Marshall Thundering Herd College Football Pregame Quote, 11/02/2021

Obviously you guys were at the game, probably our most complete game we’ve played all year as a team. Obviously there’s things we’ve got to continue to get better at, a lot of things we’ve got to clean up, but when you look at the game holistically it’s probably our most consistent game in all three phases. We did a really good job offensively, our first game that we’ve played all year that we did not turn the ball over, and we had zero penalties on offense, which you guys have heard me preach and preach and preach about the importance of discipline, about the importance of taking care of the football and it’s starting to show. Now we’ve got to go back to the basics and do the things we did all week during practice to get those same results. I told the team on Friday before we went over to the hotel that we probably had our best week of practice since I’ve been here. Last week ‚Äìreally good energy, really good focus, really good attention to detail. Obviously some things in there to clean up and ways to get better, but just the overall feel of practice when you watch it on film and you see it on the field, it was probably our best week and we had our best result. Not necessarily in points, yards, or whatever it is, but just consistency in our play.

[I’m] really pleased with the way our defense has continued to improve each week, continue to accept the challenge and continue to get better. I thought from a communication, gap control, tackling, all of those things, I thought we did a really good job. Another third quarter shutout, which is a big goal of ours coming out of the locker room and being able to stop the offense there. It’s another week in a row where we’ve been able to get some guys in games that may not have played as much, and the biggest improvement for us is that when they went in this week, they executed a lot better than they did at North Texas, so that was an improvement. Our special teams is continuing to make strides. The old coach in me where you go to ice the kicker at the half and they block the kick, you feel like you shouldn’t have done it, but they put their hand back in the dirt and they were able to block another one, so that was huge. We talked all week we talked about their punter being a weapon for them, and us having to do a really good job in the return game, and we were able to spring a big return. We’ve been talking about finishing on our blocks, and we got to do that. Really good job, really excited, really proud of the guys and the way they worked.

Really excited about the next challenge that we have coming ahead of us, with FAU this week. As we continue to get farther and farther into the season, I told our guys our window of opportunity continues to close because the amount of games we have left continues to get shorter and shorter. We talked about it yesterday with the team, making sure that this team maximizes every opportunity possible for this team. This is the only time that this team will be assembled, regardless of who comes back or who moves on ‚Äì everybody will be a year older and everybody will have more experience, so this team’s opportunities are getting more and more narrow, so we’ve got to do everything we can to make sure we maximize it as a program, coaches, players, individuals all collectively together.

Last week players of the game ‚Äì Rasheen Ali ‚Äìcontinues to do a really fantastic job, it’s really neat watching him grow. As a running back coach by trade, it’s really great to watch him grow and watch some of the things he can do naturally from the beginning of the season till now is really impressive. Koby Cumberlander was our defensive player of the week who did a really good job. Koby’s a guy who’s been around here and played a lot of football, probably one of the leaders with energy and passion on that defensive line with a couple of other guys that did a really good job. Jojo Evans was our special teams player of the week. He’s been kind of Mr. Consistent for us in our coverage and return units.

On FAU:

Obviously Coach [Willie] Taggart’s done a really good job of assembling a good group of players that kind of complement each other. Offensively it starts with their quarterback [N’Kosi] Perry. He’s done a really good job of distributing the ball in their system and he runs well enough with his feet to create some plays. We talked about one of the things we needed to do last week, which we didn’t do a great job was staying in coverage on scramble situations. This week it’s really going to be a challenge because he is athletic enough to move around and he keeps his eyes downfield, so they’ve hit some big plays on scramble drills that we’re going to have to be prepared for. Their running back [Johnny] Ford is kind of Mr. Electric, they find ways to get him the football in space and he has the juice to take it the distance. So those two guys on offense really create a lot of challenges for defenses because you’ve got to be able to maintain and cage the quarterback with also setting the edge on the defense to make sure that their running back doesn’t get in space. He’s going to really challenge our linebackers in coverage. They’re going to have to do a really good job of fitting his hip and tracking him and make sure they do a really good job down the field in coverages because he’s really good at catching the ball as well.

Defensively they’re stout. Probably one of the better defenses we’ve played all year from the consistency standpoint. Coach [Mike] Stoops and I were together last year at the University of Alabama where he was an analyst. His defensive mind, you can see by the way they play, some of the things he’s been known to do. They’re playing with a lot of confidence on defense right now. They’ve got a nose guard [Evan] Anderson, who is huge in there. He’s going to create a challenge for us one-on-one with the center and our combo blocks trying to get movement and he does a really good job of getting up the field. He’s athletic for his size and creates a lot of issues because he eats up a lot of space in there. Then on the perimeter, their DB [Zyon] Gilbert is probably one of the better DBs we’ve played against from a coverage standpoint. He can run, he’s long, he plays with confidence, you can tell he’s a veteran because he’s got some savvy, he can track the ball in the air well and does a really good job attacking the ball. From a pass consistency standpoint, I thought our receivers and quarterbacks did a really good job of being consistent. We didn’t have the 500 or 600-yard, seven touchdown game that people blink their eyes at, but I think Grant [Wells] played one of his most consistent games all year. There were no ‚Äòwhat the hell’ moments in there. He threw the ball consistent, we caught it consistent, our receivers took a step in blocking on the perimeter. Any time you have big runs, or runs after catch, there’s guys that are blocking and that’s a selfless task because ‚ÄòI didn’t get the ball and I’m not an O-lineman, so for me to turn around and block the guy so I can create some advantages for the guy with the ball ‘means that these guys are really buying into the importance of team and playing for each other.