Marshall Thundering Herd College Football Pregame Quote, 09/28/2021

Obviously had an opportunity to have a little bit of time off, having a game on Thursday night. [It was a] phenomenal atmosphere, hats off to App State, their program and their coach down there, who did a phenomenal job. I’m proud of the way our guys performed, obviously we didn’t get the result that we all expected. I want to win as much as anybody else. Our players did a really good job with their effort but we’ve got to continue to find out how to close out games. There’s a lot of positive that we can take from that game, a lot of positive we can take from that experience, but also a lot of things that we need to get cleaned up. We’ve addressed it, had an opportunity to go back and watch the film, had an opportunity to go back and point out some of the areas that probably cost us an opportunity to be successful. The players took accountability, we all looked at what we could have done better, and we all looked at what we need to do moving forward in order to be successful. We are focusing on the things that we need to do consistently to get the results we want. We’re not focused on hey, we want to win this game or that game, or we want to win this amount of games, we’re focused on what we need to do to get the results we want and the process that it takes to be successful.

On Middle Tennessee:

[I’m]excited about this week’s opportunity against a really good conference opponent that has done a really good job in this conference. Coach [Rick] Stockstill has been at Middle Tennessee for a long time and has done a really good job. They present a lot of challenges for our guys, for our schemes, for our personnel. We started off the week yesterday with a phenomenal Monday practice and we’ve got to build on that today and throughout the rest of the week.

On Middle Tennessee QB Chase Cunningham:

I know they had a quarterback change, or situation happen there and this young man came in. He’s done a really good job ‚Äì he’s scrappy, he’s creative, he’s tough. With their system he distributes the ball well, gets the ball out quick, is athletic enough to create [when a play breaks down]. His receivers and tight ends do a good job when things break down of still staying alive, which creates some scramble opportunities. I think he’s done a phenomenal job managing the game and he plays with passion and energy. You can see he gets excited and he’s not a guy that kind of just crumbles as the game goes on, he gets better and better and better. It’s going to create a lot of challenges for us. He doesn’t hold on to the ball very long, so one of our strengths obviously is our d-line and our pass rush, but when the ball comes out that quick, you don’t get a lot of time to get home. We’ve got to do a really good job in our coverage, really competing with guys on the edge and the perimeter, Then we’ve got to do a great job with our d-line of getting our hands up, getting to the quarterback when we can and being able to get him on the ground, because he can athletically make some plays with his legs as well as his arm.