Opening statement…
“Our captains for this game – again, the coaches vote on a weekly basis to determine who best deserves to represent as captains for the game. On offense, we chose Travis Homer and Hayden Mahoney. On defense, we chose Jaquan Johnson. Special teams is Jeff Thomas. Those are our captains for our ballgame. I’m proud of them.
“Coach [Bronco] Mendenhall is a good friend of mine. He’s an outstanding coach and an outstanding person. He’s doing a good job of leading that team. We have got a great challenge ahead of us. We’re going into their house. It’s going to be at night. Their fans will be riled up, I’m sure. They’ll be well-rested, because they had an open date. We had an emotional ballgame and had to turn around pretty quick to get ready for this. Hopefully that won’t come into play by the end of it.
“A lot of things for us to be challenged by. We’re looking forward to it. We’re in the grind of it. We’re right in the middle of ACC play – no more out of conference games. Everything is conference. We only have two more home games. I think we have four out of the next five, or something like that, are away [games]. We’re looking forward to the challenge of playing them at home. We’ll see how it goes.
On how close he thinks Miami is to having a championship-level offensive line…
“We’re getting better. I think we’re getting closer. We are a lot farther along than we were a year ago, and especially two years ago, in my mind. We’ve been making progress, for sure. I have to do a better job of realizing there are certain guys that probably no one in America can block and do a better job of getting a guy some help, on a guy like [Florida State defensive end Brian] Burns. Once we did that, we didn’t have as much trouble.
“There were a couple of blitzes that, gosh, we practiced them over and over, and they did exactly what they did on the film. The first time it looked like everybody sacked [N’Kosi] at the same time – that was just a total breakdown there. Other than that, our assignments were good. Our effort is good. I think we’re blocking pretty [well] at the point [of attack] in the run game, most of the time. Our perimeter blocking is improving. If you’re going to get 200 yards per game rushing, you have to break some big runs. If you’re going to get five yards per carry, on average, you have to break a few runs. You don’t always get five yards per carry. You get two [yards], and three, and eight, and four, and then you get 40 and all of a sudden you’ve got that average and it looks really good. We haven’t had as many big runs, but we’ve had a few. A lot of that has to do with how we’re blocking on the perimeter. We’re still a work in progress there.”
On the play of freshman OL DJ Scaife, Jr…
“Scaife is a real talented kid. For him to come in, and do what he’s doing right now – playing and functioning pretty well – it’s impressive for a true freshman lineman to do that. He has a great skillset as a pass protector. That’s where it starts at tackle. He’s not bad when it comes to physical play. He made a few plays where he looked like a freshmen, but there’s a lot of that going on. We’re playing a bunch of young guys. On the touchdown pass to take the lead, freshman quarterback and a freshman tight end. They’ve been playing a lot of ball so they look a little more like veterans, but they’re still rookies.”
On how important the emergence of Jeff Thomas has been to the Miami offense…
“His skillset – obviously his speed but extreme quickness. He’s a very smart kid. Very good route-runner. Even that touchdown he caught, some guys would just run a track to a certain spot, but he set the guy up, gave him a little inside move, got him to stutter just a bit and created some space for himself. N’Kosi [Perry] obviously had to throw a good ball, but he gave us a little bit of grass to throw to and some separation which made it easy. You’ve seen him leap and make these catches. The catch at LSU that he caught on the sideline was spectacular. He had two, actually, spectacular catches against LSU where he had to elevate above 6-foot-1 corners.
“The ball that he caught down the middle just prior to Brevin’s touchdown [vs. Florida State] was so impressive. It was an impressive throw, too. Just a great throw. I don’t even know if N’Kosi saw Jeff as he was running his route, because there was a guy trailing him probably three inches taller, but he trusted where he was going, he ran the proper angle and N’Kosi trusted he was going to be in the right spot and made a great throw. I saw a still shot of that catch and I think the ball actually was going through his hands. He caught the back end of the football. You ought to try to find a picture of it. How in the world could he have caught the back end of the football? I’m assuming he caught it in the middle and it started to go through his hands and he snatched it at the end. But if he caught the back end of the ball, that’s hard to do. He has been a very willing block, too. Punt return, kick return…I wish we had about three of him, to be honest with you.”
On how encouraging it is to see offensive line taking accountability with work after practice…
“The big thing today that wasn’t good was just flinching. Self-inflicted wounds, of not being able to hang in there on the cadence. We have to vary our cadence. If we don’t vary our cadence, then the defense gets off on the line of scrimmage as quick or quicker than us, so we’re always working on changing that cadence and once in a while, a guy will flinch. When that happens, he takes a lap around the field and comes back and loses his chance to get better for a couple of plays. That was a little bit of an issue. Coach [Stacy] Searels holds them accountable, Tyler Gauthier is a great leader. [Hayden] Mahoney got voted a captain this week. He’s a very good leader for these guys. And then a guy like DeeJay Dallas – that’s who he his. He loves this team and he wants to do whatever he can to help everybody be great. He’s the most positive motivator we have on the team.”
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Chris Graham
