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BOSTON COLLEGE FOOTBALL MEDIA CONFERENCE

October 14, 2019

Steve Addazio

Boston, Massachusetts

STEVE ADDAZIO: So let me just start out, Anthony Brown is going to be out for the year with a lower leg injury, he'll be having surgery if not today certainly the beginning part of this week and we're very, very sad for Anthony, he works so hard to get himself where he was, he's the 7th all time passing leader here in BC history, heading towards greater things this year, I mean he's had a great career and he's prepared and practiced and put so much into it and we're so proud of him and it's a tough deal, but he's a tough guy and he'll bounce back and we're going to love him and support him and get him back to where he was, but his season has come to an end. Getting ready for this week, welcoming homecoming here and excited to get back home for homecoming and play NC State. We have had a good bye week, we have had a chance in the bye week, defense and on offense to be able to really work with and get a look at some more young players that we're trying to get them extra reps and have, potentially get them on the field in certain positions. So that's been really good. The attitude, the mentality and the juice of our team has been outstanding, I thought we had just a really great practice today, I was really ecstatic coming off the field and kids are jacked up, pumped up to get back at it and I think the bye week was a good refresher mentally and physical and gave them a great focus to concentrate a little bit on their classroom work and get ahead there. So I thought that paid off.

We're playing an NC State team that is number one in the conference on defense in terms of rushing defense, really, really stout up front, really physical, really tough to run the ball on them. I think they have got some really athletic guys in the back end and really impressed by their linebackers, very physical linebackers that run downhill, make a lot of plays. I think they're outstanding on defense and obviously their stats show you that. So they have done a great job there.

Offensively, they got a big offensive line, they come out rolling off the ball. Very impressed with them. You can see their quarterback really coming on, first start against Syracuse did a great job, Jordan Houston a running back, good back. Angeline, tight end, good player, I love their receiver, really outstanding.

So they're a talented team, and they're going to come in here confident and we are a talented team and we're going to come in here confident. So we're looking forward to getting going, man, we have been in some wars and we're looking forward to continuing to grow and develop and continue to improve in the areas that we need to improve. So I'm happy to answer any questions.

Q. (No microphone.)
STEVE ADDAZIO: I can't really get into all that, that's between he and his family and his doctors, but I think he had, he met with the doc, got all the testing and it was very clear cut what needed to be done and that's what's happening.

Q. (No microphone.)
STEVE ADDAZIO: Great, he really handled it as well as you can, right? I won't say great like, oh, gee, this is a day at the beach, but he handled it remarkably well. Hey, this is football, you're going to have to deal with the ups and downs when it comes to a lot of things, especially the injury brigade. And he had an injury a couple years ago, he came back from it, he's got another injury, he's going to have to come back from it. It's not career ending, he's just going to have to come back, it's just the way it is.

Q. (No microphone.)
STEVE ADDAZIO: Yes, we saw that last week Dennis played a great second half of football and really did a great job. Dennis will be in that role. Matt also is working with the first offense, but Dennis will take the start and we'll go out there and lead us.

Q. When a guy like that, when he goes down in a game, is it a knock back, does the backup have to just jump in and get going right away, or is it something where someone has to go up to him and say, hey, you need to get ready to go?
STEVE ADDAZIO: I'm not sure what you're asking me.

Q. Like when you see Anthony down on the turf does Dennis just get ready right away?
STEVE ADDAZIO: Yes, when we're out there, right away we're getting Dennis, I mean, whoever the backup quarterback is, it was Dennis, to go ahead and start getting some snaps and get the center over there and gave him a couple snaps while you're attending to the quarterback, because no matter what he's coming out. You don't know if it's severe or not severe, but he's coming out. So the protocol is to get the next guy up and get a snap or two so he doesn't go into the game without taking a snap or two.

Q. Is there something that you say to him as he's going in about a particular play or?
STEVE ADDAZIO: No. No. Yeah part of the game. Just get going. We do it in practice every day.

Q. Were you able to put more on his plate having the bye week, a little extra practice time?
STEVE ADDAZIO: He's taken more work, more reps, because the starting guy gets 80 percent of the reps. But we're running what we run. Yeah, we're rocking and rolling. You saw him in full live color the second half of the game. He played, I thought, really well. Great leadership skills, threw the ball well. We had a few drops on him. Ran the ball well, made good decisions, had great leadership, I thought he did a great job.

