Blue White Illustrated

O c T O B E R 2 4 , 2 0 1 5 B L U E W H I T E O N L I N E . c O M 13 COACHSPEAK | E X c E R P T S F R O M J A M E S F R A N K L I N ' S P O S T G A M E P R E S S E R Opening statement: What I just talked to the team about was that we were resilient tonight. There was adver- sity that we faced. There were highs and lows. There were big plays and plays that we have to clean up. We uncharac- teristically fumbled the ball. That is something we haven't really done all year long. Our defense made big plays. I thought early on, they had us on our heels with some of the check-with-me and quarterback run game. We got some turnovers but we kept being in situa- tions where our offense was backed up. We weren't able to swing the field most of the first quarter. They had a good plan. They basically said that we are going to go high-risk, high-reward. Ba- sically they said your receivers won't beat us. But we made big plays tonight, and a number of guys made big plays. I thought the punting was important. We didn't allow [William] Likely to have a dramatic impact on the game, as we know he can. Great win on the road in the Big Ten. We are 1-0 this week. We are bowl eligible. We will talk about it for about 30 seconds and then move on and go back to being 1-0 again. Like I told the seniors, tonight allowed us to keep our family together for another month or so at the end of the season. On the defense: I thought early on, the mobile quarterback was a pain. All the run-pass options kind of get you on your heels. Because we are so aggres- sive on stopping the run, they pull the ball out and now the linebackers are va- cated and then they throw the ball. They are also doing a quarterback run- ning game. So you have to stop the run- ning back, you have to stop the quarterback and you have to stop the run-pass options. It's a challenge. The most important thing is that we held them to one less point than our offense scored. On Maryland's game plan: If we go back and watch this film the amount of cover-zero, which is man, no deep safeties, or cover-one, with pressed corners, they hadn't lived on that. Usu- ally when you play someone like that and you burn them a couple times deep, they stop. And they didn't. Good for them. Again, it was a good plan. The fact that they were able to move the ball on us and then force us to throw the vertical game like that and make plays was a good plan. On Christian Hackenberg's per- formance: I think what he did was he threw balls and put balls in positions where our guys had chances to make plays. We had another one at the end of the game. On the receivers' performance: I was big-time proud of all of them. They are doing a good job, with the opportu- nities that they get, taking advantage of them. Geno Lewis hasn't had a lot of opportunities lately, but he went up and snagged the ball. I'm really proud of him and how he handled that.

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