South Alabama Jaguars College Football Pregame Quote, 09/13/2021

On preparing for Alcorn State:

Anybody can beat anybody on any given week, if a player or a coach doesn’t understand that then they are not living in the reality of college football. We are very inwardly focused regardless of who we play, I think that behooves us when we do play an [NCAA] FCS opponent because it is just about us. [Assistant head coach] Matt Shadeed brought it up t the guys during the workout today, our opponent is nameless and faceless; you are competing against you and you. Certainly, we have to be indicators of opponent recognition ‚Äî I’m not trying to discredit any opponent we play ‚Äî but the focus has to be on us, especially in year of a program in the early part of a season.

On the difference running the ball late in the fourth quarter at Bowling Green:

I was impressed with Bowling Green’s front, I’ve thought the last two weeks that both Southern Miss and Bowling Green had some pretty skilled players up there with some real size. They had come out in some different looks against Tennessee that they were in a year ago, we weren’t exactly sure what we were going to get out of them because some of the things Tennessee does offensively is like playing a triple-option team. It took us a little bit to adjust, we did have a couple of nice, efficient runs in the first half. But running the football is very similar to a boxing match, it’s body blows. You’re not always going to get that uppercut in the first round, sometimes you need three or four rounds to be able to do it. Obviously, we were able to put them away in the fourth quarter.

On Terrion Avery:

I was just so pleased with our backs being more decisive this week, both guys were able to stick their foot in the ground. What was awesome about Terrion is just goes to work every single day, he just does his job over and over and over again, and when it mattered most being able to trust that he was doing his job effectively and he started to hit some things. That third-and-four run when we were backed up early on in that drive, he made contact with the first defender two yards in front of the first down marker and it was just sheer will that got him the first down in that situation; we likely would’ve had to go for it on fourth-and-two in a backed-up situation. It’s awesome to see guys who work their tail off and do things the right way show up on game day.

On what he wants to see on Saturday:

Things that are executed well in practice need to show up on Saturday. We actually had a great week of practice, but there were some things like the play-action pass on third-and-one that they got us on, we had worked through that exact scenario twice and two of our best players who had nailed it in practice did not execute it on game day. Trust your technique and what we’ve asked you to do schematically, and the things that we work on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday need to show up at a very high level on Saturday.

On the big plays given up in the passing game last week:

I thought that we were very inconsistent in where we put our eyes. We’re a vision defense, we can fix a lot of things because we are a vision-oriented defense and we can see where they are trying to go with the ball, but I though Scott Loeffler had a great plan with some crossing routes and working a post route and having a tight end come on an underneath route; they’re trick plays, they’re creative, but if our eyes are in the right place we’re executing at a high level. This defense is really built to limit the opponent’s big plays and yet at the same time create enough negatives. We’re creating negatives and we’re stopping the run, but it’s very uncharacteristic of our defense ‚Äî particularly in the backfield ‚Äî and the discipline our guys have played with to this point. We have to get that corrected in a hurry.