	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

BOSTON COLLEGE FOOTBALL MEDIA CONFERENCE

October 19, 2019

Steve Addazio

Boston, Massachusetts

Boston College - 45, North Carolina State - 24

STEVE ADDAZIO: Bye week, coming out here, feeling challenged, put a great couple weeks in in preparation for this game. I thought they performed on the field.

Our defense came out on fire, made some unbelievable plays, held them to 50-something yards rushing, two goal line stands inside the 2 or 3, whatever that was. I thought Jason Maitre's pick early was a symbol of where the defense was going to be all day long and really gave the offense a chance to get going and establish the run.

Of course, I thought we established the run. We ran for over 429 yards, roughly thereabout, and that was the No. 1 rushing team in the conference and No. 4 or 5 in the country. We were able to rush for as many yards today as had been given up -- they had given up all season.

I have a lot of respect for NC State and Dave Doeren. I always have. I think he's a fabulous coach, and they have a really good program. Our team and our coaches knew going into this game that this was going to be a physical contest and that we were going to have to really bow up, and our kids responded unbelievable.

Our two running backs, our offensive line and tight ends, I thought they did a fabulous job. Those backs were running through contact, running for plus yards, kind of unstoppable looking, and very, very proud of that. Just super proud of our football team. Life is about responding, and I thought they responded out here unbelievably, stuck together, and did a fabulous, fabulous job.

So I'm happy to answer any questions.

Q. Kind of might sound like an afterthought, but talk about Dennis managing the game and knowing when to get rid of the ball and making smart decisions.
STEVE ADDAZIO: Dennis did a fabulous job with that. In fact, he had a very critical first down on the long, whatever that 90-something yard drive he had that might have been the back breaker. He managed to be able to go out there and kept the ball and scrambled and ran and got just enough yardage for that first down. That was really a critical, critical first down.

Dennis has got really good toughness. He had total poise and composure out there and was truly in charge of that offensive unit.

Q. Coach, I know in your heart of hearts you love to run the football. How much of this week's game plan was about just running the football, or was it a by-product of Dennis starting the game and you guys feeling you might have needed to balance things up a little more?
STEVE ADDAZIO: Honestly, no. We really had a great game plan put together wanting to be completely how we are. For the season, we were like 65/35, and we wanted to keep minimally that ratio, but when we started just running the ball like that, we just weren't going to come off of that. That was -- I've been around a fair amount of time. That was an unbelievable performance by those guys. You just had to keep feeding them the rock at that point in time. There just was no merit to not doing that, and our team was totally locked into that.

Now, yes, we did challenge our team that we're playing the No. 1 run defense, and we need to go out there and bow up and run the football. If we were the No. 1 rushing offense in the conference and whatever we are in the country, 6 or something like that, we're going to go out there and act like it, and we did.

Q. What about Max? He had a huge game. He put the pressure on, I believe, on the pick six, and he had ten tackles. It seemed like he was all over the field.
STEVE ADDAZIO: He was.

Q. How big of a game did he have, and how important was that for the defense?
STEVE ADDAZIO: I'm with you. I mean, that's what I saw. I mean, I can't give you the details because it's hard from my vision point, but I saw him making an impact on the field, exactly what you just said. Max is one of those guys. He's a special guy. He has a laser focus like the great players have. His preparation, his intensity is incredible actually.

So it shouldn't be shocking because that's the kind of kid he is, but he certainly had a huge impact on the defense.

Q. You had a hunch or a sense earlier in the week that A.J. Dillon would have a breakout game. Kind of what gave you that feeling this week? And what was he able to do with NC State? That's a really stout run defense to make this happen.
STEVE ADDAZIO: I just felt, like I think I told you during the week, that he's a great back. While he has had some great games and he's up there nationally and all that, I still felt like, you know what, he's an elite player, and he hasn't had that breakout game yet.

He's had some unbelievably great games and those grind 'em out games, but I thought you started to see what I consider that breakout game today. You know he's going to have it. It's just a matter of when it's going to happen. I'm super jacked that it happened today.

