I thought he played pretty well; he did a lot of things we asked him to do. No. 1, he had a lot of poise and composure out there, and good presence in the pocket. Without seeing the film, it looked like he was making all the right decisions on where to go with the football. For his first contest in a while, I thought he did pretty well … he was pretty sharp. |
I'm not going to say that anybody's going to run the ball down their throat. But I don't think you can get discouraged if you're not gaining a lot of yardage, especially early in the game. You can't just throw against them, you've got to stick to running it. But what happens is you get behind so fast. When you look at that clock and that scoreboard and it's 35-0, it's kind of hard to say you have to keep handing the ball off. |
I'm really pleased with him right now. Because we can win games with him, and it's nice right now knowing that if something were to happen with Isaiah that you have a guy who can come in and play. |
It's his job to lose. |
It's not as if he's been sitting around. The thing I am most concerned with is, it will be hard for him to get a lot of reps. But he'll have to get enough so that he's ready in case there's an emergency. |
It's not like he's just been sitting around. I'm not worried about the rust, but what I am concerned with is that our reps are very limited in the next couple days, and it's going to be hard for him to get a lot. |
Johnny had a really good winter, and I've told him what he has to do to be the starter. I told Isaiah he needs to be consistent to get us to where we want to go, and that's a bowl game. |
Other than that, he made some good throws. He missed a couple, but when you are throwing the ball more down the field vertically like we did today, those are harder to make. You're not going to make every one. |
The No. 1 thing you have to do against USC is win the battle of the clock. You've got to keep their offense off the field. That's the best defense there is. Nobody's stopped these guys; I don't know if anybody will. The thing you have to do is limit how many touches they get. |
There would be a learning curve for him. He's never played, so the speed of the game would be different. To be fair, it would probably take two or three games to adjust to that. It's not really worth it. |
Until he commits himself to really learning the system, it'll be tough for him. He's still one of the best athletes on this football team. He has to understand that playing quarterback in this system takes a lot of work, a lot of film study. |
We saw some stuff in film that allowed us to get him out on the edge more. He presents so many problems for defenses because they have do decide, 'Are you going to let him get the edge and run?' or 'Are you going to come up and let something happen over the top of you?' So he gave us a lot of that today and it was really a nice weapon for us. |
We wanted to throw the ball down the field today. |
We're still going to be stubborn about that. |
Yeah, I think so. I think we're going to make up for lack of experience in attitude, in physical and mental toughness, in competitiveness. We have to. |