Boise State Broncos College Football Pregame Quote, 12/29/2024

Q. I was working on a story about the Penn State quarterback [Drew Allar]. He hasn’t been sacked many times this year. Your position, you’re trying to get to him. Why is he so elusive? What’s the trick to get to him?

JAYDEN VIRGIN-MORGAN: The fact that he’s mobile and he’s a bigger guy. A lot of people try to tackle him above the waist. One of the biggest things we’ve been working on is tackling through the motors, trying to get him down as easily as possible.

Just having to be able to tackle a bigger guy and the fact that he is elusive and he can get out of the pocket, makes it a lot more difficult. One of the biggest things is getting through his motors, which is his legs.

Q. He [Drew Allar] gets quite a bit of grief from Penn State fans just because the offense isn’t as good as sometimes, they think. Do you think he’s a little underrated? What do you see from film?

JAYDEN VIRGIN-MORGAN: He’s a great quarterback and has great offensive linemen in front of him, too. He’s getting the grief, but I think he’s a great player. He’s getting overlooked, but he’s a great player for sure.

Q. What did you learn from Ahmed [Hassanein]?

JAYDEN VIRGIN-MORGAN: You don’t always win on the first move you make. You’ve got to have a second move, third move, whatever, to get to the quarterback. That’s one of the biggest things I’ve learned.

Q. In what way do you complement each other?

JAYDEN VIRGIN-MORGAN: I think just having two extremely dynamic competitors on both sides makes it a lot more difficult for the offense to kind of pick who’s going to get a one-on-one and who’s not. Then if they’re going to leave the running back in to block as well, that’s one of the biggest things.

Q. Penn consistently has done a really good job of protecting their quarterback [Drew Allar]. What do they do that limits how many times he gets sacked?

JAYDEN VIRGIN-MORGAN: There’s some really athletic offensive linemen. Their protections are different. It’s a lot harder to get around. Also, I think the quarterback is harder to take down, because he’s a bigger guy. He’s elusive as well, so that’s one of the harder things for myself.

Q. Ahmed [Hassanein] mentioned that teams have gotten to him, but they just don’t bring him down. Is it because he’s big, or are there other reasons?

JAYDEN VIRGIN-MORGAN: I think it’s one of the biggest runs, he’s a bigger guy. You watch the film, a lot of the guys that are trying to tackle him are going high on him, and you can’t do that.

Q. Boise State wears blue, if you’ve got a choice. If you have a choice, you wear white. How much do you embrace the history behind that uniform?

JAYDEN VIRGIN-MORGAN: It’s a legacy, and it’s a legacy we want to continue to build. Just to be able to wear the quarterback uniform combo and being able to kind of represent what it means to Boise State to be in the Fiesta Bowl. I love it, it’s great.

Q. The “Count Us Out” statement that [Spencer] Danielson said went viral. It’s on t-shirts. Fans have used that. In what ways have you kind of rallied behind that?

JAYDEN VIRGIN-MORGAN: We’re rallying behind it because it’s a chip on our shoulder. People are counting it out. It’s a Cinderella story, us being in the playoffs. We want to prove why we should be in the playoffs.

Q. What impresses you the most about Penn State’s offense? What do they do well?

JAYDEN VIRGIN-MORGAN: Just the dynamic duo with their running backs [Nick Singleton and Kaytron Allen]. They have an impressive running game, and that’s going to be an extremely hard thing to stop; as well as all the shifts and motions they have to confuse the defense. It’s going to be a good competition, for sure.