Rice Owls College Football Pregame Quote, 11/02/2021

Touching on last week, we had a great week of practice. We really prepared the right way. I was really proud of how the guys attacked it. I thought they were locked into the game plan. I was disappointed to see it not fully translate on Saturday. There were parts of it that were good. There were individual players that were really good. But, I certainly thought that we had opportunities in every phase. We could’ve played better and probably would have been able to win the game had we played better. That’s always going to be the thing. When you go into an overtime game, you watch the film back and you think, ‚ÄòGosh, if we had just made this one play in an overtime game, you come away with a win and it doesn’t even get to overtime.’ That’s the frustrating thing. It’s much like living in the world in the National Football League where everything comes down to a two-minute drive or an overtime and you have to find a way to win. I think there’s a lot of things to be proud of in that game. Our guys, being able to respond offensively. Take the ball down in that two-minute drive and execute the way that we did to send it into overtime was awesome. But then our inability to do the things we needed to do in overtime was disappointing. We’ve got to find a way to close those things out. We’ve got to realize that overtime is a great situation to be in. We should be thrilled to death to be there and we’ve got to find a way to finish. Those are the things that we’re going to continue to work through.

Obviously, Wiley [Green’s]injury on our first offensive drive of the game was tough. It was tough for everybody. It was tough for me. It was tough to see Wiley hurting. He’s one of our rocks and I don’t think there was anybody on our team who wasn’t rocked by his injury. It took us a little bit of time to get past that. We eventually did. We worked through it as a team and we started playing football again. An update on Wiley; he will be out this week. I did talk to him. He is in great spirits. His message to the team was to go do what we said we were going to do, which is go earn an opportunity to play in a bowl game. That’s what we’re going to try to do for him.

Moving forward with Jake Constantine as our starter, I thought that, again, once he got settled in, he played some good really good football. He had a great me-to-you factor with Jake Bailey and I thought Jake made some tremendous plays for us. Staying alive and then making plays when the ball was in the air to keep some drives alive and to help us end up in the box. So that was great.

We are on a different schedule this week. We did have to come in Sunday and get right back to it. We got a practice in and then yesterday we got our Tuesday practice in on Monday. So, we’re a little ahead of where we normally are. But, it’s great for the guys now. We’ll get our bodies rested today and get back with a very normal Wednesday practice and a very normal rest of the week.

We play a very good Charlotte team (who is) well-coached by Will Healy and his coaching staff. I like Will. I think he is a heck of a motivator. You see him on the sideline and he’s always getting his team going. They’re always doing a heck of a job. I know it’s going to be a tremendous challenge going up there to play these guys. Defensively, they make everything tough. They two players who are always around the ball. Offensively, they’re a little bit like us right now. I’m sure they don’t know right now who is going to start at quarterback for them. They’re a different team without Chris Reynolds. Obviously, he’s a heck of a football player in this conference and beyond. Beyond him,

they’ve got a great running game that’s going to really challenge your eyes and your keys. You’ve got to do a great job of being disciplined and getting people on the ground. They’ve got two great receivers who can really go get the ball. We’ve got to do a good job keeping them contained.

On how big WR Jake Bailey has been for the offense:

Jake has shown me the ability to make plays, no matter whether he’s covered or not. We saw him against UAB two weeks ago make tight window catches and find a way to always focus on the ball and make sure we’ve got it for a first down. Then this past game, just his big play ability. His ability to reach over a defender and catch the ball. Later in the game, his ability to stay alive and make the diving catch. Laying out with all of our hopes right there. On fourth down, he goes out, lays out and finds a way to catch that ball and makes sure his arms are underneath it. He’s a heck of a player. He’s still developing but really filling a lot of those roles that we had hoped he’d be able to at the slot and beyond.