Everything Boston College Head Coach Bill O’Brien Said Ahead of Michigan State
The Boston College Eagles football team is looking to get back into the win column as it takes on the Michigan State Spartans on Saturday night.
On Wednesday, Eagles head coach Bill O’Brien spoke about what he’s seen at practice and how the team is preparing for its next opponent.
Below is a transcript of everything O’Brien said.
Q: 26 yards per game, it's No. 6 in the nation. What's got into that and having you guys keep improving it moving forward?
O’BRIEN: Yeah, I think it's hard to pinpoint. We’ve emphasized it clearly. We have a strong belief that if you can win certain battles within the game, the turnover battle, the penalty battle, red area, third down, then you're going to have a shot to win the game. So we've emphasized it and it's only three games, so I think that's a big goal of ours, though it's our part of our formula for winning is to not commit pre-snap penalties.
Q: I just wanted to ask about Cameron Martinez. I know we saw him returning back from injury last week, and he was out there returning punts as well. I just want to hear kind of where he is position-to-position, and what you're kind of expecting from him in terms of what you see on defense and then what you see on those punt returns.
O’BRIEN: Yeah, I think one he fair caught, the other one, he probably should have fair caught. He's just getting back into it. He's been out for a while. He's a really good player. We also have Khari Johnson, who plays that position too, who's had a really good season too. So we've got two really good players there So Cam will play. Both those guys will play and we're really happy with Cam, just unfortunate that he had a hamstring issue but he's coming back, and he's got a real good couple days here, so looking forward to seeing how he plays the rest of the year.
Q: Coach, after last week's game, you spoke about how you don't believe in moral victories, and I'm curious how you approach coaching a team when they did play really well but you want the message to be, ‘Oh, we were really close. We play harder, we played better, we can get the win,’ as opposed to, ‘Oh, we were so close, we kind of coast and do this moving forward.’
O’BRIEN: I talked to them a lot about that, like that there are no moral victories. You either win or you lose and I think the big thing for us is that many, many times in these games, if we're playing well, then it's going to come down to eight to ten plays, probably in all three phases and so, you show them those plays, ‘Hey, man, if we, if we take care of the ball here’ or if we make this tackle here, or if we make a better decision on special teams here, execute better, then we have a shot to win these games. And so that's really what it comes down to. And I talked to them a lot about, you know, these guys that desire to play pro football, that's what it's all about in pro football, too. It comes down to eight to ten plays in a game, and you either make the play, execute the play, or you don't, and if you don't, then you're not going to be where you want to be. And if you do, then you will be where you won't be. So that's something we work very hard on.
Q: I know you guys are focused on Michigan State, but I was just curious, have you seen a difference in the players, mentality, physicality or aggression this week in practice versus previous ones, or has it kind of been the same each as each week after the loss?
O’BRIEN: I think these guys have been very, very consistent in their approach to practice. I thought today we had a really good practice and I think that has a lot to do with it's gone all the way back to spring practice. We have a very strong philosophy and we're gonna wear pads, we're gonna learn how to block, we're gonna learn how to tackle, we’re gonna learn how to take on blocks, we plan our feet a lot. We don't do a lot of live, but it's a contact sport, so we have to learn how to callous our bodies to contact and I think, as you've seen over the course of the last month here our bodies are getting calloused to contact football, and that's what we try to do.
Q: Michigan State is No. 1 in the Big Ten in tackles for loss. Just how important is it to not go backwards in this game in particular?
O’BRIEN: Yeah, that's huge. I mean, I think that we have to cover them up up front. They do a really good job. They're good on defense, they do a really good job of playing technique, but also they can stunt, they can bring pressure and we've got to do a great job of communication and being on the right people. I think sometimes, the way that they do it, sometimes guys end up on the wrong people and are not going to the right people, and that's what happens. And so we've got to be really clued into what they're doing, and be ready for them to disguise and do something that may be a little bit different than what we've seen on tape, and try to execute at a high level on every play.
Q: This oriented offense is kind of a throwback offense, they run a lot of under center, not a ton of RPOs, think the only teams that run more under center the service academies. As you and Tim Lewis are kind of veterans in coaching football, going back to the 90s, are you guys almost excited to kind of face this throwback offense where it's like, ‘oh, this is real man football?’
O’BRIEN: Well, it's a really well coached team and it has a lot of things that we believe in. I don't really know their coaching staff really that well, but we have a lot of respect for them, because they play the game, they coach the game very similar to the way we do and, so I think it is going to be a good, it should be a good football game, a really good football game and we have a lot of respect for them. And they do, they do a really good job of coaching what they coach and their guys are very, very tough and very well coached.
Q: I can imagine for Tommy that when a team has an ability to take away what his legs can do, what he can do on the ground, it may get a little uncomfortable for him, because of how useful that is for his skill set, and it kind of looked like Missouri did that last week. And I just want to hear from you, how do you think that you can continue to kind of generate offense through Tommy's ability to run the football and now that more teams are finding out what that ability is like and how skilled he is at doing that, how can you continue to make ways for him to be able to run the ball?
O’BRIEN: Yeah, I'm not going to get into all that detail. I mean, you obviously, you know what you're talking about. Look, we've just got to continue to get ready for different opponents and what they're going to try to do and this week it's Michigan State and to the best of our ability coach the player, coach Tommy as to what we believe he needs to do to help us win the game. Quite obviously, he's definitely a dual threat. He can throw the ball, really, in my opinion, as well as he can run the ball and we have to be balanced, and so we strive for that. We coach him every day on what the game plan is and how we want to attack the defense that we're playing, and that's what we're going to continue to do.
KIM RANKIN