Spring Game: Postgame Quotes

POSTGAME QUOTES: Jay McGillis Memorial Spring Game
April 16, 2016
Alumni Stadium, Chestnut Hill, Mass.

Head Coach Steve Addazio
Opening statement…
"Quarterbacks I think did a really good job today. We probably could have been catching a little bit better – there's more plays left on the table – but with the wind and all of that that was going on there, I thought we threw it around pretty good. That's something that we worked on hard. We moved the ball and made some plays. When you divide it up it's going to be a low-scoring affair."

On the coordinators' play-calling…
"Today there were guys calling plays on both sides; there was mixing and matching. It wasn't like Scot [Loeffler was calling both offenses]. No, today was a day to have some fun. We said we were going to divide the teams up and let all of the assistant coaches call some plays and have some fun. We had a kind of a script of plays they were working off of which was kind of a minimal amount of stuff. It was fun. There were some good things to be had out there. There were just a couple of mismatches that I knew would occur just from putting some guys that don't run with the first team against some of the first team on the other side. That was on both sides. But we threw and caught it, probably left some plays on the field that looked like they could have been some pretty big plays out there. I thought it was fun to watch, I really did, from my perspective watching."

On the quarterbacks…
"They're all throwing it really good. Obviously Darius [Wade] and Patrick [Towles] are taking all of the reps. I think they've both done a great job. I thought that they both threw the ball really well today. I thought Patrick threw the ball really well. A couple of drops out there on that guy, but he chucked it. And Darius chucked it! They both got the thing out of their hands, now. That's as good as I've seen guys chuck it around. They were throwing it well. We weren't going to do much in the running game. We ran two or three plays all day. We really just wanted to throw it around a little bit."

On Towles' first pass of the day…
"I mean, beautiful pass. I think it was right on the money. I don't know; there should have been a couple of those. Jeff [Smith] is learning how to become a receiver right now. He's got that great speed. Those little things like learning how to go high point. There was another beautiful ball that he threw down the sideline. We've got some speed out there. Those guys can run. Thaddeus [Smith] can run, they can run. Mike Walker can run. Those guys can wheel. They got legit speed. They're fast. Put them all on one team and operate them together and put the line together. We saw a lot of progress this spring."

On the tight ends…
"Yeah, (Tommy) Sweeney and Chris Garrison. Chris Garrison, I don't know if he had many catching opportunities out there today, but Chris Garrison's caught the ball really well in spring ball. And then, of course, Jake Burt, we have to get him back, and Mike Giacone back. Those guys are out. We have a nice little arsenal of tight ends. I really like our backs. Obviously, Jon Hilliman's been out for the spring. He'll be fine, we're just holding him. He'll be back. We've got an arsenal of backs. Last year, we lost our quarterbacks and our backs. We're going to have some depth at running back and some real good depth at quarterback. Our roster is starting to really balance back out again."

On Davon Jones' quality runs…
"Oh yeah. Myles [Willis] had a couple of good runs, too. I don't think we call that many runs, at least for us anyway. I would say we threw it a lot more, but the intent was to throw it. It's hard when you play two 10-minute running quarters. That doesn't give you many plays. You never really get going. But this was more for the fun of it. We closed out Thursday. We had a hell of a day on Thursday. I really like how we left the field. I liked where we were at that point, a lot."

On his feelings about spring practices…
"I'm more than happy. I told the team yesterday, 'This is the best fundamental development I've seen in spring football practice in a long time.' Fundamentals, just really good fundamentals. I felt great about what we're doing. I know we're a raw football team, but I really love this team. Their work ethic's incredible. They have speed. They have talent and they love it. They love coming every day. You can see it out there. So we've just got to grow and continue to develop. I thought Aaron Monteiro, for example. He starts as a true freshman, whatever point of the year he started at, and he's come miles. He's still a freshman. He didn't become a freshman since November, but his play has come miles in a short amount of time. These guys have to just marinate and soak and get better, and time does that. I wish we could keep spring ball going for another seven weeks. Give them a break, because you can really feel the growth coming. The problem in football is that you don't get your hands back on them again until August, really, effectively. There's stuff you can do within their eight hour rules, but it's just hard. When you have a young roster coming up you're thirsty to do that. We don't have that veteran top end. We have a few, but not a lot. We will now, now that this thing's going to keep coming like this. Eventually this will be a very experienced football team that will be balanced. Just the fact that we played this game today the way we did. You've been here. We could never do it. We could actually function out there today. It's because there's balance, there's depth, there's balance in the roster. It just needs to mature."

On Colton Lichtenberg…
"He looked good, didn't he? He looked good at the end of the year. You saw the growth at the end of the year, and then all spring long. I want to say that in competitive settings, he maybe missed one field goal. You've got to feel good about his development. I thought we punted the ball well today. I felt Mike Knoll punted the ball well today, for never really having any game snaps doing it. But I think Colton really did look good. I thought that was encouraging. For those of you guys that come out there and watch the end of practices, I thought you could see it out there today. Somebody said it to me, but you don't sprawl out points today, and you're not going to, but the ball moves around pretty good. Especially with a mixed up roster like that. I was encouraged with what we saw."

On the defense…
"Defensively, we've done great. We've got some really good players on defense right now. We didn't do too much today. We played pretty vanilla; both sides of the ball. But on defense, we're not going to show everybody what we're going to do. You just can't do that. There wasn't a lot of pressures or any kind of that stuff, but I love where our defense is right now. I love it. I think we're talented, I think we're physical. I think we have a chance to have a very good defense."

