	products recent interviews FastScripts archive about ASAP Sports

Our Clients:

Browse by Sport

Find us on

Subscribe to RSS

Click to go to
Asaptext.com

View our
e-Brochure

ATLANTIC COAST CONFERENCE FOOTBALL MEDIA CONFERENCE

November 15, 2017

Bronco Mendenhall

Greensboro, North Carolina

BRONCO MENDENHALL: On behalf of myself and our team, we're looking forward to our next game. We welcome the challenge of our game versus Miami, versus their current success, and a difficult environment to play in. These kind of experiences are necessary for our growth and development, and we're looking forward to the game.

I'll take questions at this point.

Q. I know we've talked about this topic a lot, but I'm curious if you could just speak a little to Micah Kiser and Quin Blanding, their decisions to come back, their personality, their play, how that's maybe accelerated the rebuilding job you had there at Virginia.
BRONCO MENDENHALL: It has accelerated the rebuilding. It's given myself as the coach and leader clear examples of leadership from a player level of what Virginia football looks like from a practice, class, social and really athletic standpoint. They're doing as much -- I'm so happy that they're going to have a chance to play post-season. I'm happy that November is a meaningful month for them. They've earned that chance to have meaningful games at the end of the season. And really I think what we've done besides what they've contributed this year will probably continue to play out on a greater scale in the next couple of years and going forward because of their examples.

Q. Obviously great players can be very businesslike on the practice field, they can be very loose, they can have all sorts of different personas. What's it been like to coach those two kids?
BRONCO MENDENHALL: They're different. Micah is very businesslike, intense and fierce and competitive and is very demanding on his teammates. Quin is also a very hard worker, but he also is lighter and has more fun and just has a more free-wheeling personality during practice. Always working hard but also doing it in a more lighthearted manner than Micah, so there's a nice balance between the two of them.

Q. How much difference is there between the kind of offense you faced last week in Louisville and Miami's, and what are the big differences?
BRONCO MENDENHALL: There are some similarities. There's a zone read kind of core run game element, which is very similar to what Louisville uses. There's spread formations where the ball is thrown, and there's a scrambling quarterback and scrambling potential of extending plays.

I think probably the biggest difference is Miami's plays are -- the volume of plays are smaller in terms of -- are less in terms of frequency or number of things you're defending, but they complement at a very high level, and so it forces you to stay balanced. So I would say volume of plays is less, but intent and similarities are probably where Louisville's offense starts from, Miami just kind of keeps it more in that phase rather than expanding to some of the unique things that Louisville takes even further.

Q. Does Rosier model Jackson at all, any similarities there?
BRONCO MENDENHALL: Yeah, there is from the standpoint that he's mobile. He's not afraid to run or have quarterback-designed runs, and he's capable. When you watch the games, there are big plays, whether he drops back and it's a designed quarterback run as in a drop, or when you see him read the zone play, and he pulls it down and runs it effectively. I would say Lamar is more dynamic in terms of speed, but Miami's quarterback is absolutely fast enough and elusive enough to make -- and has made most people in the ACC miss on a pretty frequent basis.

Q. I'm just curious from you having coached against him and seen him, Lamar doesn't get a whole lot of Heisman love this year, but his numbers are probably every bit as good as they were last year. A, do you think it's a legitimate Heisman candidate, and B, what would your feelings be about a guy on a team that didn't win quite as many games or wasn't in contention at the end of the year being in that conversation?
BRONCO MENDENHALL: I think I'm philosophically opposed to a player whose team is not having great success to be in the race, just by nature of -- I think the greatest players have to play at a level where their team is having substantial success. That's just a core belief. And so I kind of operate from that framework.

Now, in terms of Lamar specifically, one of the greatest athletes that I've ever had a chance to play or coach against and try to defend. He's amazingly dynamic and just literally the ball can go the entire distance on any given play at any time, and I think he's exceptional as a football player and as a quarterback. I have no issues with that.

Again, when I think of the Heisman, I marry it -- and I'm not asking anyone else to, but I marry it together with the team's success, as well, and I think that has to be a team competing ideally for me, for a National Championship or in one of those Final Four playoff spots.

Q. A little bit on that same lines, with almost all the Power Five conferences having the possibility of a two-loss champion, if that occurs you know the media is going to start clamoring for the playoffs to be expanded to eight teams. Where do you sit on that, expand or stay?
BRONCO MENDENHALL: I sit on expanding and eliminating a preseason game is where I would sit. So I'm more expansion if you're looking for a true champion, and I'm for eliminating a non-conference game at the front end to keep the volume of games down.

Q. In your opinion if there's one issue either on the field or off the field recruiting or playing or rules, whatever, that you feel needs to be changed in 2018, what would it be?
BRONCO MENDENHALL: Wow, that is a great question. My number one rule would be for coaches not to change jobs until after the National Championship game. I think it sets a poor example for players where coaches leave teams they have worked with the entire year and then change jobs and leave their team to play without that leadership for a bowl game. I think it sets a poor example for young people in terms of honoring commitments.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

ASAP Sports, Inc. | T: 1.212 385 0297