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ABILENE CHRISTIAN UNIVERSITY FOOTBALL MEDIA CONFERENCE

September 1, 2018

Adam Dorrell

Waco, Texas

Abilene Christian - 27, Baylor - 55

ADAM DORRELL: Yeah, I think, first off, I'm very proud of our football team. I thought we played extremely hard tonight. Played a Big 12 football team, Power Five. I thought our guys played really hard. I thought we competed for 60 minutes. I don't think we gave up.

I think we did a lot of really good things tonight on offense. You know, we averaged 80 yards rushing last year, and it was a big focus for us this year to come in to have 225 yards of rushing in our opening night against a Big 12 school I think is exciting.

I think it's a lot to grow on. I think if you look at our running backs, there is no question we've upgraded there. I think our offensive line is exponentially better than it was last year. I think we have two quarterbacks that are very solid. Throwing a handful of receivers and we're back in the tight end business. That's exciting defensively.

It was a tough gig tonight. Those guys have a lot of speed. They're rangy, playing a lot of guys. Missed some tackles, but I think you have to give them credit. I was very impressed with the way they blocked on the perimeter. I thought their skill guys blocked really, really well.

But I thought we punted the ball well. Had a walk-on kicker from Abilene High come in and I thought competed really, really well tonight in his first collegiate competition in a tough environment.

So overall I told our team, you can be disappointed, but don't be discouraged. There is a lot to build on. And I'm just very, very proud of their effort.

Q. You've got to be really happy with that running game you had, and what McCrary comes in and gives you?
ADAM DORRELL: Yeah, Billy is a game changer for us. We've been cautiously optimistic. But, you know, we time 40 just like everybody else, and we knew he was fast. He's the fastest guy on our team. He got loose twice tonight, and very proud of him. He's going to continue to grow.

I mean, he hasn't played football in two years. He's been out at the university and just didn't play. So to see him knock off the rust tonight and compete, I know he was very excited.

Q. Another guy you didn't have last year, DJ Fuller, and he gave you receiving yards?
ADAM DORRELL: Yeah, he did. We pulled him toward the end. He was battling a little bit. I don't think it's anything serious. Obviously we got him on the double move route, and he brings an element of speed. He's very good at those intermediate routes in our league with the main coverage we're going to see. It's nice to have a guy that can win that match-up.

Q. And you must be pretty good with the job that Anthony did?
ADAM DORRELL: Absolutely. I thought Luke played really well. I thought Sema'J Davis came in as a red-shirt freshman quarterback, and I thought he competed at a high level. We didn't do a ton of bad things tonight as far as turning the ball over. We talked about weathering the storm in the first quarter and trying not to shoot ourselves in the foot. I thought for the most part, we did that.

Q. Coach, how difficult is it when you do fall behind a team like this in this atmosphere?
ADAM DORRELL: Yeah, it's hard. You have to be very careful not to panic and not to get away from your game plan. We had a plan to come down here ask play a lot of guys tonight, and for the most part we got that done. So it's hard because you're sitting there, going, man, you know, the worst thing about playing at night is we all saw some of those games today where they were 45 or 50 to nothing at halftime. The so they got out a couple times, and you're sitting there scratching your head a little bit.

Again, I thought we competed at a high level, and I thought the way they handled themselves at the end of the game was awesome. I thought they did a great job of pulling back and not trying to run up the score. I thought that was very classy of them.

Q. What did you notice there playing those guys? What is the difference?
ADAM DORRELL: Well, you've got to start with length and reach and girth. I mean, if you look at their O-line men, D-line men, that's where it's a huge difference from the FCS to the FBS in my opinion. Then depth. You look at the number of players they were rolling in. We had a lot, I bet we had 15 to 22 true freshmen play tonight.

It's exciting, but it's also difficult. I think just the overall depth and just the length, girth and speed of their O and D-lines.

Q. Talk about your offense, you hit some really big plays. Maybe trying to go back and find a little more consistency?
ADAM DORRELL: Yeah, it is. I think the thing, if you didn't see us play last year, what you've got to understand is like that is night and day different from last year. So, it's so exciting. Because, again, we averaged 80 yards rushing last year. I think we were one of the worst in the FCS. We were the worst, I think, in our league, and we just could not put together drives last year.

So the fact that we were able to do that to some extent here in a hostile environment, it's exciting to me, because I think it gives us something to build on.

Q. How do you translate this effort? You've got ten more games left. How do you translate that into the rest of the season?
ADAM DORRELL: Yeah, absolutely. Well, I think the number one thing is we wanted to come down here and play a lot of guys. Whether it was true freshmen or guys like Billy that haven't played college football or haven't played football in two years.

Oscar Hernandez, our kicker hasn't played since his senior year in high school. We had a lot of guys like that. So that was the number one thing, come down and knock off the rust, and turn around and get refocused for a home opener next week. Everything we're doing in our program up until our coaches, we have to think big picture. You can't think short term.

Trying to come in here and just worry about Baylor or week two. Everything we're doing is trying to build us into week three, to the start of conference, to give us a leg up on the competition. To have more depth than we had last year.

Our depth last year was horrendous and we took some injuries. We were pretty much down at some spots. So that's the big thing. We're going to try to follow that up next week and continue to build and groom our youth and guys that haven't played for a while. So when we open down in Houston Baptist week three, hopefully we're going to be ready to go.

Q. Your theme of fall camp was finishing.
ADAM DORRELL: Yeah.

Q. Did your team do that tonight?
ADAM DORRELL: I thought we did. We really did. I think you come in here and I said to this to our guys, this is no knock from last year's team, but if this was last year's team, we would have been done emotionally in the first quarter.

So to see our guys be resilient, have some grit, I think our culture is growing and that's something I obviously talk about a lot.

If you want to be great, you have to have great culture. So I feel like that is really growing. In one year's time as a head coach, that's the most exciting thing that I saw tonight. Thank you.

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