“When you look at them on offense with Mike Canales as their offensive coordinator, and I was the offensive coordinator the year he was at Arizona. He had a little quarterback at NC State named Phillip Rivers. He has developed some great talent. He is a great football coach with a good mind. I have had the opportunity to be around him a little bit in this business and I have great respect for him and Mike Simmonds, the offensive line coach, and Michael Grant, the wide receivers coach. I have a lot of history with a lot of guys on this staff on offense.”
“I am really impressed with what they are doing now. When you look at them as an offense, I would say balance is the key. They have had games where they have thrown for 300 yards and games where they run for 300 yards. I think they are playing really well right now as an offense and are doing some things to put up some yards and points on the board. They have a quarterback who is completing 68 percent of his passes. He is a third-year starter. He has an awful lot of experience and a great head on his shoulders.”
“Mike Simmonds’ offensive line returns four starters off last year’s team. They are playing really well together and you can see just the way they are communicating, turning back, picking up blitzes and protecting the quarterback.”
“Their running back is by committee. They have about three guys that carry the load with the ball for them. They are always keeping fresh guys in there at running back and then with wide receivers, they have some big-play receivers. I will talk a little bit more about (Brelan) Chancellor when I get to the special teams, but he is a big-play guy that they will put at receiver, in the back field and throw him the ball. They will throw him the ball as many different times as the can in many different situations. They have a very good, sound offensive scheme. I think they are very fundamentally sound and hard-nosed and a very physical group with an experienced quarterback.”
“When you look at them on defense and what (defensive coordinator) John Skladany has done with them defensively, you can see the progress they have made from the beginning of the season to where they are now. They are a very simple team in what they do in that they are a 4-3 based defense with quarter coverage. They have held their last two opponents to seven points. Defensively, they held Middle Tennessee to seven. They also held Tulane to seven, but Tulane had two pick-sixes for 14 points to win that game 24-21.”
“I think defensively they are really playing well. I talked about them being physical and fundamentally sound. As I said, Skladany is really doing an awfully good job with them on the defensive side of the ball. They play an awful lot of people. I do not think it is about one superstar as much as it is the power of the pack when you talk about them as a defensive football team.
“Statistically, they are a little bit gaudy when you look at them, especially in their last two conference games. One of the great things Conference USA does to try and get a good evaluation of the entire conference is they keep statistics of just conference games, not everyone we play because we have played such a wide variety of non-conference opponents. When you look at this defense, they are first in total defense, scoring defense, passing defense and first-down defense. When you look at what they are doing as a defensive football team, they are ranked in the top three in almost every statistical category from a conference play standpoint. I have really been impressed with what they have done defensively.”
“Coach McCarney has done a really good job of building this program up. I know Frank Wintrich, their strength coach, we were together at South Florida and I have great respect for him and the job he does and I have a lot of respect for this program. I think it is up and coming. I think they are in the same boat we are. They are excited about having the opportunity to play in Conference USA with where we are both trying to go with this program.”
“I think it will be a great challenge for us Saturday, but one we are looking forward to after having the opportunity to have an open date and get that fundamental work. Not only for the coaches itching to get back into game week and ready to play a game, but I think these players are pretty excited about getting back into the season. I do not think they want to go through another open date and some of the things we did fundamentally this week. We are really looking forward to the challenge, having the opportunity to be here at homecoming and for me, experience my first homecoming here at Louisiana Tech and we are excited about the week.”
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