Middle Tennessee Blue Raiders College Football Pregame Quote, 10/14/2019

We’re on the road again to North Texas. They have really, really good individual football players as well as a really good football team. Head coach [Seth] Littrell has done a good job there reestablishing that program. He’s done a great job. I have a ton of respect for him as a person as well as a coach. Their offense starts around their quarterback, Mason Fine. He’s a senior leader and great player. He’s a really talented player, a great leader, a great competitor. We played them in ’16, we were his first start. He’s done a fantastic job in that time that he’s been there. He’s thrown for over 10,000 yards in his career and a bunch of touchdowns. At running back, they’re running the ball a lot better this year than they have the last several years. Their running back [Tre Siggers] is second in the conference, averaging right at 100 yards. Benny LeMay at Charlotte is averaging 103, so he’s an excellent running back. They have an excellent offensive line, they’re not giving up a bunch of sacks. They’re doing a really good job. Their receiver [Jaelon Darden] is the second leading receiver in the conference. If you look at it, they’ve got a great quarterback, a running back who’s second in the conference and a receiver who’s second in the conference. Their skill guys on offense are very talented, and we’ve got our work cut out for us this week from that standpoint. Defensively, the thing that jumps out at you the most is their overall team speed. This is one of the fastest defenses we’ll face all year. Their secondary is good, their linebackers can run out of this world and they’ve got some big guys up front. They’ll base out of three guys up front. They’re getting a lot of production from their front guys. Their record is 2-4, like us. They got beat by Cal by a touchdown, they got beat by SMU who’s ranked and then they got beat last week by Southern Miss, who’s very, very good. This is a good football team. A lot like us, I think we’re better than our record states, and I think they’re better than what their record states. They’re very good in the kicking game, very sound. Their punter is averaging 42 yards a punt, so they’ve done a good job. Their field goal kicker is 9-out-of-11 in field goal attempts, so they’re really good in the kicking game as well. North Texas has always been a tough place to play. They play really good at home, and that’s no different this year. We’ve got to make sure we’re mentally tough and handle the environment, handle the trip in a professional manner and be ready to play better than we did last week.

On becoming more consistent on offense:

We didn’t play very good. We turned the ball over three times, had two holding penalties, two illegal block penalties and we had four illegal procedure penalties. When you turn the ball over three times and you commit those mistakes, it’s hard to be consistent. It starts with us. We’ve got to be more consistent. We’ve got to coach better, we’ve got to play better and we’ve got to do all the little things that lead to success. To have a consistent offense, you have to do the little things, and we didn’t do the little things Saturday. That’s where it’s got to start. We’re not good enough to just show up. We’ve got to practice better. We’re still not running the ball very good, then you throw in all the dropped passes we had ‚Äî we had seven drops Saturday. You throw all that in, it comes out a pretty pathetic performance.

On taking a good performance last week into a game against another tough offense:

I said after the FAU game that I thought, defensively, they gave us a chance to win the game. We gave up 28 points to a team that’s been averaging over 40 points the last three games. Defensively, we did a good job, we just didn’t score. We’ve got to score. We didn’t score enough offensively. We had 24 against Marshall. You get four turnovers and you get 24 points. We scored 13 points against FAU ‚Äî you’re not going to win games in this day and time scoring 13 points. We’ve got to get the ball in the end zone, and we’ve got to be more consistent at every position offensively. We’ll get better at that and put a better performance out there Saturday.

On game-planning for North Texas receiver Jaelon Darden:

To me, it’s more about us. We’ve got to play. [Darden]’s a good player, but everybody’s got good players. I’ve got a lot of respect for him, he’s a talented player, but we’ve got to get better ourselves.

On North Texas Head Coach Seth Littrell:

One, [Littrell]’s a good person. To me, that’s where it always starts for a coach. If you’re a good person, you’ll be a good coach. If you’re a good father, a good husband, you’ll be a good coach. Same as a player: If you’re doing the things off the field that you’re supposed to be doing, nine times out of 10, you’re going to be a good player. That’s where it always starts with me. Seth is a good person, he’s a good man and he’s been an excellent football coach. He’s at a good school. They’ve won there, they have great facilities, they have a great recruiting area, and he’s done a good job of turning that program around when he inherited it. He’s just done a nice job of turning the North Texas program around to where it was when Coach [Darrell] Dickey was there in the early 2000s. I only competed against Coach Dickey in ’06. North Texas was the team to beat in the Sun Belt. They went through some tough times there, but Seth has come in and done a great job.

On being able to run the football:

Before the season started, you knew it was going to be tough against Michigan and Iowa and Duke. We ran it okay against Tennessee State. We didn’t run very good against Marshall or FAU. That’s a little disturbing and disappointing. To answer your question, we’ve got to get better, obviously. I’ve got a ton of confidence in our offensive line, and I’ve got a ton of confidence in our running backs. We’re halfway through the season, we’ve got a long way to go. If you look at it, we ran it pretty good against Tennessee State, you knew you were up against tough sledding against those three Power Fives. We haven’t been pretty good these last two weeks; let’s be better these next six weeks.