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BOSTON COLLEGE FOOTBALL MEDIA CONFERENCE

September 7, 2019

Steve Addazio

Boston, Massachusetts

Boston College - 45, Richmond - 13

STEVE ADDAZIO: Okay, guys. Obviously, feel great about the fact that we're 2-0. Some good things happened today. It was great to see Nolan Borgersen have that big pick. Here's a fifth year senior who's really paid his dues and playing his best football. He's all about the team. And watching Jake Burt go down the field for a big touchdown strike and watching some of the older guys have some great success.

We came out fast on offense. We scored a bunch of points and had a bunch of offense in the first two weeks, which is a good thing.

I thought defensively we tightened up a little bit in the second half. I thought in the first half we had some things we had to kind of really get corrected, but there were some big plays on defense as well with the interceptions.

That was good. We came out healthy, which was really incredibly important. We're kind of on to Kansas and getting started on that right away. Certainly never want to not enjoy a great win because wins are hard to come by, as I guess the landscape of college football told you today.

Proud of the way our guys prepared all week. Came off a big conference win here, which was an emotional conference win, and came out with intent and purpose and came out fast. So that's a positive as well.

We need a great week of preparation, and we're looking forward to getting started. Happy to answer any questions.

Q. Obviously, one of the things you were hoping to see last year from A.J. was sort of the evolution of him in the passing game. How much did the injury sort of hamper those plans and hamper him, and how gratifying was that to see it play out today?
STEVE ADDAZIO: Yeah, as you said, it was a tough year, but he's worked real hard on that. He really looked -- I thought his hands looked great too. He caught that effortlessly and spun that thing right up the field, so I was excited so see that. I thought he and David ran -- and Travis at the end, but they ran hard today and had some tough yards. What did we have over 300-something yards rushing? Offensive line did a good job.

I'm happy to see A.J. really -- last week the unknown thing that wasn't talked about was he was excellent in pass protection. This week, as you pointed out, nice reception out of the backfield. So there's some really nice things that are happening.

Q. This feels like a game where you can kind of -- I don't want to say like test some things out, but explore possibilities with the guys. Especially in A.J.'s case. How much more can you get out of pass protection, pass catching? You know what he can do on the ground, but how much more room does he have?
STEVE ADDAZIO: He's got a lot of room. He's still a young guy that is a work in progress. All players can continue to improve and get better. That's the beauty of college.

Q. Coach, staying on the topic of A.J., it looked to me like you guys really emphasized running the football, getting the third team personnel, running the ball out of two backs. Was that your game plan going into this week, getting A.J. and the running game going even more?
STEVE ADDAZIO: A little bit. I mean, not over the top, but a little bit. We wanted to be kind of who we were. Quite frankly, when I saw that we were having some problems a little bit on defense early, I kind of wanted to see if we could stay on the field a little bit and give them a chance to get off the field and attack some of the deals we were seeing.

So I actually thought maybe it would be best for our team if we had some long slow drives, which isn't really how we want to play, but I thought in that situation it was warranted. It didn't always work out that way, so we kind of shifted into that.

I actually said, before we started the game, let's just play wide open and do our thing, and that really was the intent when we came out. I think, when I saw what was going on a little bit defensively there, I think the best thing you can do to help your defense is give them a chance to regroup a little bit sometimes. So I started to become conscious of that, to be honest with you.

Q. Steve, was it kind of a case where you kept it basic and didn't show anything that could be useful to Kansas next week?
STEVE ADDAZIO: Yeah, we didn't really -- there's a lot of stuff that we intentionally didn't really want to do in this game. So we have another piece of our game, both in the throw game and really in the option run game that it wasn't necessary. We didn't want to run Anthony Brown in this game. There's a lot of things we didn't want to do. We felt really good about handing the ball off to our tailbacks.

So really wanted to make sure that we developed in areas we needed to develop in, get some guys off the field. That was our goal, as quickly as we could. We have a short week. So all those things -- but, hey, you don't know how things are going to go. At the end of the day, you've got to win the game. So you're hoping it goes the way you want it to go, but sometimes it just doesn't. So you've got to be prepared for all of the above.

So we practiced all week with a bunch of stuff with the intent that, if we didn't need to do it, we wouldn't do it. So we didn't, and we got most of the guys off -- I don't know when we did, probably early in the third quarter, which was great too. Like I said, short week, and we were healthy last week, but we were banged up, but healthy.

Now, I'm hoping -- sometimes I get surprised, but I'm hoping, I think we'll have a chance to be in good shape because Monday is our Tuesday. So we kind of got to get going. In fact, we'll be going at 7:30 in the morning tomorrow.

Q. So just following up on the short week this week, and after such an emotional game last week, were you ever worried about kind of a trap game this week? And how do you kind of change up preparation with such a tough week?
STEVE ADDAZIO: Well, honestly, I'm going to be real conscious of how many periods we have in practice because Monday we're right back at it. I'm also conscious this week, we've talked about strength and conditioning, how much we want to do in the weight room this week. We want to give the kids -- thankfully, most guys didn't play a whole lot more than two quarters so that we can -- tomorrow we'll watch tape but won't go outside with them tomorrow, and the player day off will be next Saturday that falls in our week so that we can come back in on Monday.

So Sunday is kind of like a day off. It will be a little bit of mental work but not a lot. Monday, we'll be right back at it. We've looked at all pieces of that right now. It's hard. And thank God we're home, to be honest with you. You've got to turn around and get on a plane -- we've done that before. A year ago I think we went down -- played on a Saturday and had to go down and play Wake on a Thursday night, if I remember correctly.

You do what you have to do, but I think managing it is important. We've had a couple of games under our belt. One was at a high level, and then this one that we he have under our belt. So I think we'll be in good shape.

Q. Coach, another big game for Zay Flowers. Has the emergence of him as an offensive weapon kind of made him more of a factor for you guys moving forward?
STEVE ADDAZIO: Yeah, he's -- you know, you can't deny that he's an electric player. I think we'll continue to find ways to target him. We've got other guys we're trying to target too, but sure, he'll expand with what we want to do. It would be crazy not to.

Before I forget too, I really want to thank the fans for coming out today and did a great job for us. I really appreciate our administration working hard on a great game day atmosphere. That was important. And our players really appreciate that as well. Go ahead. Anything else?

Q. A lot of times in a game like this where it's pretty lopsided, the tendency can be to get pretty sloppy, just human nature. But you only had two penalties for ten yards. How impressive was that to see?
STEVE ADDAZIO: Yeah, it was great. Not a lot of penalties. I don't have all the stats in front of me right now, but I thought from that standpoint it was fairly clean. I was happy about that because, yeah, it can get sloppy, and I think we contained that.

I want to look at the tape, not overly. We're going to take a look at it and correct what we need to correct, and then we're moving on to Kansas pretty quickly. By about 9:00 tomorrow morning, we'll be 100 miles into Kansas.

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