Utah Utes College Football Pregame Quote, 11/17/2020

On his thoughts on the passing of longtime Voice of the Utes Bill Marcroft:

First thing I would like to say is that I want to acknowledge the passing of a Utah sports legend, Bill Marcroft, this past weekend. He was a good friend of mine. When I first got the job here way back when, he was a big help to me – a mentor if you will. I spent a lot of time with him during those early years in my head coaching career and I had the chance to get to know Bill very well in those 15 or 16 years. He will be missed. He was just an icon for Utah Athletics. I had the opportunity to go out to dinner with him and his wife Joyce a couple of times and the respect, admiration and love that he had for her was really inspirational. He was a great guy. Rest in peace Bill.

On how the week has gone:

We have had an encouraging week so far. We had an excellent practice yesterday. You might expect the players’ spirits to be a little down because of the disappointment the last couple of weeks, but that is not the case. They are eager and ready to go. Like I said, we had a very productive practice yesterday and we will get back out on the field today. Things are trending in the right direction for us as far as getting back to health and getting guys back out on the practice field. Right now, all of our efforts are geared toward getting ready for USC and we will hopefully be kicking off on Saturday night at 8:30 p.m. on ESPN, national television. We are excited about that opportunity.

On his thoughts about the possibility of getting a game on short notice, similar to the UCLA-Cal situation this past weekend:

It is not ideal to prepare in that short of time to prepare for an opponent. I think it was like 48 hours that Cal and UCLA had, but if both teams are on the same footing and it is a level playing field where neither team had an extended amount of time to prepare compared to the other, then you have to go. We have to get games in. It is not really a factor for player health or safety, it is more a strategic factor with coaches not having enough time to prepare, plan or be able to put in things specific to that team. So, as long as it is not a health or safety factor for our players, we are good to go.

On if he has seen some growth in his young secondary in practice these last two weeks:

We have definitely seen growth, but we have also seen guys miss a bunch of practice because of the circumstances. It has been a little bit of a double-edged sword where guys are getting better, but then guys that need reps are unavailable for practice. We feel that we have made progress, but we still don’t know what we have. We haven’t lined up against anybody yet. As far as their techniques, their skill and them grasping the schemes, we are getting better on a daily basis.

On what he hopes to get out of this really unique season:

Well we hope to play, first of all. I think we are the only Power Five team that hasn’t played yet, so first and foremost we just want to get on the field. We want to see what we’ve got with these new players and obviously be competitive. We have some good things going for us on offense with very few new players and it being a veteran group. We expect to be productive on offense. The key is also how quickly this defense can come around. We are always looking to win the South and get to the championship game, and win that. So, that is our objective and we will see what happens. We have to start playing at some point and hopefully this is the week that we do that.