ON THE STRUGGLES OF K MICHAEL TARBUTT:

“We evaluate every position and if we think that there is somebody that can go in and do the job better than the guy we have, we’ll make that move and determination. That’s something we would talk about. But Michael has a good leg, there’s just some things between the ears that has to get worked out, but he has a good leg. What we have to do is try to help him with the other things. That’s what we’ll continue to do, but we will always take a look at things to see if we can better ourselves.”

THIRD DOWN PERFORMANCE ON SATURDAY WAS IMPROVED:

“Guys just understood things a little better and just did their job. We played some of the same calls that we’ve played and we just went out and did a better job of executing. There were some guys that hadn’t been out there before that were there, maybe that was part of it as well.”

ON P BRETT GRAHAM AND HIS PERFORMANCE THUS FAR IN 2017:

“It’s been inconsistent. We are going with Brett Graham this year, I made an announcement a week ago that we were going to redshirt ___, so Brett’s the guy and he just needs to be more consistent. That’s what we’ve talked about with him. Again, at this point in time, there are certain things we aren’t going to do moving forward based on where we are in the season and based on what you’re allowed to do when it comes to redshirting people. Michael and Brett need to just be more consistent in what they are doing. Michael is doing a great job on kickoffs and he has plenty enough leg, he just needs to relax when he goes out there and not think about what quarter it is, how much time is on the clock, any of those things. Sometimes it takes people some time to be able to work through that pressure stuff, but it’s my job and our coaches job to make sure we can get him as comfortable as we can in those situations.”

ON WR HERGY MAYALA RETURNING FROM INJURY

“It was good to have him out there, but he’s still working through some things with that ankle. He probably played too many plays yesterday, so we’ll have to monitor that going forward until he gets back to 100-percent, but he probably played too many yesterday.”

HOW DOES CB JORDAN SWANN’S PLAY HAVE AN IMPACT ON JAMAR SUMMERS MOVING FORWARD?:

“We are going to talk about that here a little bit later before we go out to practice. We’ll talk about that a little more tomorrow. We’ll update anything in terms of that position and all the other positions on the depth chart for this week. I thought he [Jordan Swann] played well. I thought he went in there and handled the situation well and played good, sound, fundamental football and was out there executing the things that he was being taught during the week. That’s always nice to see people out there working and doing the things you teach them. Usually when you do that and go out and play well, you are going to earn yourself more opportunities to be out there playing.”

DARRIAN BEAVERS SEEMS LIKE A NATURAL PASS RUSHER, HAS HE SHOWN YOU OTHER THINGS TO GET MORE PLAYING TIME?:

“We need to work on that with him. He’s a young man that we feel has some really good pass rush ability. What we need to do is work with him with his technique and do some thing to help him because he’s just a young guy, a freshman coming in. He think he knows a little more than what he doesn’t know, but the nuances of rushing the passer and setting things up, having counter moves, that’s all new to him, he’s never done that before, so that’s where we’ll work with him and try to get him better each and every game. Knowing that he has that specialty, it’ll be something he can continue to work on. When he gets stronger, he’ll be even that much better. The thing that I like, a lot of these young guys, Ryan Van Demark, Darrian, all these freshmen, they are just going out competing, having fun and they are coachable. They fly around and what we need to do is get them better as much as we can. A lot of them had to play because they are the best guys and we decided to play our best guys and it’s good to have him out there doing those things.”

THE IMPORTANCE OF 3RD DOWN DEFENSE:

“I thought that was one of the key things in the game that we were able to get off the field during the game and it made a big difference. In the fourth quarter, they were 0-for-4 on third down and 0-for-2 on fourth, so that was a big difference. We did a pretty good job. In the third quarter, they were 3-of-4 on third down and 0-for-1 on fourth, so that quarter hurt us a little bit, but I thought our guys played hard, they ran to the ball, were close to guys and really focused on executing the call and using good fundamentals and technique to get it done. It’s the same things that we’ve been stressing to them for six previous weeks with the bye and they just did a good job with it yesterday and hopefully we can continue to do that.”

IT’S BEEN AWHILE SINCE YOU STARTED A WEEK AFTER A WIN, DOES THIS ENERGIZE THE TEAM & THE ENTIRE PROGRAM?:

“You come in on a Sunday and we already had a team meeting with them and were able to stress a lot of the good things that happened. Once we get done at 5PM today, that’s behind us and now we need to move forward. Hopefully our confidence will be a little bit better, but we still have a lot of work to do, a lot of improving to do. Even though we won the game there are plenty of things that we need to get a whole lot better at. As long as they approach it the right way and have the right frame of mind as we go through corrections today and they come to practice on Tuesday, then we’ll be good. I told them you’re going to get a lot of congratulations and all that, you’re going to get the sugar, but when you eat too much sugar you end up getting fat. We don’t have anything to get fat about. We just need to keep getting better and that’s what I told them. Hopefully getting the win will help them work a little be harder, clean things up and understand how hard you need to work and prepare to win and we’ll have that attitude as we go into this week. Winning isn’t easy. There is a lot of work you need to put into it and if you’re willing to put it in each and every day, then you give yourself the opportunity to win on game day.”

DOES THE WIN HELP REINFORCE THE MESSAGING AROUND WHAT IT TAKES TO WIN?:

“I would hope so. As I told them last week, the format we had for practice last week is what we’ll have the rest of the year. I would hope that they understand that you really need to prepare and work hard to win. You try to make sure you give them the right messages and guide them in the right way, but their own pride and commitment to each other and the team really has to take over if you really want to get where you want to go.”

MATT SCHONVISKY / SITE CREATOR