Marshall Thundering Herd College Football Pregame Quote, 08/27/2019

We’re looking forward to this season. Any time you open up, regardless of who it is, there are a lot of unknowns. For us, we have guys who haven’t had the opportunity to play yet and react in a game situation. Of course, there are unknowns with the opponent because, with it being the first game, you don’t know exactly what you’re going to get. You expect everything and make some adjustments early on based on how they decide to play us. For them, they’ll have unknowns because we have a new (defensive) coordinator with Brad (Lambert). First games are always fun. I’m glad it’s at home because, a year ago, we were on the road at this time.

On the captains for this game:

On offense, it will be Brenden Knox and Levi Brown. On defense, it will be Nazeeh Johnson and Marquis Couch.

On VMI:

They’re going to load the box and force us to throw it at times. We have to able to do that. Offensively, if you’re one-dimensional, you’re going to have problems. With Isaiah (Green) having year under his belt, and our having our offensive line back intact, we’ll have to take what that defense gives us. VMI is going to play extremely hard, it always does. Offensively, they play extremely fast and like to throw the ball, which is something that sets them apart from other military programs. We’ll have a challenge with a lot of people lined up in the secondary for us. They’ll play fast and throw it all over the place and I’m eager to see how our guys respond.

On Marshall:

Omari Cobb brings athleticism and experience to us so we can line up in some of our base looks in much the same way that we do our nickel. When you have a lot of ORs on the depth chart, that’s a good thing because that means you have several guys who can play that position. In our case, we have some of those ORs on offense and defense because we think we have good players who can help us win.

On Marshall’s young players:

There will probably be four or five true freshmen who actually play. J’Coryan Anderson is a linebacker who has been with us since the spring that we like a lot. Eli (Neal) is another guy we like who we think has the ‚Äúit‚Äù factor. Micah Abraham is a guy at safety whose dad was in the NFL for a long time. There will be young players out there for us and I’m eager to see how they go play.

On Josh Ball/Marshall’s offensive line:

We’re glad he’s here. He has gone to work and fit right in with the rest of (the offensive line). So not only has he gone about it the right way, but he’s a good player so that helps. I like this offensive line. These guys have been together and Levi (Brown) is the only senior so they’ll all be back next year. There is a lot of experience in there and this should be the strength of our team.

On VMI quarterback Reece Udinski:

You’d like to get to him but he does a great job of getting the ball out of his hands. We have to do a great job of taking away the easy-access throws to, hopefully, force him to hang onto the ball a little longer so we can get to him. He understands their offense and they put up a lot of yards a year ago. It’ll be a challenge for our secondary.

On Marshall’s preparation for the game:

I tell our guys all the time that someone will get beat Saturday who shouldn’t. We just have to make sure that it isn’t us. Anyone can beat you on any given day and, if you aren’t prepared and ready to play, it’ll happen to you.

On the battle for the placekicking position:

It has been a great competition up to this point. I think that’s good because when you do have that competition, it’s healthy no matter what position you have. We’ll see how it shakes out this week and then make a decision prior to Saturday.

On the maturation of Isaiah Green:

He’s a totally different guy right now. I think you could see last year, from game one to the bowl game how much he matured. Then you saw that carry over into camp. He’s had an excellent camp and he’s playing really confident right now.

On Brenden Knox/Tyler King:

I thought it was good a year ago having both Keion (Davis) and Tyler go early on. I like both Brenden and Tyler a lot and they’re both going to play. I’m eager to get them both out there.