Charlotte 49ers College Football Pregame Quote, 09/21/2021

A disappointing result on Saturday night, and I think a lot to correct. I think you’re going to go through a stretch of nine games here where if you don’t play your best, you could be in trouble and I don’t think we capitalized on opportunities on Saturday night. I think there was plenty for everybody to correct, starting with me. I didn’t think I did a very good job of managing the football game on Saturday and if I don’t do a great job myself, how can I ask our players to be able to do it. I’m disappointed in the outcome, frustrated, humbling, but so proud of the response and that’s what I was most excited to see. These guys moved on quickly, we brought them in on Sunday, got back really late, really Sunday morning and then in the afternoon flushed Georgia State andnow all eyes are on Middle Tennessee. We understand how good this football team is, how well-coached they are. They’ve changed some things up over the last year and have made really big improvements in all three phases and [it’s] our first conference game, getting back home and on a short week, so the challenges are ahead of us and again, the response has been phenomenal from our guys.

On whether suffering a first loss can be beneficial, or a tougher thing to bounce back from on a shorter week:

I think it’s awesome, because you get to move on quickly. Typically we’re off Sunday and we get back in and flush the game on Monday, but this week by 1:30 we were on to Middle Tennessee. I had a meeting with our team and just went over corrections and some things I think we can do better and talked a little bit about why that happened to us, and challenged them to take accountability for what they did as well. Then it was all day on Sunday watching Middle Tennessee film and practice on Monday, practice today and then it’s back into the recovery zone. We’ll go no-sweat tomorrow, fast Friday on Thursday and play Friday night. The question would be, what would our energy be coming back? How tight would these guys become? Obviously it’s a lot more fun to learn after a win than after a loss, but what type of football team do we have? What type of bond do we have? The seniors have been awesome, the leadership has been phenomenal and the guys have responded very well.

On the sudden change at the quarterback position at Middle Tennessee:

We thought Chase [Cunningham] was going to play the entire time, obviously when they moved on from Bailey [Hockman] in the first half I think it was at UTSA. They’ve done that before this year, and it’s not a surprise. Obviously last week it was a little bit more of a surprise and found out on Friday, this week it’s been better in that we’ve been preparing for Cunningham the entire time. I’ve been through that before as a coach and I know it’s a challenge anytime you’ve got a guy who is your starting quarterback isn’t there anymore, there’s going to be people who were following him. The great part about it for them is that Rick Stockstill has done this a long time and knows how to handle the situation and I’m sure that their guys will be ready. Sometimes you need a spark and we saw it last week with Georgia State and I’m sure we’ll see it again this week.