UAB Blazers College Football Pregame Quote, 10/04/2021

We are obviously licking our wounds this morning from a tough loss. Just kind of backtrack to the opening of the stadium and I said it after the game, it was everything we hoped for and more. It was a great turnout in spite of some rain and lightning. I just could not be prouder of our fans, the attendance and atmosphere – our players loved it. There’s going to be things for everyone to clean up, but it was everything we hoped for. I don’t spend a lot of time talking about injuries. We’ve got a few guys that are banged up going into that game, we knew we were. You have to give Liberty a lot of credit, it was a close game at the half and we couldn’t get first downs and couldn’t get stops in the second half, pretty simple. The guys never quit and kept fighting just like we thought they would. I don’t think there’s any doubt that Malik Willis is as good or better than advertised. Just like we said, just like we knew and he titled the field. But give them credit, give their coach credit and their coaching staff credit. You know good, bad and ugly this morning we got to put that one to bed and now we’re working on winning the championship.

We’ve got a very good Florida Atlantic team coming in that I think defensively they got nine of their starters back that played us in the conference championship two years ago. They are a very well coached. They had a huge win last week against FIU, I know they feel like probably that was their coming out, so we got to get back to home and you know defend these championships that are so hard to come by. I think our guys know what it takes and we’re going to have some guys step 
up. That happens when you get guys beat up and we knew that was going to be the case with this really tough schedule we had and every game being as tough as it was. You know sometimes you got to have a little luck. I think we will get a couple of guys back this week; we hope. But either way we got to go, and I know our guys will be ready to do that.

On defensive depth:

Depth became a factor in that game. That’s kind of what happened. We lost Damon Miller right before half, which was huge. Jaylen Key comes in to take his place and then they call targeting on him. You know a guy like CD Daniels is key. We get Tyler Taylor back this week that’s been big you know he hadn’t played all year. Every person we can get back helps us and that’s when depth really plays a factor when you start playing game number six or game number seven in a row. That’s where you got to have some luck as far as open dates and things like that. We got to fight through some of these things and have guys step up. Getting a guy like CD back obviously that created depth in the secondary.

On Florida Atlantic:

Defensively, they are the same as far as just really aggressive well-coached defense and then offensively they’ve probably found who they are last week. They went really high tempo; they have speed everywhere. They’re in a hotbed of recruiting. They’ve got speed all over the place and are gigantic up front. We knew when they added those guys to our side of the schedule, they were giving us one of the best teams on the other side of the conference and they looked like it on Saturday.

On having former player recognized at the Liberty game:

One of the things since we’ve been back was that I wanted a way to recognize former players and that’s one of those big deals when I said you didn’t play for me, but you did. It really is family and so we didn’t have a really good place to bring them and then we got this facility built. Every year we invite them back and this was probably our biggest turnout with over 150. We created something called The Dragons Club which is zero cost if you played football, you’re in it. We’ve got to recognize those guys and I’m telling you my phone yesterday was just loaded with texts of appreciation. Some of them stopped me on the field and those guys should be recognized. They helped build this program. When we walked down Blazer Walk, tears coming down my face I feel the same way about former players that we now got a place to recognize them and there’s no doubt that is future is so bright for our program and everybody surrounding that stadium.