Nov. 14, 2006
Head Coach Rocky Long
Click here to watch Long’s entire press conference
Click here to listen to Long’s entire press conference
(on BYU QB John Beck):
“He’s an excellent quarterback that is having, in my opinion, his best year. He’s playing better than any other quarterback in our league and probably playing better than most quarterbacks in the country.”
(on injured UNM QB Donovan Porterie):
“He’s not doing very well. He’s kind of day-to-day, but he’s not going to practice today either. I would say as the week goes on if he can’t practice tomorrow, he won’t start. If he has trouble practicing on Thursday, he won’t play. He’s a lot better than he was Saturday, but sometimes you make dramatic improvement and sometimes you have one real good day and then you regress the next day. So you have to take it day-by-day. Right now I don’t think he’s going to play, but he might improve a whole lot by tomorrow. I hope he does.”
(on slowing down John Beck):
“I don’t think you do. No one else has. All the statistics have me scared to death. They’re (averaging) 450 yards per game, they’re beating everybody at home by 37.6 points. You get tired of hearing about it because everybody is telling me how bad they’re going to beat us.”
(on where he is more concerned about getting down early at BYU):
“Well, it doesn’t help you to fall behind anybody. If you go on the games that have played to this point, BYU is ahead of everybody. They’re ahead of everybody from the start and they’re way ahead of everybody at the end. We’re going to have to play really, really well to hang in there and then make it a game.”
(on whether the team’s recent success in Provo helps going into this game):
“I think our program is to the point that it doesn’t matter where we play. I don’t think it worries us to play anywhere, but it’s a different team and different year. We’re young and not quite as good we’ve been the last couple times we’ve gone up there and they’re a veteran football team that’s a whole lot better than the teams we played the last couple times we were up there.”
(on the Cougars’ rushing offense):
“This year they have run the ball a lot more and a lot better. They have a lot more balanced offense. They have three really good running backs, which keep the pressure off of Beck. Last year you could try to blitz and stunt and get some pressure on Beck, and some people gave him trouble, but this year nobody is getting to Beck because the running game is so good.”
(on the Lobos having to change their defensive signals against former coordinator Bronco Mendenhall):
“Bronco still knows our signals and he still knows our defense, so I’m sure his offense will have a better feel for our defense than most people do because he understands our defense so well.”
“Every year we go at it a different way. The first year, we put armbands on our kids and just called numbers out there and our kids read the defense off their wrist. The second year, we didn’t worry about it. We just called our defense and said they didn’t have time to make an adjustment anyway. Last year, we did half-and-half. This year, the first day of practice we worked with color-coded cards from the sidelines that mean something to us and nothing to them. Now we’re going to do something else in practice today.”
“If the offense knows it’s man-to-man as opposed to zone or they know its zone as opposed to man-to-man, that gives the quarterback and guy calling the plays a tremendous, tremendous advantage. If the quarterback drops back to pass and knows whether it’s man-to-man or zone, he’s going to throw it to the right guy every single time. So we have to do something so they’re not sure what the coverage is.”
Sophomore Tailback Rodney Ferguson
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“We’re really like the little brother to their big brother (BYU). The little brother is going to come up and play hard. We have to give it everything we have because in every 10 chances there’s usually one time when the little brother beats the big brother. We’re going to try and take that chance this time.”
Sophomore Cornerback Glover Quin
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(on the difference between the team’s first half and second half production vs. TCU):
“I don’t know if it’s trying to catch up to the game speed. We just come out to start the second half with the knowledge that we played our worst half, yet we are still in the game. Then we seem to do what we have to do and good things happen. Coming out in the second half is really like going to the BYU game. We are viewed as down already, so we have nothing to lose. We need to go out and play as hard as we can.”