Penn State Nittany Lions College Football Pregame Quote, 01/07/2025

On Omari Evans:

Omari has always been a guy, really, since he came in that’s been extremely talented. The ceiling has always been super high for him, and it’s been fun to really see him this year, be able to put his talent on display, put his speed on display. He’s always stuck to the process. He’s always looked to get better. So like I said, it’s been fun to kind of see his development. See him push other guys in our room as well. And he’s a great teammate, a good guy to have in our room.

Question: When did you realize just how fast he really was? 

Right away, right when he got to school, yeah, just getting into winter workouts and summer workouts. Right when he got on campus, you can tell he was a guy with legit 4.3 low, high 4.2 speed. He’s a burner, and that’s what he does best, and it’s fun to watch him do it.

On losing the Big Ten Championship:

Yeah, I think obviously getting the opportunity to play in the Big Ten championship, wanting to win it, and then coming up short, motivated us a ton heading into the playoff, knowing that we had more opportunities it wasn’t going to be over when we lost that game, so just using that as motivation when we hit the playoffs, kind of propelled us so far. But again, just taking it week by week, obviously, that’s in the past now. Our preparation doesn’t change, no matter what, each week, just having that 1-0 mentality, which is what we’ve done this week, is what we did last week, and that’s what we’ll continue to do.

On Notre Dame defense:

They play a lot of man coverage, which is always awesome challenge as a receiver. They play extremely hard as a defense, harder than when you when you turn on the film. You notice it right away, how hard Notre Dame plays. And they’ve done a really good job throughout the whole year of being able to create turnovers and being able to capitalize on those turnovers. So just doing what we do well is take care of the ball. So needing to do that is going to be big in this game. But like I said, just excited for the challenge. They have a great defensive back room. Their defense overall is solid, so excited for the challenge.