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PENN STATE UNIVERSITY FOOTBALL MEDIA CONFERENCESeptember 4, 2018Miles SandersUniversity Park, Pennsylvania Q. Miles, one start and you're on the cover of Sports Illustrated. I'm sure you've heard the news. I don't know if you have a copy yet, but just your general reactions, it's gotta be pretty cool. MILES SANDERS: Like I told everybody else, I didn't really know I was going to be on the cover. Everybody was texting me saying that I was on the cover and stuff. Like I said, I'm speechless and blessed, and it's interesting. But right now focused on Pitt. Q. Miles, how many guys on that Pitt team would you say you're good friends with, and does that make it any more difficult to work up a good hatred, for lack of a better term, for an opponent when you are familiar with so many? MILES SANDERS: Yeah. I know a pretty good amount of people on the team, but it doesn't change. It's just another opponent. And it's a friendly game, so not really don't like at it as a rivalry or nothing, but it's a special game just playing against my friends that I know back at home. Q. Miles, I think you were going to strangle the next person who brought up Saquon this off season, but then on your very first carry you proceeded to jump over somebody, which really didn't help your cause very much. How nice was it just to get that first game out of the way to play the way you did? Maybe you feel like you could do better, but it could have been worse, just to kind of get your feet under you again. MILES SANDERS: It felt good just being the guy for the offense, being the running back. But I was just doing whatever I could to help my team win. That's all that matters every week. Q. Miles, with where you're from, can you kind of encapsulate, how big is this game to that community and to the kids that you grew up playing with? MILES SANDERS: I mean, like I said, it's exciting, but we treat every game like the same every week. We treat it like the Super Bowl. So just ready to be 1 and 0 each week. That's how we approach it. Q. If I can follow up, you treat it the same, but fans don't. Do you understand that, do you get that sense when you're around campus? Is it easy to understand how big of a game -- you know, for you guys it's the Super Bowl. For other people this is a date they have circled on their calendars. MILES SANDERS: Yeah, I mean the fans like to hype it up as a rivalry and stuff with Penn State students and Pitt students, they have that, I guess, little rivalry. But like I said again, it's just another game for us. It's just like the Super Bowl every week, and we're just ready to be 1 and 0 this week. That's all. Q. What do you remember playing at Heinz Field as a kid? Do you have any recollection of that? MILES SANDERS: I remember losing. (Laughs). That was for a WPIAL championship game. Played there like twice. Q. And how many friends and family, any idea, that you'll have there this weekend? MILES SANDERS: I don't know. I'm trying to get as many tickets as I can for the game. Q. Miles, what did you know about this rivalry growing up, because I think there's kind of a generational gap with younger people who didn't grow up watching it and that kind of thing. Did you know much about Pitt-Penn State as a kid? MILES SANDERS: I actually didn't. I never grew up as a Penn State fan or a Pitt fan actually, but I never really knew about the rivalry that much. I know they didn't really play each other a lot, so I didn't really see it as a rivalry or hear about it as a rivalry. Q. What do you remember, then, about two years ago as far as just the fans and that kind of thing? MILES SANDERS: I mean the fans, like I said, the fans hype it up as a rivalry. We know we're going into a hornet's nest. But it's going to be a real hostile environment, night game, ABC network, primetime. So I mean, I don't know, just ready to come out of there 1 and 0. That's all. Q. You guys are pretty good with the 1 and 0 thing, but at some point in your life you probably like sports and look forward to your favorite team playing someone else. Is it an adjustment to come in and take the emotion out of every week and have everything be the same? I'm sure at some point in your life that wasn't how you approached sports, and then you've kind of gotta get into this mindset of everything being the same. Does that take time to get to that point? MILES SANDERS: No, not really. I mean we just like to treat every game -- like our goal is to win every game each week, so every game is important. We don't see it as, oh, we're playing Pitt this week or we're playing App State like last week. We're just focused on getting better each week and becoming 1 and 0 each week. Q. You were a freshman when Lamont was a high school senior. What was your perception of him in high school? Did you get to know him when he came for recruiting trips and did you know him in high school? And how do you think he has kind of elevated his game since being here the past couple years now? MILES SANDERS: Yeah. I knew him since high school. We're kind of from -- not kind of from the same area, but like played teams from his area, like McKeesport, Clairton near McKeesport. I was his host on his official visit. So I know him pretty well. He's my roommate now, and he's just got that dog mentality since he's been here. That's just the way we grew up over there. Q. What can you tell us about Ricky Slade that maybe we don't know and can you talk a little bit about his game and what he brings to the field? MILES SANDERS: He's real goofy. In the running back room he's real goofy. What he brings, he's explosive. He's fast. He's very smart. He picks up the offense really well, faster than probably than I say I picked up the offense. But he just brings that competitive nature in our room, like all the running backs in the room are just competitive and we make each other better. Q. How is he goofy? MILES SANDERS: He just cracks jokes and he just does little weird stuff sometimes. Q. Following up on Lamont, what's he like as a roommate? What's he like kind of off the field? MILES SANDERS: Real cool, laid back. I mean similar to me. Don't really do too much. Q. You mentioned on Saturday night that Trace is a pretty quiet, calm leader. How does he handle Sunday when you're all in the film room and evaluating and trying to correct? What kind of role does he take in those corrections? MILES SANDERS: Sundays, I mean I don't really get to be in the film room with Trace until like unit meetings, but Coach does most of the talking. But like if you want to know how he is on the field, he just likes to lead by example, and then when he has to be vocal, he is vocal. But he just brings that competitive -- like you said, everybody says he's a winner, and we're all following him because he's the leader of our offense. So as he go, we go in. Like in the touchdown drive before regulation was over, we all knew that we had to go down and score, and that's just what we did. There was no and, ifs or buts about it, just we want down and scored. Q. And K.J. is also somewhere in the roommate mixture. He said that you're much more funny, outgoing around them. What's K.J. like when he's not around us, because he seems pretty forward. MILES SANDERS: Oh, man. K.J. Well, y'all know how Marcus was last year. I compare him similar to Marcus. He just brings that energy like Marcus did, I could say. Q. And what do you remember about that photo from you and Lamont at Pitt's facilities? What was the back story with that? MILES SANDERS: That picture wasn't -- social media hyped it up more than it was. It was just a picture, just us working out, after workout. Q. Do you train or have you trained with guys like Damar and that kind of thing in the past? MILES SANDERS: Yeah. We have training with DeWayne Brown back in Pittsburgh, and like all the local Pittsburgh like athletes all train there. Q. Is there smack about this game come up during those training sessions? MILES SANDERS: No, not really. We always just focus on getting our work done. Q. Before he left, Saquon asked you to save some records for him. Did you hear from him after the game, even a text in the past 48 hours? Has he reached out in any way? MILES SANDERS: Yeah. He just said good game. He critiqued me, what he saw and what he think I can do better. But he liked the way I handled myself, I guess. With all the chatter about me filling big shoes and stuff, he just told me like everybody else told me, just be me. Q. How quickly did he get in touch with you? MILES SANDERS: I actually called him. But like it was like just right after the game really, just to see what he thought. Q. Before you met with us even? MILES SANDERS: Uh-huh. Q. Okay. So right after. MILES SANDERS: Yeah. Q. Got ya. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
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