Blue White Illustrated

S E P T E M B E R 4 , 2 0 1 6 B L U E W H I T E O N L I N E . c O M 8 C O A C H S P E A K • 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 Can you speak about Trace McSor- ley's toughness and about his com- posure especially on a day like today making his first start? I thought his composure was really good. That's kind of just who he is. He's been that everyday since I've seen him on-campus through the recruiting process. There's no doubt that we're going to run our quarterbacks so that toughness aspect is going to be really im- portant and he displays that all the time. He displays it in the weight room, in summer workouts and in practice so there's no surprise that it showed up in the game as well. I was pleased with him. I mean you look at his accuracy, even some of his incompletions. He had one that he threw away in the red zone, which was clearly a throwaway. Another where he drilled a receiver in the facemask. I thought he played very well overall. Did you realize Blake Gillikin was that good and got a standing ovation? With a 47-yard average in his first start, did you think he would be able to do that, and how will that impact and change things for you guys this year? I didn't know he got a standing ovation, so thank you everybody for doing that, it's great to reinforce a positive. As you guys I know, I tried to kind of temper my expectations a little, although he showed that. If you talked to our team, every- body talked about his summer, and the way he was kicking the ball it was clearly obvious to everybody that he had a chance. We never know until the games get going and practice gets serious, but he showed it time a?er time a?er time in practice. We tracked every punt. His location could have been a little better. He had one drop where the nose of the ball was down so he didn't get it off as clean as he would have liked to. I think he can be better than what he showed today. I went to him right when we start our typical warmups when we do a sky punt and he knocked it about 12 yards out of the end zone. I said to him that his legs were a little live today and he was excited about the game so just to make sure he understood that. How would assess your red zone play? Do you feel you le$ some points out there, and also why did you go for two early on? We had a plan to just be aggressive on the opening drive and we wanted to go for two. I think we did leave some points on the board and we weren't as clean as we wanted. We ran a little naked-type play where it was a run-pass option to Mike Gesicki, who would have had two touchdowns in the game, was wide open with Trace rolling right it's an eas- ier play, but going le? the quarterback has got to get his hips around and he threw it straight into the ground. If he lo?s it, it's a wide-open touchdown, but we have to be cleaner and score touchdowns.

• Cover