On letting the defense attack…
"No. Can't. You just can't do that, for a lot of reasons. The biggest reason, quite frankly, is that you can't get all your patterns down like that and let everybody have a chance to do that. With the roster mixed up like this, and everybody mixed together like this, you get yourself into some compromised situations like that because the offensive lines are all gelled up or mismatched. A lot of reasons, but the fundamental growth on defense – the fundamental growth – has been great this spring. Fundamentals; use of the hands. Playing fundamental, not just relying on scheme, but relying on fundamentals. The development's been incredible. Credit Coach Pasqualoni and the front. What a job he's done with that defensive line. Coach Reid with those linebackers. If you watch the way they play and the way they use their hands, it's vastly improved. That's important because that gives you the ability in games to be able to get a four-man rush, play fundamental, and play some coverage and not put yourself in stress all day long. And that's a good thing. You need to be able to do that. I think we're making great strides to be able to do that, situationally."

Junior WR Thadd Smith
On the pass game…
"It felt good to be out there and compete. Pass-game wise, it was okay. I feel as though we still have a lot of work to do because it was our first time being out there, being in sync and on full go, but other than that it was good to me."

On what work needs to be done…
"I think that, for me, I need to get my plays down, get the right split, be locked in and focused mentally and get that connection with the quarterbacks."

On his connection with QB Patrick Towles…
"It's been pretty good. We still have a lot of work to do so now that spring ball is over, for May and June, we'll come back and we have to keep working and get that one-on-one work with Darius (Wade) and all of the rest of the quarterbacks."

On the offensive scheme…
"I like the offense. It is very diverse and mixed up. We're trying to get everyone the ball so they can make plays. I like it."

Sophomore QB Darius Wade
On how it felt to be back on the field…
"It feels great. We've definitely been looking forward to this, I definitely have. It feels great getting back in the beginning of spring and constantly developing with the boys on offense. And this is a nice little deal that we have, matching up the teams and making it more competitive than it has been in in years past so it was a lot of fun."

On the connections with the wide receivers…
"Just practice every day. That's what practice is for - just constantly developing a rhythm and a connection with the guys, and like I said, I just felt great. They were running good routes and they were just making plays.

On sophomore TE Tommy Sweeney…
"He's come along very big this spring and we're happy to have him. He's constantly getting better every day and we just know that he's going to be a big help. Tight ends are huge in this league so that's going to be a big help for us. "

On how the offense is different this year…
"Like you said, pretty much just passing attempts. The offense, like I said, it has different wrinkles. We have a new offensive coordinator but at the end of the day, it's Addazio's offense. We're trying to keep everything pretty base and vanilla today and we're just happy that we're able to connect and make some plays."

On practice…
"It's great. It's definitely necessary. You have to take advantage of all of the aspects of the passing game; the deep, the middle, and the low and screen and so forth. It was just great to be able to run all that and, as you saw, move the ball efficiently. We just have to work on finishing in the red zone so that we can put up some points. "

On the red zone offense…
"Red zone is something that takes some time in game planning. It's something that right now, in the spring, we haven't put too much emphasis on yet. As we get into fall practice, that is definitely going to be a major emphasis and we'll make sure we get that right."

Graduate QB Patrick Towles
On 50-yard throw to Jeff Smith…
"It felt good. It would have been a little better if he caught it; if I threw it better. It was nice. This was a lot of fun. It was pretty vanilla, play-calling and stuff today, but just getting out here. We mixed up teams a bunch. Yesterday was a lot of fun. Beautiful day, it was just a lot of fun."

On how he felt about all of his reps…
"It felt really good. We have Coach Frye over here, he's our run-game guy, so it was fun to mix it up with him a little bit. He took my input a bunch. Anthony [Brown] got to get some reps, so it was good. A lot of fun today and that's what it was. We had a great 14 practices. It was awesome. We're fighting hard and competing hard and then this was kind of the culmination of everything, so it felt really, really good."

On the wide receivers…
"Today I thought they all played well. I wish I would have had (Tommy) Sweeney on my team, unfortunately Darius (Wade) took him from me. Thadd (Smith) made that play at the end there; Jeff (Smith), too. Guys are playing hard. I can live with everything else if everybody's playing hard.

On if he likes to roll out…
"For sure; trying to keep the defense on their toes. We can run the ball effectively and that makes that play action rollout stuff a lot better. It gives you more time, gets me out on the edge. I can run a little bit, so it's better if I have that option."
On how the offense is different from Kentucky's…
"It's a lot different. It's more complex, but I like it. It's going to prepare me well for hopefully the next level. It's a lot of different packages and a lot of shifts and motions, but Coach Loeffler has been awesome. So I'm just excited."

On mixing up the passing plays…
"Yeah, for sure, no doubt. Like I said, it's going to be a lot different. Coach Loeffler is doing an awesome job, coming in here and mixing it up. We're making a lot of plays down the field. We'll get Charlie [Callinan] back in the summer and that'll help us a bunch. There's going to be a lot of plays made in this stadium this year."

On how spring ball went overall…
"Really, really well. Always when you're part of a new team, practicing with new guys, it takes you a lot of time to get used to them. Luckily for us, spring practice was really spread out a lot. We had spring break and Easter break in the middle. We had one practice before spring break. Everybody was playing hard, but it was a first practice. Once we got back, we had three or four good ones, but once we got back from Easter break, we took the bubble down, we started playing a lot better, executing a lot more. I'm just excited for this summer. We'll continue to improve and then I'm looking forward to the fall."

Boston College Athletics

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Players Mentioned

Jake Burt

Chris Garrison

Jon Hilliman

Davon Jones

Mike Knoll

Colton Lichtenberg

Aaron Monteiro

Jeff Smith

Thadd Smith

Tommy Sweeney

Patrick Towles

Darius Wade

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