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ATLANTIC COAST CONFERENCE MEDIA CONFERENCEOctober 2, 2013Randy EdsallTHE MODERATOR: We now welcome Maryland Head Coach Randy Edsall, whose Terrapins will travel to Tallahassee for a Saturday game against the eighth ranked Florida State Seminoles at Doak Campbell Stadium. Again, the game will be a noon kickoff, nationally televised by ESPN. With that, we'll bring on Coach, ask for a brief opening statement, and then go to questions. Coach? COACH EDSALL: Thanks, Mike. We got a tremendous opportunity but also a tremendous challenge this weekend going down to Tallahassee and Doak Campbell Stadium and playing FSU. Jimbo has got those guys playing very, very well. When you just take a look at the statistics offensively and defensively and you see the speed on special teams, they're well coached. They do a great job. Like I said, we'll have our hands full as we go down there this weekend. THE MODERATOR: Questions for Coach Edsall. Q. What's made your pass rush so effective this year? COACH EDSALL: Well, I think it always starts with the players. We have some guys, Marcus Whitfield and Yannik Cudjoe‑Virgil and Quinton Jefferson and Andre Monroe and a few other guys, they just, they really understand what it takes to be a good pass rusher. Greg Gattuso and Lyndon Johnson have done a good job of drilling the fundamentals. Also, we've done some things schematically that I think we try to put our guys in the best position to be successful. Ultimately, it's the ability of those kids to take the coaching that they're getting and then applying it there on the practice field and then transform it to the game field. Q. Are you sitting here in the top 25 surprised to be at the starting off so well, or did you kind of‑‑ this is exactly how you figured you'd be this summer? COACH EDSALL: Well, I had a tremendous amount of confidence in our team. What we went through a year ago, I think, made us stronger. We went through a lot of adversity, and we see how people react to that and knowing we were going to get some guys back on board. I did, I had a good feeling about our team, but, again, you never know how it's going to be until you go out on the field and play. Through all their hard work and being coachable, they put themselves in the position we're in. We're only four games in. We have a heck of a lot more to go than just four games. Q. Yes, good morning. Coach, Jameis Winston getting so much of the praise, rightfully so, but could you talk a little bit about the weapons he has, and specifically, his receivers don't drop too many balls. What have you seen when looking at them? COACH EDSALL: Well, I see guys that are tremendously athletic, who have a lot of God given ability, and then also who are well‑coached. I mean, you can't‑‑ it's one of those situations where who do you try to take away? Because if you try to take somebody away, they've got somebody else that can hurt you. Not only when you're talking about their wide receivers in Rashad Greene and Kelvin Benjamin and Isaiah Jones, but you've got to throw in there Nick O'Leary at the tight end position as well because he's an outstanding receiver, and you've got Kenny Shaw and Christian Griffith. You've got all those guys. So it's like what do you do? I think that's the thing that makes them so good offensively. The quarterback can beat you with his legs, and he can beat you with his arm, and they got Devonta Freeman and James Wilder. So they got the total package‑‑ Carlos Williams. They're very tough to defend. Q. Randy, how much has this being last year in the ACC, does it ever come up? Is it part of the storyline within the program for you this year? COACH EDSALL: No. We're just trying to go out and get better each and every week. Just that's all we're trying to do is take them one game at a time. We're fortunate that we're 4‑0 right now. We know we've got a very tough one in Florida state, it's the opening game for us in the ACC. So it's the next game on the schedule. After this game, we go to the next one. That's just really all the focus is. How can we get better from week to week and continue to elevate our level of play? That's what I'm concerned with, and that's what our team is concerned with. Q. Hey, Randy, how's everything going? COACH EDSALL: Doing good. Q. Talk about Winston, the quarterback for Florida State. I know you haven't seen him‑‑ any quarterbacks this year in the four games that you have seen somebody similar to Winston? COACH EDSALL: No, I think he reminds me a lot of E.J. Manuel, who they had a year ago there at Florida State. I'm just very, very impressed with his poise and with his level of maturity in terms of being a redshirt freshman his first time playing. You can see that he's playing with a lot of confidence. They've done a good job with him, and he's playing at a very, very high level. We hope to be able to‑‑ that he doesn't have that kind of a game against us on Saturday. But very impressed with him. He can do it all. He's very strong. He can make‑‑ extend plays, throws the ball extremely well. When you see the talent and you see the coaching that he's getting and you know the coaching he's getting, you can understand why he's having the success he's having. Q. How difficult is it to play there in Doak Campbell Stadium? Seems like Maryland, every time they get down there, it's been one of those horrors. What have you guys got to do? COACH EDSALL: We haven't, we've never won there. So that's something that we've just got to go down and try to make sure that we just focus in on what we can control and what we can do, and hopefully we can go and play our type of game. You know, we don't make mistakes that are not going to allow us to have an opportunity to win. Q. Good luck on Saturday. COACH EDSALL: Thank you. Q. Coach, I was just interested. Florida State's defense looked very impressive first three weeks, but Boston College, obviously, had some success against them last week. What do you see on film? Is there vulnerability there? Or should we give all the credit to BC? COACH EDSALL: I think they're a very talented, fast defense, aggressive defense. And, again, you're going to have to earn your stripes against them. You're going to have to go and beat them. They're not going to beat themselves. Hopefully, we can go down and do the things that we're capable of doing and move the ball and utilize all of our weapons that we have in order to move the ball and score points. THE MODERATOR: Coach, thanks for being with us. We're out of time. Good luck this weekend, and we'll talk to you next Wednesday. COACH EDSALL: Appreciate it, Mike. Thanks. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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