Q. (No microphone.)
STEVE ADDAZIO: Well, here's what happens, right, year one we had one quarterback the whole year. Year two we had one quarterback the whole year, right? Year three Darius Wade went down with a broken ankle and John Hillman went out with was it a broken ankle? I can't remember right now. So we lost our starting tailback, our starting quarterback in that year and we had to go into the rotational quarterback brigade and that's what happens when you come into a program and you got to turn that program around.

And year three that was, we were going, we were starting the process with a young quarterback and we lost him for the season. We lost him for the season because we had a very young offensive line and one of the greatest offensive linemen to ever come through here and he was just a little freshman at 265, 270 pounds, got thrown around by one of them big Florida State D-linemen and went and jumped on Darius and broke his ankle and, you know, I mean, so that happened that year.

Then the following year Anthony was having a great year and he hurt himself going in for a touchdown against North Carolina State. We were off and running that year. I mean, quite honestly, I consider it, I'm proud of the fact that having to weather all those things and that one year we had a non-bowl eligible team and we had no linemen, no quarterback, no running back, but every other year we have weathered all of those injuries and continued to move this program forward, which I think is something that we can all be proud of. I can't control injuries, there's not much I can do about that. Just like this year, I can't control that. That's it. You know what? It's football, man, you roll. That's exactly what we have done and the better recruited you are, the more developed your program is, the more you can absorb that.

Q. (No microphone.)
STEVE ADDAZIO: They have adjusted great. You can judge it by the second half of that game we put 39 points or whatever we put up at Louisville at that point after Anthony got hurt. But you can go down through, I mean I have them all here, but the amount of categories we are either one, two, three or four in our conference is incredible and where we are ranked nationally we're firing at a very high level offensively right now and my expectation is we're going to maintain that. We'll see. I'm not trying to downplay the loss of your quarterback, okay, we all know how important the quarterback is to everything at every level of football for every team. But we have got a really good offense and we expect to go out and perform at a high level.

Q. You mentioned in the bye week getting the young guys reps and refreshing a little. Was that just treating it like almost like a preseason week with them?
STEVE ADDAZIO: No, we game planned North Carolina State and started to get some young guys, especially on defense that we wanted to get a look at or that we think are talented guys, it's hard to get them on the field but we want to start to try to. So I think the bye week helped with us that. But no we didn't go back to spring football mentality, we game planned and had three really good NC State days last week. That's what I thought was right for this team. But we did have a chance to look at a bunch of guys and get them some reps and we're continuing to do that this week. We have some very talented young players on defense and we want to continue to grow and develop those players. We are building our defense. It's very evident right now, we replaced eight starters and we're young and/or inexperienced. So what we're doing right now, I mean we're firing at a very high level offensively, we're very strong and solid in our special teams, and we're very inexperienced on defense and we're going to grow that defense, mature that defense and play some of the younger players because I like the future there with the talent level that we have. But what you're trying to do is introduce more freshmen into an already inexperienced young defense can lead to some problems. But I think that that's what we want to do.

Q. (No microphone.)
STEVE ADDAZIO: I guess there must have been another school record. Louisville put 62-up last week, didn't they? We're in the same place we have been. If you watch our defense right now we're a little bit of a roller coaster ride. And what we have to learn to do is handle adversity a little bit. We make a lot of mistakes right now and we have to learn how to grow up and handle that. It's not like, oh, this guy's getting blocked into here and, oh, we're getting mauled or -- no, no, no. What it is is we have a lot mistakes being made we have got some coverages being blown and I thought we did a good job of starting to tap that back down the couple weeks before that. And then it showed up a little bit again. We lost essentially our whole secondary and the Hamp deal hurt us and the McDuffie deal hurt us too. So on top of everybody we lost, we also lost those two guys that really should have been functioning within the framework.

