Miami Hurricanes College Football Pregame Quote, 09/30/2019

We’re excited to be in game week. This is our 10th week of football practice. We’ve only played four games. We’ve had a very unusual schedule, with the two byes and there’s been a feeling of waiting to get this thing going and get into a routine. The routine is finally here. We’re excited. Obviously we know the next six weeks, we play six games in our league. Four of those games in our stadium ‚Äì the next three at home, starting with Virginia Tech this Saturday at 3:30. We’re expecting a great atmosphere. It should be a great game. Like I said, we’re just excited to go and play. We probably had our best practice of the year yesterday. The guys came back – we had a couple days off – and guys came back with high energy. You can just feel their sense of urgency, that it’s time. We understand that the meat of the league schedule is finally upon us. With that, I’ll open it up for questions.‚Äù

On the health of the team, and WR Mark Pope:

Mark practiced yesterday. He caught a deep post [route], which I thought was great for his confidence. Right now, we are probably as healthy as we’ve been. Nesta Silvera has been out there. It has been good to have those guys back.‚Äù

On QB Jarren Williams, and toeing the line between protecting the football and aggressive passing:

Well he has also had a throw in every game that has probably been a dropped interception, too. There’s that element also. But yes, he has not thrown an interception yet, which has been fantastic. The big part of why he was named the number one guy‚Ķin this offense, it’s just all about the decision-making. Remember, we talked about one of the three elements that would allow us to choose the starting quarterback. If you’re asking in terms of taking shots and his instinct for pushing the ball down the field, part of that is coming.

Here’s the flip side of that ‚Äì is now, am I trying to see the guy open, and the extra pat of the football results in sack? To me, part of that is trusting the read ‚Äì whether it’s a top-down read where potentially this is a shot play, instead of waiting for the shot to come open. That anticipation ‚Äì the safety grabs the inside route, get it to the outside guy‚Ķthose are the things that, I think, just come with experience. Obviously Jarren is very accurate, as we’ve seen with his completion percentage. I think in terms of the grand scheme of the offense, no matter what pass concept we have, it’s just a matter of getting that rhythm and getting that count in his head to be as quick as possible.

On the team responding well to any lackluster practices in mid-September:

Number one, this is not a Miami-specific problem. I think every coach in the country is always guarding against their guys competing. All you can do is watch college football this Saturday. It is hard to be the same team every week. That’s why you see, all of a sudden, a game that was not supposed to be competitive turns into very competitive. You say, ‘This team played like this with that team, which means that, when these two teams play, this of course should happen.’ We know that that never happens.

That’s exactly why, college football is, honestly, quite fun to follow. It’s a little nerve-wracking for the coaches that coach it. I think it’s about always getting your guys to compete at their highest level every week. When you say, ‘all your guys,’ you’re trying to get as many guys to their top form as possible on any given Saturday. That’s really been the challenge. I don’t think you ever sit there with your arms folded and say, ‘I think we’ve got it figured out. I think we understand how to compete.’ It is something that is a constant grind, because human nature is to just relax and think something is easy. We know, every time we think something’s easy, usually something bad happens.