Florida Atlantic Owls College Football Pregame Quote, 10/24/2022

On Jaylen Wester filling in for Eddie Williams:

I thought Jaylen came in and played well. He played like we thought he can play. He’s a really good football player, very passionate, loves playing, and he showed that in the time he was in there. He even got injured and went on the sidelines for a little bit and wanted to help the team, so he went back out there limping and still was trying to play. I was happy with what Jaylen provided for us, just knowing that he’s going to continue to get better. I think the kid is going to have one heck of a career at FAU. He’s a really good linebacker and the more he plays, the more he’s going to continue to show us.

On keys to beating UAB:

We have to run to the ball and tackle well. What we’re going to see this week is pretty much what we’ve seen the last two weeks, where you have teams that run the football and love to hold the clock. The keys for us are first stopping the run and knowing they’re going to run the ball. They have some really good running backs. Theo-line does a great job. They have a really good running scheme. Getting guys to the ball, that’s how you stop the run. You have to get multiple guys to the ball and tackle well. You have to dominate your gaps. You can’t have guys out of gaps, and I think they do a good job of creating extra gaps, so we have to do a great job of filling those. And then try to get some takeaways. You look at the games they lost, pretty much like us, they turned the ball over. Offensively, we have to take advantage when our defense does get us in good field position and take advantage of every possession, because you’re not going to get many when you play a team like this.

On UAB RB DeWavne McBride:

He’s really good. He has great vision. He’s got patience running the ball, and then he’s explosive through the hole. Once he decides to go, he goes. He has a great understanding of how they’re blocking things and does a great job of setting up blocks. He’s a strong runner. He runs behind his shoulder pads. He’s by far the best running back we’ve seen this year, so it’s a big-time challenge for our defense. I know those guys will be looking forward to this.

On UAB’s defense:

It’s a good defense. They play well together. They have a lot of guys back from last year. They have been in the system for a while now, and you can tell by the way they play. The key is taking care of the football. We played them last year and spotted them 14 points and had four turnovers in that game. On the road, you just can’t do those things. In games where we’ve taken care of the football, we have won. In games that we’ve given the ball to the defense, we have lost. That’s going to be really critical in all of our games.

On Saturday being a must win:

All four [games left] are must wins. Every game we’re playing. For us, we’re trying to win and being consistent when it comes to winning. If we want our goals, then we have to win these games. Our goals are still ahead of us, but they’re not going to be achieved unless we do the things that we need to do in order to win, and that’s taking care of the football and scoring when we’re in the red zone. If we want our goals and things, that we want to accomplish this year. We have to go take care of business.

On giving younger players looks:

We’re letting guys compete every week and seeing who has the best practice. There’s a lot of young guys playing now. We’re pretty young as a football team. We’re going to play the guys that give us the best chance to win.