Syracuse Orange College Football Pregame Quote, 11/25/2019

Just wanted to remind the community and everyone out there that this will be our last game for our seniors. We’ll be having our senior walk right after the game. The seniors will go into the locker room for a brief moment before they come back and have an opportunity to reflect on their four, five, and six years at Syracuse, but also any memories that you’d like to share with them as they walk around the football field for their final lap in the Dome. I just wanted to put a reminder out there for the community.

On what the players can take away from a season like this that didn;t go as planned:

I think the biggest thing is the adversity part.You have to turn a negative into a positive. There were expectations from a lot of people, including a lot of people who were in this room on Sunday for the team meeting. Things didn’t go our way. Now we need to take that and put it somewhere and remember how hard you have to work for something when you want it and that you can’t wish, you have to make it happen. I think that’s a message thats been learned by all the members on our team, and a lot of people in the community as well.

On Sam Heckel’s outlook:

Again, it has to do with medical stuff and I don’t want to put his business out there, but I always love for him to be a part of what’s going on here. I don’t know what the medical people are going to say.

On when he’s going to take another look at Heckel and if Heckel will be ready for the spring:

One of the things I’m going to do, and I’m going to set a precedent – I want to stop talking about other people’s injuries because it’s not healthy. He’s been hurt and we need to see if he’s going to get better or not, and some of that stuff is private and I just don’t want to put it out there.

On Ed Hendrix’ outlook:

He has had some things done and hopefully it’ll make a difference. I can’t tell you right now and I don’t know if he’ll be ready for the spring.

On Caleb Okechukwu:

You nailed three good ones and all three are the same. That’s not to make them the same, I literally don’t know what’s going to happen.

On the defensive coordinator hiring and how does that open role affect recruiting and the upcoming signing period:

Once again that is something that’s going to be decided after the season. It’s definitely something that we need to look into and that I’ll look into because it needs to be addressed whether we do or don’t make a change. I’m not even going to start that stuff until we see how this season ends.

On what he can say about this year’s seniors and how they’ve affected him:

A fantastic question. I think about our word faith – belief without evidence. These guys came when there was no evidence, and they had tremendous faith in what we were going to get done here. They’ve had some good times and they’ve had some bad times, but I think they’ll always going to be Orange and I don’t think they’d have it any other way. Their memories are strong memories and I think as they go off into the world as better fathers better sons, and better husbands, we’re always going to have somebody who’s connected to Syracuse University, and always connected to Upstate New York. I couldn’t be more proud of these young men, both the ones that played and the ones that didn’t play. There’s a lot of young men that medically you never even saw. There guys who are graduating who got hurt two or three years ago and people don’t even know their names, but they’re still a part of what we started here and they came here with the right frame of mind but things just didn;t go their way. There’s going to be a lot of family members who are walking and that we’re going to be thinking about on Saturday and they’ll always be Orange.

On Ben Honis who wrestled at Cornell before coming to Syracuse and how unique he was to this team:

He came in with the right mentality. If you don’t know who not to mess with, don’t mess with a wrestler, wrestlers are different. Football players and wrestlers, I don’t even know who’s weirder but you have to be careful with those guys. He’s got some physicality to him, he came in and practiced real well. He fit right into the team atmosphere and he was a good contributor on what we were trying to get done.

On Sterling Hofrichter and how he’s doing following his hard hit at Louisville:

I’m expecting him to be fine and expecting him to be there on Saturday, unless something pops up that I don’t know about. It was a little scary because he’s a different position than most positions, but when I went out on the field to see him he was a warrior. He’s a warrior in every sense of the word. There’s no doubt that regardless of what happened on Saturday that he’ll be able to play on Sundays and that’s really where he’s going to end up. The crazy thing about it when you watch the tape is that it was friendly fire. It was somebody hitting one of our guys and one of our guys running into him. There’s a special place on helmets that’s really soft and if you get hit in that spot you can feel all of it, and he felt it all. He’s ok. I saw him at meal yesterday and he’s doing alright, it’s not going to stop him or his career but we’ll have to see what’s going on for Saturday.

On the future of the quarterback position:

Obviously recruiting is recruiting and you never know what is going to happen. We’re recruiting at all positions because we need all positions. We’re going to go through the process and see who we can get and get the best player possible and throw them in the hat and let it all work out and see where it settles down at. The quarterback is no different than any other position, especially in that position where you try to get a quarterback every year and in one year we didn’t so we have to fill in some gaps.

On whether he views Tommy DeVito as the starter going into next year:

I think he’s the guy because he’s the best guy coming back, but everything is open. We had the one situation when there was a starting safety when Andre Cisco got here, and Andre Cisco was the second string safety in the spring and then he was the first string safety in the fall, then ever since. Same thing with Kendal Coleman, there was a starting defensive end when he got here but he [Coleman] was just too good to keep off the football field. The first time he had a scrimmage here the position coach said he graded 100 percent and I said bologna cheese, no one grades 100 percent, and he’s never been coached before. So the whole staff started watching the game again at 10 p.m. and we got done in the a.m., and when we got done regrading it, he didn’t have 100 percent, so the position coach was wrong. But he did have the highest grade by someone playing in their first scrimmage before and in that way the position coach was right. So you never know when you’re going to get that individual that’s totally different from everyone else, but you need to be green and grown and open to that sort of stuff. Certain guys have their slotted positions, but the best guy has to play no matter what.

On Wake Forest being the surprise team this year and what he sees from them overall:

Consistently being able to score a lot of points. I think any time you have that type of offense and you’re able to score points you’re going to be in games even when you’re not supposed to be in games. And even the games that they’ve loss, if you look at point total scores, they’ve been able to score points on everybody. So I think they’ve done a nice job on offense, they’ve done a nice job on defense in getting turnovers and stops, but for the schools like us to be able to make moves like we did last year and what they did this year, you’re going to have to score a whole bunch of points if you’re not going to have major stops out of your defense.