Middle Tennessee Blue Raiders College Football Pregame Quote, 11/25/2019

We’re coming off a good week last week, and we’ve got Western Kentucky this Saturday. Western’s a really good football team. They’re top two, top three in our conference defensively in all the different statistical categories. They play a really good, sound defense. They’re not giving up a lot of points, so we’ve got to be very efficient offensively, and we’ve got to do a great job protecting the ball because they make you earn everything you get. They’re really talented on defense, and on offense they keep getting better each week. They kind of settled in on their quarterback now. Through the first few games of the year they were going back and forth. [Ty] Storey is playing really well. He’s protecting the ball. He’s throwing the ball really well. He’s a good runner. He’s not going to run by you or anything like that, but he is an effective runner, so we’ve got to be cognizant of him in the run game. They’re very sound in the kicking game. They’ve got a really good ball club, a really good team. Going on the road up there is always tough, so we’ve got to make sure we have a great week of practice and that we are mentally and physically tough going on the road this week.

On what makes WKU’s defense so good:

One, to me it always starts with players. They’ve got good players on defense. It’s an older group. They’ve got a transfer linebacker in from Georgia, the University of Georgia, that has helped, and they’ve got good players. The guys up front, their defensive line, has good size, and they’re athletic. Then they do a good job on the back end. They mix up the coverages with man and zone, and they do a good job of keeping the ball in front of them on the back end. To me, it starts with players and then what they do schematically defensively, they change up the pressures with zone and man coverages, their pressure packages are very diverse. They do a good job. They’ve got a good football team on that side.

On WKU wide receiver Lucky Jackson and the Hilltopper offense’s improvement:

The big thing is, they’ve gotten better, and to me, it starts with their quarterback. They’ve gotten better there, they’ve been more consistent with his play. He’s throwing the ball to the right guys, he’s protecting the ball. Their skill guy, Lucky Jackson, is really dynamic. He’s a good player. I think it starts with their quarterback. He’s doing a good job throwing the ball as well as being effective enough in the run game. Their running back is fifth or sixth in the conference in rushing yards. They just have a good football club. They’ve got a good ball team.

On what makes the MT-WKU rivalry fun:

I think the passion that everybody has on both sides of the ball for this game. Their coaches and players, our coaches and players. Our fans, their fans. The history of this game goes back a long, long way ‚Äî back to the OVC and 1-AA days. There’s a lot of tradition, a lot of history in this game. Here recently, since we started playing every year from the Sun Belt to Conference USA ‚Äî I know we had that one year from Sun Belt to Conference USA that we didn’t play while they were still in the Sun Belt and we were in Conference USA ‚Äî there were exciting, close, competitive games. I respect their players, their team, their program. I have a lot of respect for their coaches. Coach [Tyson] Helton’s done a good job there. It’s the competitiveness for this game, the passion that people have for this game, makes it fun, makes it enjoyable, makes you want to play, makes you want to coach in this game.

On what the rivalry means for the fans of both programs:

The players in the game, they only know this rivalry probably since the time they’ve been at their respective schools. The fans, they’ve known it for the past 30 years, when it goes back to whenever we first started playing. That adds to it. As a player, I don’t think you look at ‚ÄòI want to beat this team so they don’t do this,’ or ‚ÄòI want to beat this team so they can’t do that.’ I don’t think players look at games like that. I think players look at ‚Äî or should look at it ‚Äî as ‚ÄòWe want to win this game for us. We want to do whatever it takes to win this game for us.’

On the play of the seniors on Saturday’s senior day game:

I think they did [step up]. I’ve always believed if your seniors play their best and have their best game or season, it has a lot to do with the success that your team has. You look at it, I think our guys ‚Äî Jovante [Moffatt] and those guys ‚Äî played really well. Our seniors made some plays. Some of them didn’t play at all because they’ve been hurt. I was just glad those guys can walk off the field the last time they ever stepped on it as a winner. That was important to me and our team.