Florida Atlantic Owls College Football Pregame Quote, 10/04/2021

On dominating in the Shula Bowl:

Everyone’s always excited about the win. It was just good to finally play well in all three phases and I think as a team and where we’re at now, we’re excited because we showed what we’re capable of doing, but we’re also excited because we know we can still play much better than what we did on Saturday. Having that challenge to continue to play your best is always great and I think our guys are locked in to try do that after watching the film on Saturday. It was a great win, and we did some good things, but when you watch the film, we still left some plays out there. Guys are in a good mood and they’re always going to be in a good mood after (winning) the Shula Bowl. It was great for our offense to come out and finally play from the beginning. We hadn’t done that. I think gameplan-wise, our offensive coaches cut back a lot, and it made a difference in the way our guys played.

On carrying the momentum from the Shula Bowl to the road against UAB:

We have to look back to the beginning of last week and why we played the way we did. We played the way we did because of the way we prepared. The way we prepared last week has to be that way all of the time. Our guys played better. They played faster. That’s our football team and that’s the way we need to be. Going on the road against a really good opponent, you better be on your ‘A-Game’ and not have to think about much other than defeating the man in front of you. If we’re playing at our best, we’re feeling good about whoever we’re playing.

On facing UAB:

They’re a very well-coached football team. You look at them size-wise and things of that nature, they are a very athletic, very physical football team on both sides of the ball. They built their team on physicality, built their team on running the ball and stopping the run. They’ve done a great job over the years, and you look at the foundation of what and how they do things, it is a big reason why they win a lot of ballgames. It’s another big challenge for our guys, but another opportunity for our guys to see if we can continue to build our program the way we want this team to be this year. For the things that we want out of this season, games like this is part of those obstacles that you have to overcome in order to get the things that you want. Our guys understand that, and we have to have a great week in practice and go out and play one of our best games and beat this football team.

On preparing the team this week to face the defending C-USA champions:

In order to be the man, you have to beat the man. Our guys understand what we’re going up against and it’s going to be this way the rest of the season. We have to take it one game at a time. We have to focus on FAU and what we do and how we do it.