Marshall Thundering Herd College Football Pregame Quote, 10/01/2019

Captains for this week will be Omari Cobb and Channing Hames on defense. On offense, we’ll have Brenden Knox and Levi Brown on offense. As I’ve mentioned before, anytime you go on the road, you better take your toughness and leadership. Getting that from those guys, among others, will be required to get that done. I’ve known Rick Stockstill for a long time, even back into the 70s. He’s as good a person as he is a coach. The one thing I know about his team is that they’ll always be well-prepared. He does things the right way. They’ll be physical and ready to play. We have to make sure our team is as well. I thought when his son (Brent Stockstill) left, that there would be a bit of a void at that position. But they have a guy named (Asher) O’Hara who looks like a clone of (Stockstill), unfortunately. He can make a lot of plays. If you look (O’Hara), he’s lined up against Michigan, Iowa and Duke … three really good teams … and he’s thrown for a bunch of yards and is completing over 70 percent of his passes. He has rushed for over 200 yards, which includes 11 sacks. All you need to do it pop in the tape of those three games and you’ll see they had a hard time tackling him. He’ll be a challenge that we have to deal with. They have great skill kids on the perimeter with (Ty) Lee. It seems like he’s been there forever. They have a good football team. Defensively, they have two safeties that make a lot of plays for them. They’re going to get after you about 60-70-80 percent of the time. They’re going to come after you with different blitzes, different looks. We’ll have to do a good job picking things up (up front). It’s the first conference game and we have to find a way to come out of there 1-0. That’s the goal for right now.

On Middle Tennessee’s skill players:

Lee and (Brad) Anderson … it seems like he’s been there forever as well. He’s not a very big kid but he’s extremely physical and he’s tough. He plays with great pad level. You don’t know if he’s going to be lined up at tailback or if he’ll be a wideout. You don’t know where he’s going to be. They do a great job of getting the ball to their skill kids on the perimeter, whether it’s screens, bubble screens, speed sweeps etc. Then you throw the quarterback runs in there as well. Our defense has a big challenge this week trying to get them stopped.

On Asher O’Hara:

If you watch him, he’s doesn’t run out of bounds and he isn’t going to slide. He’s going to jump over people and he takes a lot of shots. He gets hit a lot and bounces right back up, throws the ball to the official and goes right back and does it again. If he had number 12 on, that’s who you’d think it was (Brent Stockstill). Put any of those tapes in and you’ll see the same thing. He can play. You have to get him on the ground and tackle him because he’s going to take off, with the ability to throw the ball as well.

On safeties Jovante Moffatt and Reed Blankenship:

They’re both all-conference type players. They get after you a little bit blitz-wise and, every now and then, you’ll break one on them. But they have great confidence in those two guys. They do a nice job of tackling back there … getting guys on the ground.

On Middle Tennessee’s defense:

They’ve played Duke, Michigan and Iowa, three pretty good football teams. They try to create negative plays, put you in 2nd and long and 3rd and long-type situations.

On the improvement needed from Saturday’s game versus Cincinnati:

We have to go make plays in all three phases. We have to tackle better defensively. Offensively, we have to make the plays that are there. In special teams, we have to find a way to make a big play there, as well.

On the wide receivers working to get separation in their route-running:

We do a lot of 1-on-1-type stuff in practice … good on good and that type of thing. If you get it done on the practice field, you can get it done in the game. I’ve seen that happen and it needs to happen consistently this week.

On Marshall’s wide receiving corps:

They have to accelerate (their learning curve) quickly, because that’s who we have. We have good players, they just have to continue to grow and make plays now. We need it. And they will. I like those kids. They’ve made some plays. They’ll work hard and (wide receivers coach) Dallas (Baker) will do a great job with them. Some of our older receivers aren’t out there right now. Artie (Henry) is out for the year and Obi (Obialo) has struggled with some injuries. Those young guys have to step up like (Brenden) Knox did a year ago. Knox, when his number was called, stepped up and made plays. Two or three of these freshman receivers have to step up and make some plays as well.

On Obi Obialo:

We haven’t talked about that (possibly redshirting this season) at this point. We’ll have to see where he is when he’s able to get back at some point and see where it goes from there.‚Äù

On conference play:

It’s going to be about us. We have to go find a way to be our best us, our best team, on Saturday night. It’s a conference game. Anytime you get into conference play, every game is important. We set goals early on this season and they’re still all out there. At the end of non-conference play, your season sort of starts over. Not only for us, but Middle Tennessee is sitting there saying the same thing. They are 1-3 and lost to three really good football teams. They were 2-2 a year ago and ended up playing for a conference championship. That’s what it’s all about. I’m sure Stock is telling his kids the same thing. We have to find a way to get better as a football team this week.