Middle Tennessee Blue Raiders College Football Pregame Quote, 09/20/2021

We’re playing Friday night, so we’ve got a lot to do in a short period of time. We’re excited about this opportunity ‚Äì Charlotte is a really good football team, they’re 2-1 and won their first two games. They beat Duke and Gardner-Webb there and then lost to Georgia State this past weekend. It’s a really talented football team and they’ve really changed the look of their team, especially defensively. They’ve added seven, eight transfers in there, so their defense is a lot different. Obviously we didn’t play them last year, but it’s different from the look that they had last year. Offensively they’ve got eight starters back, their quarterback is a really special player ‚Äì he throws the ball well, he can run, extends plays, he’s a tough kid, just a really good player. He’s got good guys around him obviously in the backfield and up front, so this is a good football team and we’ve got to be ready to play here on a short week. We’re fired up and excited about the opportunity.

On having a short week:

It’s a little bit different, just in the sense that Monday is our normal day off. There are so many class conflicts on a Monday that we have to go later tonight.That’s a little bit different, Tuesday will be the same, Wednesday becomes Thursday, Thursday becomes Friday, we’ll play Friday and then Saturday will be their day offfor the week.It’s a little different, you’ve got to take into consideration what your team has done the last couple of weeks from a physical standpoint and we’ve played two really physical games, both away games. You have to figure in the travel with that and how you manage your practices and time off for treatment because the big thing is that you want to be prepared to play the game mentally, as well as physically. But, you’ve also got to be able to come in there fresh, you can’t be all lethargic and tired, so we’ve got to do a good job. We’ve got a mature football team, so we’ve got a good plan set up this week for them to be ready to play the game from a preparation standpoint. From a physical standpoint, we’ll do the right things and they’ve got to do the right things on their own as far as getting treatment, rest and stretching and taking care of their body from that standpoint.

On the significance of starting fast:

You always want to start fast. I thought defensively we got off to a really good start and again, I thought the defense played well enough for us to have a chance to win the game. You’d like to see both sides get off to a good start, and the kicking game too ‚Äìbecause our first punt was a 22-yarder that put our defense in bad field position, but they hung in there and stopped it and they didn’t come away with any points. Offensively we’ve just got to be more consistent and getting something going. You always want to start fast because you want to get some confidence, some momentum going and we were never able to do that Saturday to start the game, or any time during the game. It’ll be critical that we play better, which will enable us to start faster.