Boston College Athletics
Football Prepares For Hokies
October 06, 2006 | Football
Oct. 6, 2006
The following is a partial transcript of BC Football Coach Tom O'Brien's October 6 media teleconference:
Q: How does playing on Thursday shift your preparation?
A: "Well, it drives everybody here crazy (because of getting off schedule). Other than that, hopefully we will be rested and get our legs back and get some players back and get players healthy. You need some time off. It would be better to have a whole week off but we don't have that. I think those are the benefits of playing a Thursday night game, other than that, as with (the FSU-NC State) game, the ACC is Thursday night television, the only game on TV and I think it helps with exposure for our program."
Q: Do you think your defense has turned a corner these last two weeks or are they going to be a work in progress?
A: "We haven't settled as well as I would have liked to at this point. I think we will go game by game. We are going to play another ranked team coming in here and it's going to be a great challenge. I think people may have questioned some of the defense early but they went up against the best returning offensive line in the conference the second game of the year. They went up against a great offensive line against BYU - who doesn't allow sacks or a lot of pressure. We got a little pressure against BYU but we got a lot more these last two weeks out of a four man rush, without blitzing, so, we are still trying to find our way."
Q: Are you getting more injured players back with the week off?
A: "Hopefully our quarterback is a little healthier than he was. We'll see Taji Morris (who didn't play last week) and Toal who wasn't able to play at the Maine game."
Q: Are you concerned about Brian Toal's injury becoming more and more of a lingering one?
A: "Well, he hasn't been up to full strength and it's not the injury he had last year and it's not the same shoulder. It's a different injury. But, his strength has been improving and getting better and we chose to hold him out last week, except to run the football and not take a shot on his shoulder and he's getting stronger and stronger and hopefully he'll be strong enough to participate this week."
Q: Has he participated in practice this week?
A: "No hitting."
Q: Can you talk a little bit about Matt (Ryan) and asses his first five games of the season?
A: "I think that he has done a good job. It's unfortunate that he hasn't been healthy since the first half of the first game of the year but hopefully we can get him back to as close to he can to being whole for this game and then go on. He's such a competitor. I think he sees things, he's very quick with his reads, he makes a lot of right decisions and he's played some pretty good defenses thus far. It's only going to get tougher on him with the Virginia Tech defense as well as down the road but I think that he is up to the challenge and we feel very good about our chances with Matt at quarterback."
Q: Do you feel he is mobile enough to protect himself?
A: "He's much more mobile now than he was the second week of the season."
Q: Third down conversions and placing the responsibility on himself...
A: "No, we all take responsibility. It's coaching, it's playing, it's the receivers, and it's the offensive line. That's the way he is but we all have to take responsibility. We have to do a better job and that's one of the things we tried to study earlier in the week, how we can be better and went out and tried to practice to be better. We're going to play the number one pass defense in the conference on Thursday night. They are probably the top third down conversion defense, they way they play. It will be a challenge but we will be ready for it on Thursday night."
Q: What other areas are you hoping to improve upon?
A: "Hitting the right guys on the field in the right spots so that we can be better in all facets of the game - running game, passing game, run defense, pass defense, special teams."
Q: How beneficial do you think the couple of day's rest that you have had are?
A: "I think they are always beneficial. You get your legs back. Everybody is tired, bruised and sore and those things heal and you're a little bit fresher and we're going to have to play very fast and be right on the money. We're going to have to be near perfect on Thursday night if we expect to win."
