HEAD COACH ROCKY LONG
(on the Utah State offense): “They’re going to throw it about 80 percent of the time. They use every formation and every personnel grouping there is. They even use a short yardage lineup with four tight ends and one running back. They have a really good quarterback (Jose Fuentes) and a top three round draft choice at wide receiver (Kevin Curtis). Their quarterback doesn’t like to scramble, either. He’s very patient, he’s going to sit in there until somebody comes open and then he does a great job of throwing it.”
(on stopping Curtis): “They put him in the backfield, motion him out, put him out at wide and motion him in. We have a way to take him out of the game, but what happens is you open yourself up to everything else that they do. BYU double-teamed him the whole game and he still caught four passes for 68 yards. He has great hands, great speed and pro scouts say he runs a 4.4 on grass. He’s not real big, he’s 5’11”, so he’s not real tall, but the quarterback looks to him a lot.”
(on UNM’s defense improving against UNLV): “I thought the defensive backs played pretty well, but I also think it was a combination of their improvement and (UNLV quarterback Jason Thomas’) not being accurate. We didn’t have a lot of sacks against Thomas, but he was under duress an enormous amount of the time. We tried to help our corners every once in a while and give the quarterback a different look. If you can only play one coverage, quarterbacks get good at knowing where to throw the ball.”
(on possibly playing Justin Millea and Casey Kelly at the same time): “One of them might be a wide receiver, one of them might be a pitch back, or we can run the option and pitch it to one or the other. There might be some times in short yardage or in a for sure running situation that Millea might be in the game, or when we think we might need a little different outlook on the game.”
(on the Utah State Defense): “They do a lot of things on defense, but they consider that we do a lot of things on defense too. So there’s nothing that you can hang your hat on, when you’re designing an offensive game plan, that they’re going to be in a certain defense. They run everything in the book and they run a whole bunch of different coverages. So what you hope happens is that they make a couple of assignment errors and your guys are good enough to take advantage of them.”
SOPHOMORE STRONG GUARD CLAUDE TERRELL
(on establishing the running game vs. UNLV): “We knew coming into the game what our plan of attack was. We had a new quarterback and didn’t want to put too much pressure on him, so we ran the ball a lot, which says a great deal about how our offensive line blocked.”
(on the offense having an influence on Justin Millea’s performance): “Well, we try to do a good job on offense every week so that the quarterback can have time to throw the ball and make some plays. Justin had some good plays with some good blocking.”
(on getting Casey Kelly back in the line-up): “I know when we get Casey back his arm is probably not going to be 100 percent so it’s going to put a little added pressure on the offensive line to keep him safe and out of harm’s way.”
JUNIOR NOSE TACKLE GUILLERMO MORRISON
(On the play of the defensive line vs. UNLV): “We focussed mostly on the agility of the quarterback, relaxed and played the game we should have been playing since the beginning of the year. We got in a groove and played like we can. There were no distractions that hurt us this time.”
(on forcing turnovers as a defensive lineman): “It’s kind of like a shark frenzy. If they drop the ball we go after it and if we someone isn’t playing that well on the other team or looks weak we attack them.”
(on playing well defensively for the rest of the season): “We need to play against every team as hard as we can, focus and play to the best of our abilities.”