Navy Midshipmen College Football Media Day Quote, 08/04/2021

On being ahead of the curve from last season:

It’s not even close to last year at this time, nobody knew anything. The smartest people in the world, we didn’t know anything. I erred on the side of caution to keep our program safe, we didn’t do things we normally do. We missed spring ball. This year it’s been completely different from January on normal things, normal spring practice. It was a great offseason. I told somebody this and I don’t know if it’s good or bad, we were at one of our workouts and it was pretty grueling and a couple of guys were throwing up on the sideline. I looked at one of our guys and said I don’t know if I’ve ever been so happy to see that because we’re back. We’re back to doing hard things, football is a hard game and you have to do hard things and last year we couldn’t do anything. We shadow boxed all spring practice and we hit bags. We played that way. Really excited about where we’re at, we’re going to be a completely different team.

On Navy being picked eighth in the preseason media poll:

We’re picked low pretty much every year. Pretty much every year in the magazines we get picked in the 100s. In 2019 I think we were 116th and we finished 17th in the country. I don’t worry too much about where people say we’re at. You look over the years at where we stand in the total amount of wins in the conference, we’re like third or fourth and only a few games out of being number one since we’ve been in this league. I am just worried about our preparation and I like where we’re at.

On the status of the team’s quarterback situation:

Xavier (Arline) came into spring practice number one and it’s not that he had a bad spring, but Tai Lavatai closed a lot of the gap and had a great spring practice. Tai reminds me a lot of Will Worth, bigger quarterback about 215, he can throw it and run. Xavier is more along the lines of Malcolm Perry, a slashy runner, but Maasai Maynor also had a great spring. I feel like we have three quarterbacks that we feel good about and last year, our guys that played behind Malcolm didn’t get any spring practice. They went straight into the BYU game without any spring practice. This year it’s been different, all three quarterbacks have gone against our defense. Coach (Brian) Newberry is a great defensive coordinator and we have a lot of returners on our defense. The opportunity to go against our defense, things that we do on our defense, pretty much everything that we see all season Coach Newberry shows us on defense. Multiple different fronts and coverages can be confusing on our quarterbacks and I thought it was great for our quarterbacks to learn under fire. I feel great about our quarterback situation, much better than we did last year, and it’s nothing against our quarterbacks last year but they didn’t have the opportunity to progress. They all had great summers and whoever separates themselves in camp will be the starter.

S Kevin Brennan

On if preseason rankings motivate the players:

It definitely motivates us a little bit but honestly, we don’t pay much attention to that. If you look at past years, I think every single year that we have been picked toward the bottom. It really doesn’t matter, we’re ready to play with whomever.

On the keys to a Navy bounce back season in 2021:

It started once the season ended last year. We got started laying the foundation for what our culture is going to be this year. Things are back to normal now for the most part. We’ll be burning the boats every day, that’s our team motto, there’s no excuses for anything. We just go to work every day and let the results speak for themselves.‚Äù