Middle Tennessee Blue Raiders College Football Pregame Quote, 11/11/2019

Before we get into Rice, I’d like to recognize all the veterans. It’s Veterans Day today, and I’d like to recognize all of them. To all the men and women who have or are currently serving our country, I just want you to know how much I and we as a football program appreciate your sacrifices and everything you’ve done to allow us to live in this great country. I salute you today and have a lot of respect for what you do and what you’ve done for this country. We’ve got Rice coming in here. Both of us are coming off of open dates. Obviously, they haven’t won a game yet. I told our team this week that by no stretch of the imagination should we or can we overlook or underestimate this team. When you look at their games, most of them are one-score or two-score games. They’ve played everybody very competitively. Defensively, I think they’re as talented as anybody we’ve played. They’ve struggled offensively, but their defense is keeping them in the game. [Head Coach] Mike [Bloomgren] has done a great job of getting them to keep playing hard in those games. This team coming in here may not have won a game yet, but this is a team that has our full attention, and we’ve got to get better. We haven’t done anything to overlook anybody anyways. We’ve got to make sure we have a good week of practice and preparation both mentally and physically to get ready for this team coming in here.

On the bye week last week:

I’ve said it all along that I can’t fault this team’s effort. We’re playing hard, we’re just not playing very good at times. We’re playing hard, practice has been great, we’re mentally intense at practice, our focus is good at practice, and we’ve got to make sure that carries over into the game. Sometimes it has, and sometimes it hasn’t at times. That’s the frustrating part. This team is giving it everything they have. We’ve got a lot of people hurt, but they’re not making any excuses, and they’re coming to practice every day. I thought the two days of practices we had last week and the one we had yesterday were three really good practices in preparation of this game.

On the Salute to Veterans & Armed Forces theme to Saturday’s game:

I think the big thing is, it’s just a very small way to honor those men and women and what they’ve done. If you think about it, what they’ve sacrificed, what they’ve done, and we’re going to recognize them for a few minutes at a football game really doesn’t do them justice for what they’ve done for this country. I’m proud of what MTSU does in recognizing our veterans, men and women, and to me it’s just a very small token to show our appreciation for what they’ve done. I’m glad Middle Tennessee puts this much effort into recognizing our veterans and what they do. They deserve a lot more than five minutes of recognition at a football game. To me, it’s five minutes that we can show them how much we appreciate them.

On the message to the quarterbacks heading into Saturday vs. Rice:

We’ve got to get better. It’s been more than a couple of weeks. You go back to FAU, we throw three interceptions. We threw for some yards, but we didn’t protect the ball very good. The next week was North Texas, and both quarterbacks threw for about 125-130. [Against] FIU, we threw for 30, and Charlotte we threw for 115-120, whatever it is. We’ve struggled throwing the ball these last four games, and in this day and time, if you can’t throw the ball, you’re going to have a tough time moving the ball. We’ve struggled moving the ball. We got a little bit better running the ball, but we’re still not where we need to be consistently. We’ve got to get better. It’s an area of concern to me that we’re not as efficient throwing the ball in the passing game as we need to be to have a chance to win. Sitting at home Saturday, you watch a bunch of games on TV, and ‚Äî you guys know that have been here a long time ‚Äî you’ve got to be able to throw the ball to win games, especially in this league.

On the amount of injuries and the effect it has:

We’re up to 24 [scholarship players injured]. It’s been one of those years. When you think about it, you started in August, and you’ve got 24 scholarship players that started in August that if you played today we would play. That’s almost a third of your team. It affects so many different areas, not only on game days, but it affects how you practice. We don’t have enough bodies to make practice scout teams. We’re doing it, but not at the level we need to be. I’m not overly optimistic that we’ll get anybody back that we didn’t have. Going into the Charlotte game, we lost a couple of guys at Charlotte that won’t play this week. It’s been a grind. It’s one of those years. I’ve always said it: Nobody practices safer, and nobody practices smarter than what we do. It’s just been a lot of unfortunate things that have happened throughout the course of the year.

On the play of Rice linebacker Blaze Alldredge:

The big thing, and this is a compliment to their whole defense, is how hard they play. They’re strong and physical, but they’ve played really hard. He’s a relentless player. He gets around the ball. He’s physical in the box, and he’s a good tackler in space. He’s a really good football player.

On playing Rice for the first time despite being in Conference USA for six seasons:

We played North Texas, UTEP, UTSA twice, Southern Miss twice or three times. It’s been different with the way the schedule has fallen. I think there are some other teams like LA Tech ‚Äî I don’t think they’ve played Charlotte or some teams from the east. When you add teams, like we added UAB and some other teams coming in, the schedule may get out of whack a little bit. When you have 14 teams in the league, it takes some time to get around to playing everybody.