Post-Scrimmage Quotes

Head Coach Dennis Erickson and Quarterback Rudy Carpenter give their impressions of today's scrimmage.

Dennis Erickson

Overall Thoughts

“There were some good things and some bad things. I thought the intensity level, in terms of hitting and being physical picked up pretty good. I thought those first groups are both playing pretty well, when you start getting down towards the end you see more screw-ups, you see some fumbled snaps. Rudy (Carpenter) is playing pretty well. We’re making progress, I like where we are at right now.”

On the Penalties

“Penalties were down some but we still had too many.”

On the new Spread Formations

“We did some awfully good things out of them; we have to continue to do that. We went four wides a little bit, not as much as we were last week. There were certain things that we wanted to work on today.”

On the play of the Defense

“Defensively we were flying around. Had a couple fumbles and turned it over. The biggest thing we are doing is we are making too many mental mistakes, assignment wise. We were a little simpler today on defense.”

On the play when Omar Bolden and Chris McGaha both collapsed to the ground in pain

“Oh my God. I wouldn’t have cared if we went another play. I saw those two guys go down and my life flashed in front of me. They are both O.K. They both had injuries from last week, but they jumped up pretty fast.”

On the Running Game

“I thought we ran the ball pretty well. Keegan (Herring) gives you what he gives you, shiftiness. Dimitri (Nance) is solid in all aspects of it, a good pass protector and a short yardage guy. Jarrell other than that last fumble ran very very hard today. He kind of jumped out at you today. We have four pretty good guys. Keegan and Dimitri both catch it well. Those would be the two if I was going to play tomorrow. Obviously you have to be able to play them all.”

Rudy Carpenter

On the opening drive for the first team offense

“It was a good drive. I think that has been the thing that we have been trying to work on the most all spring, really trying to start out faster. We got down there and in the first three plays kicked a field goal. I think within our first ten plays we scored ten points, that’s obviously good for us, now we just have to try and maintain for the rest of the scrimmage. I thought it was good overall.”

On his Overall Thoughts

“It was similar to what it was last week. If we can get the intensity up more it will be good for next week. I think overall we are doing O.K., we need to just keep working.”

On if the Pass Protection is Better So Far

“It is hard to tell in a scrimmage because they can’t hit me. It’s always hard to tell if I would have gotten sacked or if I would have gotten hit, so I have to wait and see. It feels like it and it seems like it.”

On the new Screens and Spread Formations

“We are just trying to find as many ways as possible to keep teams honest so they can’t sit back there and blitz us so much. We have to find as many ways as possible; it has been hurting our defense so hopefully we can keep it going.”