Opening statement: “As I said Saturday, I’m really proud on how our football team responded down at Wake Forest. I think we went in there and beat a really good football team, a well-coached, good football team. That was a great win for us.
Boston College is a team we’ve played a bunch of times and I have a lot of respect for them. They’ve had some tough injuries and some turnovers, but they’ve had an off week, so they come in here fresh. [They’re] big, strong, tough, well-coached a defense that bends, but doesn’t break. Their quarterback [Chase Rettig] has hit 53 percent of his passes and is getting about 200 yards a game throwing. This is a team that we need to make a great preparation for and another tough conference game.
On injury report: “I’ll leave out the injury report. We’ll put that out Thursday with the status of our players at that time.”
On how the players who replaced injured defensive starters fared on Saturday: “They did all right. (Tyrel) Wilson I thought had an excellent ball game. Played tough, played fast, hung in there great. (Detrick) Bonner had a couple plays, but he’ll be better with a good week of practice here this week. (Alonzo) Tweedy was kind of in and out of the game according to the personnel groupings, but he’s got a lot of good ability and he made some nice plays for us. They did well. The young (defensive) linemen, (Corey) Marshall and (Luther) Maddy, I think are coming along, getting better each and every week. So we just got to keep plugging along.”
On the performance of the offensive line after a slow start on Saturday: “I thought they all did ok. We’ve got a thing called chain gang and you grade a winning percentage. (Andrew) Lanier, (Greg) Nosal, (Andrew) Miller, (Jaymes) Brooks, (Blake) DeChristopher, (Nick) Becton all are in that. Some of the troubles there early weren’t particularly them. There were other people involved that missed an assignment here, missed an assignment there and all of a sudden the play doesn’t look very good. But overall, I thought they did well for the day.”
On the punting position: “(Michael) Branthover – I think he’s another guy as he gets more and more comfortable, he’s going to get better and better. He’s a guy like I told you earlier, he’s got a strong, strong leg and has a good, quick release time. And that’s two really good things to start out with. I’m looking forward to and I think again as he gets more and more confidence, calms down more and more, he’s going to get better and better.”
On if long-term consistency of program and the ability to bounce back after losses are due to staff stability: “Yeah I think you can. I’m really proud of this coaching staff. I’m proud of how we handled things on Saturday. I mean there wasn’t panic there. We just hung in there and we keep talking about as a football team, we want to get better as the day goes along. I thought we did as a coaching staff too. I think the consistency that you have there on the staff, how we try to run our program and how we to try to be consistent from day to day on how we treat kids. They know what they’re getting here. When we do lose, we don’t flip out. We find out why we lost, identify that and try to correct it. That’s all as long as the kids are giving great effort. And effort around here has never really been an issue, but I think that goes back to our coaching staff too. The relationships they have with the players. I think we care about each other around here and trust each other and I think as a result when a problem comes up we have a chance at getting it solved. I think those are the issues really.”
On success of the passing game during past two games: “Well again I think having a veteran offensive line has certainly helped. I think having a threat at tailback certainly helps. Our tight end has come up big the last couple weeks on a couple crucial plays – (Chris) Drager’s been really good. We’ve got a couple more that can really run, so hopefully we can get them more involved in the passing game also. And then we do have some receivers that you can really count on. I think (Jarrett) Boykin and Danny (Coale), Marcus Davis came up with a couple plays. D.J. Coles hurt himself there but, we’ve got some guys there that you can count on. But I just think Logan (Thomas) each and every week gets more and more comfortable. As I’ve said a couple times, I think the more you know where you’re going with the ball, the more accurate you become. You’re not late, you’re anticipating where a guy’s going to be and I think that’s happening with Logan as he gets more and more experience.”
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Chris Graham
