San Diego State Aztecs College Football Pregame Quote, 09/17/2019

We’re back at home, ready to play a home game. Hopefully we can get a lot of people out to watch because it ought to be a really good game. Utah State’s obviously one of the better teams in our league. They have some outstanding players coming back from last year and they had a great year last year. (Jordan Love) is an NFL guy. How high he’s getting drafted, nobody knows. I’ve heard all the way from the first round to the third round, but they’ve got an NFL quarterback. Their statistics are eye-popping. They’re gaining over 600 yards a game and scoring over 48 points a game. They’re an awful good football team coming in here. We have our work cut out for us.

On Utah State quarterback Jordan Love:

He’s a big, strong guy that can do things with his feet, but he doesn’t usually have to. He’s got great accuracy, but he looks like he throws effortlessly. He just kind of flicks the ball and he completes the ball 50 yards down the field. He’s a very talented young man that played really well last year and has started off playing really well so far this year.

On how concerned he is stopping Utah State’s passing attack:

If you watch them on film and look at the statistics, you’re very concerned. We have to give ourselves a chance to stay in the game. As fast as they score points, you could be out of the game before it even started. Obviously we have to play good enough defense to keep the score at a point that our offense has a chance to outscore them.

On Utah State coming off a bye week:

I think everybody’s different off a bye week. You’re obviously going to be healthier because any nicks and bruises have all been healed. You’re going to be quicker and faster, because you’ll be refreshed. The coaches have an extra week to prepare your game plan, so their game plan will probably be excellent. There’s a lot of different advantages that you get from a bye week. That’s just the way it is so you don’t worry about it. You go about your business, but a bye week should help them.‚Äù

On if there is anything they could learn from watching Utah State lose to Wake Forest in the opener:

Wake Forest moved the ball really well on offense and scored enough points to win. They also won the time of possession battle, so Utah State didn’t have the ball as much as they would have liked. Utah State is a tempo team, which means they are moving fast and trying to get as many plays as quick as they can as well as tire you out and keep you from doing some exotic things of defense. People think they do that for a lot of reasons. Obviously the more plays you get the more yardage you can gain the more points you can score. But in our case, we’re pretty complicated on defense. So the faster they go, the more they limit our defense on what we can do.

On the running back situation and the health of Juwan Washington:

Number one, hopefully Juwan gets well and he can play this week and be near a 100 percent. He’s not right now. He practiced a little bit yesterday but he wasn’t 100 percent, so I don’t know what he’ll be like today. I thought going into the season one of our deepest positions on our team was running back. Thank goodness for that, because we have a couple of running backs hurt and we still have three healthy ones that are pretty good players. Hopefully they’ll continue to perform at that level so that we can run the ball, run the clock and keep their offense off the field.

On what kind of crowd he expects for Saturday’s game:

I have no idea what kind of other things of going on this weekend or what the weather is going to do or anything like that, so obviously you have no control. For the football fans out there, this ought to be a really good game. You’re going to get a chance to see one of the future NFL stars playing here, and a high-powered and everybody-likes-to-watch offense out there. It’s a very entertaining prospect, and I think the game is going to be close and pretty exciting.

On if Jordan Love is similar to former Wyoming and current Buffalo Bill quarterback Josh Allen:

He’s very similar to Josh Allen. I think that he’s a big, strong guy and Josh Allen could run with it if he had to, but normally he didn’t have to because he was completing passes. He’s very similar. He’s a big, strong guy that if he has to run, he can run. He can run you over, he can make you miss and he can put it in the end zone. Most of the time he doesn’t have to run because he’s able to read the coverage and he’s thrown the ball on time before the pressure can get there. And he’s very accurate. Josh Allen to me looked like he wound up and threw it, and had a gigantic arm. (Jordan Love), he kind of flicks the ball. It doesn’t look like it’s any effort whatsoever for him to throw a pass. Most of the time it’s on target and it gets there awfully fast. He can be going to his left and throw a 60-yard pass back to his right. He did it several times in the last two games. He’s obviously an NFL guy, I think a very high draft choice in the NFL. Any time you have an NFL quarterback on your team, guess what? You are pretty darn good on offense.

On if he is surprised on how quick the Mountain West teams won some big games this season:

Not at all. The last few years the Mountain West Conference has played well against all the other leagues. It doesn’t matter if they’re Power 5-leagues or not-Power 5 leagues. Overall the league has been very competitive, not matter who you play. I’m not surprised at all. There’s 12 teams (in our league), there’s six or seven that legitimately have a chance to win the conference championship and two of them are playing here this Saturday.

On who has the advantage between a good offense and a good defense:

I don’t think (there is an advantage either way). They’ve only played two games and we’ve only played three. That’s a very small sample size. At the end of the year if they are still gaining over 600 yards a game, they’ll be the No. 1 offense in the country. They would be the best. We’ll see what it is after 12 games. I’ll promise you this. If after 12 games we are still only giving up eight points a game, we’ll be No. 1 in the country and probably the lowest total in a 100 years or something.‚Äù