Opening statement
“I think Boston College is as typical, very physical football team—very big up front both ways. Defensively, they make you drive the field, keep things in front of them. They execute extremely well. Their quarterback is throwing the ball for a lot of yardage. He’s completing 57 percent of his passes, has 16 touchdowns and I think nine interceptions. I think they’re a very well-coached, tough football team.”
On any updates about Michael Cole’s condition
“No, not anything new from the other night. He came by the office here the next day and was in good spirits, but it was a scary situation.”
On what it is like for a coach to see a player go down like that
“Very concerning. No matter what team it is, whether it’s yours or someone else’s, you really don’t want to see that. For it to be one of your own, a kid that football means so much to and really cares about Virginia Tech and really cares about performing, your heart goes out for him.”
On the psychology of road games since the team has lost seven-straight away from Lane Stadium
“Before that streak, I thought we had a pretty good streak of wins away from homes. We really don’t do anything different. We have talked this season about mental toughness and physical toughness away from home. I think there’s something to that. Other than that, I think the effort has been good; we just haven’t gotten it done. I think we’ve played some good football teams away from here and got teams who played extremely well against us away from here. Again, we haven’t played as well as we need to, that’s for sure.”
On what he takes away from the film of the Florida State game
“I feel proud of our football team. As tough of losses as we’ve had, we’re never giving in and they’ve always come back with intensity for the most part. You’re proud of that. The other side, we did some things very well and just need to do a couple more things very well to win the football game.”
On if he worries about his players pressing the last two games
“I think when you play at this level, you have to be able to handle pressure and right now, you’re exactly right, we have to win the next two to be bowl eligible. It’s very clear what we have to do.”
On the play of Alonzo Tweedy against Florida State
“Tweedy flies around there and is very athletic and is good when he’s stunting so we’ll see how the game plan goes here this week.”
On the running back situation.
“I think [J.C.] Coleman and [Tony] Gregory, of course Michael [Holmes] had a little bit of an injury the other night, but I though Coleman and Gregory really ran the ball hard and ran it well while they were in there.”
On Holmes’ status for this week
“Yeah, I think he’s going to be. We haven’t met as a staff today, but I believe that he’ll be OK.”
On any concerns about his two-minute defense
“We just have to play the coverage and play it well, play it better. I think that’s pretty much it. You try to play coverage and pressure them a little bit and we just ended up not executing what we needed to do.”
On the importance of continuing to get Demitri Knowles involved
“We’re going to get Demitri in there more and more. He’s a guy that is a threat. I think he’s getting better each and every week. Even though he hasn’t played a lot of football, he does things very naturally, catching the ball and so we’re going to work on getting him in there quite a bit here in the next couple week.”
On if Brooks Abbott is still the kicker on kickoffs
“We’re going to look at that closely this week too. We need hang time and need distance and one or the other for sure. We’re kind of getting in between right now so we’re going to look at that again this week too. Brooks started off getting the ball in the end zone and good hang time and pretty consistent in where he was kicking. He’s kind of been off here a little bit so that’s the reason we’re looking at that.”
On if Michael Cole is unavailable, what will they do about the nickel this week
“We’re putting our game plan together right now. I think [Desmond] Frye is a kid with a lot of ability. He’s played well on special teams. I think he has a great future so he’s going to get some work there and then we’ll see where [Donovan] Riley fits in here as we go along during the week.”
On if there’s a chance Cole will play this weekend
“No, I don’t think that’s going to happen. No.”
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