Marshall University Athletics
Quotes/Video from Doc Holliday's Sept. 15 Press Conference
9/15/2015 12:00:00 AM | Football
Press Conference Video
Marshall Game Notes
Opening statement:
Captains for this week will be Jarquez Samuel, Corey Tindal, Davonte Allen and Michael Selby. As you know, we weren't the best team out there last week, so we have to work extremely hard this week on becoming a better football team, becoming better individuals and getting better offensively. So, the plan is to play both Birdsong and Chase Litton on Saturday. We'll play two quarterbacks and see what happens. This team we have coming in here, when they played Rutgers, they were in that game early on. To be honest with you, if they did not put the ball on the ground against Old Dominion late in the fourth quarter, it's a 24-17 game. They have good athletes. Greg Hankerson, their quarterback; when you turn the film on and watch him, he's a problem. For Rutgers, he was problem. For Old Dominion, he was a problem, so he'll be a problem for us if we don't contain him. He's tremendous. He was at FAU and FAU at one time thought that he was going to be their quarterback over the guy that now you all know is pretty good. He's a problem and we have to contain him because he can beat you with his feet. He can also throw it. Then they have two receivers: one played at Syracuse and is very talented and the other, Sangster, had over 100 yards versus Rutgers. They have Deon King, the linebacker, number 53, who's a tremendous football player. I think the strength of their defense is their two corners, so we have to focus on us becoming a better football team this week and get ready to play these guys.
Thoughts on Chase Litton's camp:
Well to be honest, and you all saw the same thing I did, which was Chase and Birdsong making plays all through camp. There's no doubt in my mind that Birdsong earned the job throughout spring and all throughout camp, but when you get in that game, you have to make plays. You have to make plays at the quarterback position and we didn't make enough plays against Ohio University in order to win that football game. There's competition at every position. If the running back doesn't play well then you play another running back. Same thing with the offensive line and the quarterback is no different. We have to open that thing up because if Birdsong is the kind of player I think he is and the kind of person I think he his, which he is; he's a competitor and he'll welcome that. He'll compete. We're going to play them both. You know, I saw the same things out of Chase. He does things very naturally, he's very athletic, he makes throws and he does all those things, but at the quarterback position, you have to be able to make plays at some point. You can't become one dimensional. If you do, you have problems against anybody you play, especially a good football team. We have to see what happens there. We're playing both during practice this week. They'll both be in there with the ones and in probably the third series of the game, you'll see Chase trot out there and see how he plays.
On his team's fitness coming into the Ohio game:
We heard all week about emotional letdowns and questions like, `did you prepare as much?' I didn't see that. You turn that film on and you see the defense ran around like they ran around against Purdue. On special teams, we made 10/12 goals on special teams. The team went up there and I thought we had a good week of practice. I thought we spent a lot of time in cold tubs and did a lot of different things, but I didn't see practice Tuesday and Wednesday any differently than the week prior to the Purdue game. If you go up there and a you're tired team, the offense, defense and special teams doesn't play well and they're not running around and they're not doing all that then I would say, `well, you know what, maybe that was an issue.' I didn't see that. I didn't see an effort issue. The offensive line, with the exception of a couple times, blocked pretty well. I didn't see that. We had way too many penalties. Every time I looked up it was first down and 25, we gain eight then it's second and 17. At the end of the day, we overcame a lot of that adversity and into the fourth quarter we're down four points with great field position; no different than it was against Purdue. You take one of those drives and we score, we're up, but we didn't do it. We didn't make the plays we had to offensively. I don't think there was a let-down emotionally. I know we were prepared and I know the hotel was no different. We won eight straight games on the road and we were no different in the hotel or wherever we went. We just didn't execute on offense. They did a better job.
On whether or not Ohio did something Marshall didn't anticipate:
Not really, no. They lined up the way we thought they would line up. At the end of the day, let's give them a little credit too now. They had 19 of 22 starters that came back. They're a good football team. Toledo goes to Arkansas and Arkansas is a bowl team that's won seven games and was thinking about how they were going to compete in the West. Toledo beats Arkansas. Then Bowling Green comes and waxes Maryland who went to a bowl game last year. You have to give all those Mid-American teams credit. They're all good football teams and you have to go beat them. You have to be the best team on that particular day and offensively we didn't make enough plays. We could've played a lot of people and we wouldn't have beaten them. We have to get better offensively, continue to get better on defense and keep doing a good job in the kicking game. I don't think it had anything to do with going up there or this or that. I think it had something to do with us not making plays on offense; we didn't do it.
On whether or not the plan going into the season was to redshirt Litton:
I think that was the plan. If you felt Birdsong was your guy you'd like to separate the two, but at the end of the day, I'm all about winning football games. I'm not concerned about five years down the road. I'm concerned about right now; concerned about Saturday. He's a talented young freshman. When you play freshmen, you'll go through some growing pains. We all know that. When they're talented, some of those growing pains are a little easier to go through. So, we'll see.
On Deon King:
He can play for anybody. They have one guy that is in the NFL right now, a linebacker who played for them a year ago. They have good players. Ask Auburn; they're in the same league as Jacksonville State, who should've beaten Auburn at Auburn. By the end of the day, and I say it all the time: `you pick up the paper and somebody loses who shouldn't have.' There were several of them: Arkansas, Maryland and several others. They'll be some this Sunday and they'll be some next Sunday, so you have to work your tail off to make sure that it's not you, because they can beat you.
On Hankerson at FAU:
We knew some people on the staff that thought that Hankerson was going to be their quarterback of the future. He's talented and he's a pain in the neck. He can beat you with his feet. You know, Rutgers has some good players. They can make plays in spades and he made a lot of guys miss and did the same thing against Old Dominion.
On matching wits with former WVU teammate Jerry Holmes (NSU Defensive Coordinator):
We did. He looks a lot better than I do at this point, but Jerry is a heck of a guy. He was a great player and weighed about 160 pounds, but he played 12+ years in the NFL. He's a tremendous player and a tremendous guy. We coached together at one point and he's just a good human being. He's coordinating that defense and he's got them running all over the place. They're in the three-down look which is a little bit different for us. We've worked it every week at some point. It's a little different for us, so we have a great challenge for us this week in making sure we match the fronts and understand where they are and where we need to block.
