Naturally, coming out on the first day, you're going to be a little rusty. You've got to get the butterflies and the kinks and things out, but I think as a team our morale is up. We're definitely excited about coming in. |
No! Not in a million years. |
Our coaches always say the most important thing is the first drive, and we came out, got a touchdown, and we knew right there they couldn't hang with us. |
Our goal is to reverse that 31. Have us win by 31. |
Our mind-set as an offense is to keep the ball away and try to control the clock. If we have the ball, we feel we can control the game and the game can be played at whatever tempo we want it to be played at. |
That kind of posed a little bit of a problem as far as the running game was concerned. |
The first thing I noticed was the size of it. It really is about the size of a phone book or a dictionary. |
This is the best defense we've played all year. Their linebackers are incredible, their front four is dominant and their secondary is fast. |
We feel we can play with anyone. We try not to base too much ... on the luck of the Irish. We just try to go out there and get it for ourselves. |
We in turn have to make sure that we're up for that challenge, because there's going to be a lot of contact - hard contact - all the time. |
We were not surprised with what happened tonight because we were very well prepared. |
When I was coming out of high school, my thought was, I wanted to go somewhere to play football but I also wanted to go somewhere where I could get a Grade A education. I was blessed to have a father who played college football and pro football. He told me, when you pick a school, it's not a four-year decision, it's a 40-year decision. |
You can tell the get-nasty attitude in the way you walk, the way you talk, how you feel about yourself. Maybe it's a little bit of a New Jersey-type deal with Coach Weis being from New Jersey. |