something that will generate and actually helps, not ‘hey, we had a pink wristband.’ That’s just my belief, not a knock against anybody who does that. I have members in my family who have been affected by the disease, so I’m fully aware of it and I know that what they need is resources and volunteering. I think we all have the awareness. I know that’s been done here in the past, that’s not a knock to what’s been done in the past, but I want to let you know you won’t see any pink on the field for the Thundering Herd, but we are doing something.

On last week’s game:

Last game we had a talk after the game. Obviously you all could see it, Ray Charles could see the issue that happened Saturday night. We’ve got to find a way to eliminate the turnovers. It’s been something that’s been happening since the first game of the year. We’ve gotten away with it in multiple games and now it’s catching up to us. I think sometimes it takes a failure to learn. You talk about in the first game not turning it over, not turning it over, not turning it over, and in young running backs minds, not necessarily mine, but they say ‘I didn’t fumble, I got it back. ‘Then you kind of don’t really think about it. Then as the year goes on, you don’t get them back. I don’t know if it was like the vortex, but every ball that came out Saturday night just seemed to repel away from all of our guys. I mean not even close to like ‘did we get it, did we get it?’ No, we don’t even have a guy in the area, so I think what we’re going through now hopefully our guys had a chance to see it.

I talked to the team and told them we had six turnovers and a blocked punt and we’re still less than a half a yard away from having an opportunity to go win the game. How great can we be if we stop beating ourselves? I told them when I went in the locker room, do not hang your head. I believe you hang your head when you play your best and the other team beats you. You don’t hang your head when you beat yourself. You’ve got to look in the mirror and say ‘how can I get better? ‘That was one of the things we talked about. I thought our defense played well enough for us to win the game, especially in the second half. We kept turning it over, they come out and get a stop, we’d turn it over, they’d come out and get a stop. The one we turned over that they didn’t have a chance to put their hand down was probably the one that kind of put us a little too far out of reach, but I think our defense is starting to play the style of defense that we all expected. It takes time. I’m not by any means making excuses for it, but it takes time. I think we’re starting to play the type of defense that we expect our guys to play. A great learning opportunity, and we’ve got another tremendous challenge coming up this weekend.

Obviously homecoming, I expect the Joan to be full of fans really getting the opportunity to come back. ODU is a really good football team. You can look at records, but if you look at our record, what will people say? I think you’ve got to look at the film. I think when you watch their games, I think they’re in a very similar scenario as us. They’re in a lot of games ‚Äì there’s a turnover, or a penalty, or a drop, whatever it is that kind of separates them. We’ve got to be prepared, and I told the guys it’s really about us this week. It’s about us fixing the things we need to fix, improving the things we need to improve on all week, so we can go out and execute on Saturday.

On Old Dominion’s usage of their tight ends:

Yeah, I think they do a really good job of maximizing the tight end, they play a lot of 12 personnel, mainly 11, but they play a lot of 12 personnel to get two tight ends on the field. It’s a matchup type of deal for them. Nine times out of 10, the tight ends usually matched up where he’s going to have a little bit of a size advantage. They’ve got two guys with great size. Zack Kuntzwas at Penn State when I was there, we recruited him, I left and then he came in, so I know a lot about him. And then their other is probably a little more athletic vertically, but Zack is 6’8‚Äù, 6’9‚Äùwith a really good catch radius, does a really good job running his routes. I think they do a really good job of matching up to create advantages for them, so we’ve got to be able to defend those tight ends in the passing game and in the run game.