Q. These matter in a large sense, but I think he's like 75 yards from the school record, two touchdowns away from the school record or whatever. Where do those numbers, where does it put him in the pantheon of running backs? Does it matter right now?
STEVE ADDAZIO: I'm sure you'll talk to A.J. I'm sure what he's going to tell you is what matters is his team, his teammates, and being able to do what he has to do to help our team win. He's that kind of guy, centered guy, and it's going to be all about one week at a time, get prepared, and move forward. But right now it's about this game and about the focus of our team on this game.

Q. I think this is three times now against NC State since you've been coach that you've rushed for 300 yards and held them to 50 yards or less rushing. For the defense, was there a point of, like you said, responding, but also just pride where they wanted to get stops?
STEVE ADDAZIO: I think the defense set the tone for the day. I believe we came out on fire for defense, and I think they set the tone for the day. Just trying to rolodex it through my head really quickly, we had that drive, went down to the 5, went backwards with a few penalties, but our defense playing the way they did gave us an opportunity to kind of keep banging on that rock a little bit, and you have to be able to do that if you want to really run like we ran.

So I just think the defense did a fabulous job and set the tone for the game and gave the offense the opportunity to build and generate that kind of run attack.

Q. Coach, talk a little bit about the importance of the bye week, coming off the Louisville game. How important was that bye week for you guys, knowing you had NC State coming in, knowing you had a tough stretch coming up? How important was it for you guys to just get back to the fundamentals and just refocus a little bit?
STEVE ADDAZIO: It was extremely. We had a few goals for the bye week, one of which, quite frankly, was we had a bunch of guys that had a lot of schoolwork they had to get done. Just being truthful with you, our guys, they're challenged in the classroom, like everybody here at BC, and this time of year, there's a lot of reading and a lot of homework, and a lot of stuff had to be done. So we wanted to make sure our guys had an opportunity to be able to handle that.

I think the other thing was we wanted to go back and work on our fundamentals. I think that was very important to us. We wanted to look at some players, some younger players. We wanted to get that done in the bye week. We wanted to look at our overall scheme, where we were, how we felt we could streamline, how we could make it simpler, how we could become more efficient.

On offense, we spent an awful lot of time, honestly, trying to scheme our run game. It was a little bit different style of defense. We hadn't seen it yet, and there was really no film, enough film out there for us to view them playing anybody like us, and this defense is different for them. I don't have last year's tape to bank on. We spent an awful lot of time putting together the run attack against this defense.

So those were the things we set out to do in this bye week. In the beginning of the bye week, get them some physical rest. We were mentally tired, and we were physically tired at that point. Honestly, it came at an incredible time for us. Sometimes some years more so than others, that break for us, we really had to have that. We were able to hit the reset button.

I knew this week we had an unbelievable amount of energy and intensity in our preparation.

Q. Only six completions on the day, but three of them went to Hunter Long, and he had some big plays again. He's been doing that all year.
STEVE ADDAZIO: He has, yeah.

Q. Can you talk about what he's bringing to the offense right now?
STEVE ADDAZIO: He's a gifted athlete. He's a 6'5", 265-pound guy that runs real fast, and he's got great hands. He's a playmaker. He's a good blocker, and he does all the other things well as well. But he's an explosive playmaker in the throw game, and that's been fairly consistent. That's what you need. You need to be explosive. You need to make plays. He made two big screen catches for us that were huge, and he will continue to grow and develop.

Q. Given, Steve, what's ahead next Saturday night down in South Carolina, how important is it to establish that mentality on both sides of the ball in the trenches knowing that that test next week is going to be just that much tougher?
STEVE ADDAZIO: Yeah, I think our guys are mature and know that we have to play at a high level. We're going to go on the road and play in a tough environment against an outstanding football team. What we have to do is keep the physicality that we had today. We have to play with our -- with who we are, and we're a physical football team, and it has to start there, both sides of the ball.

We've got to tackle hard. We've got to be aggressive on defense, and on offense, we've got to be very, very physical, and of course we'll have to be much more balanced.

I think that we can grow from today, and we can move forward and have a great week of preparation and go down there and just flat play real hard.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

ASAP Sports, Inc. | T: 1.212 385 0297