North Texas Mean Green College Football Pregame Quote, 10/08/2019

It was good to get a little extra time to rest our bodies and heal our bumps and bruises. These guys have been going since the beginning of August and so hopefully this off week helped us re-energize and get our focus back and make sure we have great focus on Southern Miss. With a little extra time it’s always easier to correct your mistakes whereas when you get in the season it’s more challenging to really focus on the fundamental issues and the corrections we need to make. This past week we had good preparation and a lot of time to heal up and really work on our fundamentals, making sure we’re doing what we need to do on our schemes to be successful. We’re excited to see where we stack up against the western division. We’re 1-0 right now, and this week will be a great opportunity to go on the road against a team that’s playing really well. You look at Southern Miss and they’re playing as good as anybody in the league, their only two losses are against two SEC teams and this past week they had a very convincing win against an opponent in UTEP. I know they’re wanting to see where they stack up in the conference as well so it’ll be a great battle and a great challenge for both teams. I know they’ll be very prepared as they had an off week as well, so we have to make sure we do everything we can to go on the road and have success against a very good football team.

On whether or not it’s good to face Southern Miss early on after a tough non-conference schedule:

Honestly I don’t know if it matters. It’s always good again to have a bye week to hopefully get some guys back healthy. We’ve been pretty banged up and those guys need to and have had the opportunity to get healthy. You want to be at full steam especially when you play a team like Southern Miss. I know they have a ton of weapons and they’re very explosive on offense, they put up big numbers and their explosive plays have been pretty ridiculous. Their backs are good, their quarterbacks throwing it really well, defensively their scheme is always a great challenge for the league. They do a lot of different things defensively they’re very multiple, they play aggressive and they’re solid on special teams. You’re going to have to play every opponent throughout this conference and I’ve said it before there’s a lot of great teams that stack up well against each other and you’ve got to make sure you prepare the right way and every opponent has to have your full focus because if not, it’s going to be a great challenge. So whenever we play them I don’t know if that truly matters, you’re going have to play them at some point. But with both of us coming off a bye week hopefully both teams will be fresh and it’ll be a great battle.

On what he’s seen from Southern Miss QB Jack Abraham:

He manages the offense very well. He doesn’t put them in bad situations, if the play is not good he’s smart enough to get the ball out of his hands and throw it away and be able to play the next down. Secondly, he’s very comfortable getting the ball downfield to those receivers. They get in a lot of different formations, they’re going to force you to be disciplined defensively making sure you understand where your alignment and assignment is.

On what he’s seen from Southern Miss defensively:

They’re aggressive and their scheme is very multiple, getting into three-down and four-down fronts. Their pressure packages are good, they play in bear they play four-down so you’re going to get a lot of looks. They’re pretty similar to our defense in a lot of different ways they may just get to things in a different way but they’re very explosive. I think they’re very talented with skill and they’ve got speed and they play physical.

On the mindset in the offensive line room when going up against a team with 16 sacks on the season:

They’re going to have to have a great mindset. It’s always been a challenge playing against Southern Miss, again they’re very twitchy and they’ve always been good up front. We’ve got to do a great job at making sure we put ourselves into position, if you get behind the chains and you’re getting to where you have to throw the ball down the field and you’re not making sure you stay in front of scheduled downs you can get yourself in trouble with this team. We’ve got to manage the game we’ve got to execute and make routine plays because if you don’t it’ll be a long night.‚Äù