Marshall Thundering Herd College Football Pregame Quote, 09/17/2019

Our thoughts and prayers are with the family and friends of Alex Miller in Roane County. What a tragedy that was. As a coach who played in the state of West Virginia and coached here forever … again our thoughts and prayers are with them from myself, our family and the entire Herd family to everyone in Roane County.

On the open date:

Anytime you go into an open date, I think it’s important that you work on yourself, as far as getting better as a football team. That’s what we’re doing in a couple of ways. Number one, we’re going to work on getting a couple of guys healthy who are banged up a little bit to get them back. We have to get better as a football team in all three phases, which we’re planning on doing as far as self-scout. The players have (yesterday and today) off, which they need, to get away from us for a couple of days to refresh themselves when we get back to work tomorrow. This week, we’ll get into Cincinnati a little bit and then go full speed ahead on Monday.

On those who are banged up:

Those guys get an opportunity to double up treatments (because of the bye week). Most of those situations are just a “couple of days” deals so we have the chance to get a lot of those guys back.

On self-scouting:

In a self-scout, you’re breaking down your own tendencies. What are we doing on third downs? What are we doing to our opponents? In special teams, where are we giving away things with our alignments and that type of thing. We go over all three of our games and find out what tendencies we have and what we need to change up as well as what other people are doing.

On Marshall’s offensive line/Ohio:

You go back and watch our offensive line ‚Ķ to have more than 300 yards rushing and no sacks says a lot about that effort. That last (near)-six minute drive was one of the most impressive drives I’ve ever been around against a good football team. That quarterback (Ohio’s Nathan Rourke), thank goodness he’s gone. He can make every throw. He can beat you with his feet. I hope his little brother is not as good as he is.

On byes:

The good thing is that we have two of them, which I think in college football, to be honest, everyone ought to have two byes for injury purposes and that type of thing. It gives kids a chance to catch their breath a little bit and get healthy. I think it came at a good time for us because we have a couple of guys who are banged up and we have some critical games coming up as well so I think it fit in pretty well.

More on byes:

With camp, you’re still out there for about four weeks (before the season), so now they’ve (Marshall’s student-athletes) been going for about seven or eight weeks straight. It’s good to give these kids a week this week and then another one in five weeks will be good for them as well. It helps the kids because they start getting beat down a little bit and the number of reps makes them a little prone to injury. Having two byes gives them the opportunity to refresh a little bit and I think that helps.

On Marshall’s crowd:

I thought our crowd here on Saturday night made a difference. There’s no question. I’m looking forward to that crowd that we’re going to have against Cincinnati.

On Cincinnati:

It seems like every week we play, we face a quarterback that’s going to be a problem and he (Desmond Ritter) is. He was a freshman a year ago and they won a bunch of games with him. The thing that you’re seeing in college football now, almost every week, is a guy at that position who can beat you with his feet. You hear me say it every week, but it’s true. It will be a challenge for our defense. They have a tailback (Michael Warren II) who is 220-plus pounds. The reason that they were so successful last season is that they have good players. They have them again and it will be a great challenge for us. We’ll talk about them more next week, but it will be a challenge that we’ll all look forward to.

On whether or not Marshall’s offensive players and coaches had a chip on their shoulders following the loss at Boise State:

They should’ve, to be honest, with the way we operated in that second half. I thought they came out (against Ohio) and started fast and did what we had to in the second half to put that game away. It was good to see. I told our kids that we just can’t leave points on the field against these really good teams that we have coming up.

On Marshall’s recruiting strategy during the bye week:

(Safeties coach/Recruiting Coordinator) Mike Treier was out yesterday and today. All of our coaches will be out Friday night at local high school games in the area.

On Marshall’s fourth-quarter approach against Ohio:

I saw a team that reacted the way you’re supposed to react. We had some adversity. We talk all the time about adversity occurring in every game and you just have to be able to overcome that. I saw a bunch of guys who had the right look in their eye and, at the end of the day, got it done. We made two drives when we had to, to win the game and that was what was needed to get it done.

On Marshall’s non-conference schedule:

When you play the schedule we’ve played, and we’ve talked about that in here ‚Ķ we don’t have a Power 5 (opponent, on the schedule) but these three (Boise State, Ohio, Cincinnati) are better than about half of the Power 5s that are out there. You just call it like it is ‚Ķ they are. Ohio’s an excellent football team that took Pitt right to the wire with a quarterback who couldn’t run because he was sick. You look at Boise. Boise is a top-20 team right now and they’re an excellent football team. Cincinnati is no different. They just beat UCLA pretty good. At the end of the day, these three have (and will) help us as we head into conference play.

On Marshall’s identity:

We know what our identity is. We are a tough, physical football team that takes care of the football. Anytime you play a really good team like Ohio or Boise State or Cincinnati, it’s going to come down to one or two things. Number one is turnovers. If you look at that game (Saturday), the difference in that game is they had one turnover and we didn’t have any.

On Isaiah Green:

That play where he was coming to his left to throw that touchdown is an unbelievable play. That play was as good as I’ve seen where he threw it off his back foot. It was tremendous. He’s a talented guy. He just keeps getting better and better. He loves to play and he’s a competitor. It’s going to be a treat having him around here for the next three years because he can play the game.

On Xavier Gaines:

This time last year was the first time he had not played quarterback. You saw him grow up the last four games and he just keeps getting better. He’s feeling more comfortable with what he’s doing. He’s an athletic, talented you guy that just keeps getting better and better. In today’s college football world, with the transfer portal ‚Ķ if things aren’t going well, they just pick up and leave. I talked to him a year ago about moving to tight end and I asked him, ‚ÄúDo you want to make money playing this game or do you want to leave?‚Äù He had the answer. He wanted to play tight end. He’s a really talented guy that has a future where he is right now. He’s just a tremendous athlete. It just shows you that guys who hang in there and work to overcome adversity ‚Ķ good things can happen for them. That’s another perfect example of what sticking around does. Xavier has five or six brothers and all of them played Division I football. He has benefitted from making the right decision. He’ll tell you that he’s bought into what we’re doing. Tim (Cramsey) and the offensive staff have done a great job of taking advantage of his skillset. If you’re a defensive coordinator now playing against us, you have to spend a lot of time now on where he’s going to be. It’s a win-win for us.