Florida Atlantic Owls College Football Pregame Quote, 08/26/2024

On preparing for Michigan State:

I’m really excited. I haven’t seen half of this team play in a game live. Half of this team did not play football for FAU [last year]. They were either in high school or playing for another school, so all I got to do was watch them on film. It will be fun to take this team into a hostile environment. Certainly, I respect the heck out of Michigan State and their tradition and their fanbase. It’s going to be a really difficult place to play. I know Coach Smith [Michigan State Head Coach Jonathan Smith] does a phenomenal job and will have those guys ready. It poses unique challenges, too, in Week 1 to [face] a brand new staff, very little of our film study has been on Michigan State. We watched them early to study personnel matchups, but beyond that, we’re watching Oregon State and Minnesota videos. It’ll be interesting to see what new wrinkles each side of the ball has, knowing the personnel side is different as well.

On being able to run the ball:

We want to run the football. We’re going to be better in that facet this year compared to last year. How much better? I don’t know. This is going to be as good of a front seven that we’ll play all year, but I think we’re very simple in our gameplan. The offensive line and tight ends and backs feel really comfortable. We haven’t installed a new run in weeks, so they’ve been doing the same thing over and over again. We’re not built to drop back 50 times a game, so when we throw the ball on first and second down, a lot of it’s going to be off-the-run action, so you better be able to run the ball for it to matter.