So what we have to do is, the thing is, is what we're doing right now is developing some good younger players though. It's not like, oh, there's no talent. No, there's talent, we just got to mature it, we got to develop it. Some of the teams we're playing are explosive. Louisville's got some really good athletes, really fine athletes in space, you just saw that. I mean, I forgot what they put up against Florida State but you just saw this. You saw the 19th team in the country got 62 put on them. So I'm just saying, that's an explosive team.

So right now we have got to smooth that out, make less mistakes and smooth that out and continue to develop on that side of the ball and clearly that's where our focus is right now to do that. But the attitude, the mentality, the how hard they practice, what they're putting into it, phenomenal.

Q. NC State's defense, they have always had the linebackers, you mentioned that, they have always had some explosive linebackers. Is it anything they do in particular in their system to free those guys up that you noticed?
STEVE ADDAZIO: No, they have big, strong, thick powerful defensive linemen. They're hard to move. That usually is what equates to stopping the run. That's what they have, 320-pounders and they're good. And I think they have got an outstanding set of linebackers that run to the ball really well. So, no, they have recruited, they have got a very good defensive line and not that you asked me this but I think we have an outstanding young defensive line right now. They're just young. They're just pups. But I like, I love Kyiev Bennermon and TJ Rayam and Ireland Burke and Ryan Betro and we have got some -- but we just got to get some whiskers on them and thicken them up a little bit more and get them ready to roll. But that's, we're going to have a very stout interior front here as we move forward as well.

Q. With the game like this against NC State and how good they are too on the offensive line, do these guys get a little fired up for the fact it's going to be a physical day, a physical hard hitting day?
STEVE ADDAZIO: It's a physical day every day around this joint. We just got off the practice field. We got a big physical offensive line and we run the ball pretty good. I think it's number one in the conference. So it's like that every day honestly, which is a good thing.

So to answer your question, we have a lot of youth over there, but every day they got to get up against it. It's not like they're not seeing that level. And today, today was a good day. It was a good day. We did a good job on defense today. I thought they had a hell of a day today. So we got to just build on that. Like I said, it's the inconsistency there that we got to continue, but that goes part and parcel within experienced youth.

Q. Even more imperative to get A.J. and Bailey mixing it up as opposed to one of them taking most of the pounding if those guys are as bad as you say? I mean how tough is he?
STEVE ADDAZIO: We mix them up pretty good right now. You know what, we're going to do -- like right now on the season we're 225 runs for 65 percent and 117 passes for almost 35 percent. We have got a decent mix for us right now. When you talk about the quality of the backs that we have, that's a pretty good mix. So I think we're, I think we got a good plan here on how we're going to attack the defense and I've got a lot of respect for NC State, Dave Doeren, I like Dave a lot, I think he's done a heck of a job there and I think he and I probably look at some of these things very similarly in terms of the ability to have a strong run game and to have a physical team, so I think these are two teams that are going to -- we certainly, it's a pretty good matchup game here. This is a good matchup game. But wasn't last week a good matchup game? And I would say the week before was a good matchup game. Those are good games, those are good matchup games, man.

Those are, aside from not winning it and you're the coach and you're coming off, and those things emotionally, but if you're just a fan watching those games I think you've seen a couple of really good football games out here with a lot of offense, a lot of explosives, and enough to keep you excited and in your seat and I don't expect that will change.

Q. Is there anything that you kind of look at with their receivers being young too and knowing that you having young defensive backs too, is this one of those games where maybe you can catch them in making some of the same youthful type of mistakes?
STEVE ADDAZIO: I hope so. Who knows. I don't know. I mean, listen, every football game is different, I just think -- our focus right now is on us. Our focus is on taking a look at what we're doing, trying to put our guys in the best positions to give them the most confidence to play the most consistently and hope that everything you put into that practice will show up on that Saturday on that field. That's obviously what you're always in a race for.

I feel like on offense I probably know a little bit more where -- I can tell the level of consistency because of the older guys that we have in place, but of course we're taking on a new week with a new guy at the helm, just in case it wasn't spicy enough, we're going to do that. But it's fun and it's exciting and I can't wait, because our team competes so hard that I know it will be an exciting, competitive day out there on Saturday and hope to have another point than they do on the scoreboard when the whistle blows in the end and get in the locker room and sing the fight song. So that's the goal.

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