Jax State Football Weekly Press Conference – Coastal Carolina Week

On opening the season on national television
“We are really excited for our players and our program. We had the opportunity to do that really the last two years, and it was, I think it was a lot of fun for our guys, and certainly playing on a Thursday night with some national TV is going to be good for our program. Our guys have worked hard and don’t think we’ve really kind of thought about too much of the TV thing. We’ve been worried about getting ready to play, but they’ve worked hard. I’m really proud of our guys and ready to play game.”

On having many new players in the program
“This is probably the norm now for this day and age, with transfer portal. I think half or, almost half our team are new guys, which is usually really difficult to manage. I think the returning players that we got really helped those guys understand our culture, and then we didn’t waiver any shape or form and how we do things culturally wise. You know, we want to make sure that those guys are coming in to hear the new guys. They’re good players, but they had to adapt to what we did, the way we do things, and they did a good job of that, and I think they’ll continue to do that. And that’s just, I mean, that makes it harder nowadays, we got 60, or whatever it is, we got new but they’ve done a good job of that. And now the games, they got to make sure they maintain that during the season.”

On leadership in the program
“We’ve got a big senior class, there’s 25 guys, but about 10 of them or so are new and so, you know, those guys can help a little bit with leadership, but it’s really like J Rock and Sean (Brown), the guys that have been here for three years, the whole time since we’ve been here, are the ones that got to take charge from the leadership standpoint. I always said this, I’m not worried about leadership during practice. That’s what coaches are for, but you know, off the field, in the locker room, in game preparation, on their own time, that’s where it takes hold. For the handful of seniors that have been here the whole time, I think they have done a good job of that and have to do a good job of that.”

On the quarterback position
“We don’t play today. We don’t have to name a starter until the kickoff, but both Logan (Smothers) and Tyler Huff are the two older guys, and Logan has a little more experience in our system, but Tyler’s an experienced player and has played a lot of football and has done a good job. So those two are, right now, in my opinion, co-starters, and then Zion Turner’s right behind them as well. So we’ve got three guys that have gotten a lot of game experience, which is a good thing. Now it’s all new for us, for some of them in our system, but I feel pretty comfortable that with those three guys playing and even Caden Creel and Te’Sean Smoot have shown some good stuff too. I think we’re deeper at quarterback than, probably, certainly than we’ve been in the last couple years.”

On preparing for Coastal Carolina
“They’ve got a lot of new guys as well. I don’t have a depth chart or anything, other than what we read and what we see from the returning guys, we don’t know a whole lot about them. I think we probably have more guys that they’re familiar with, if you look at our depth chart, but at the same time, they’ve got the same coaches. They do a great job. They’re very multiple on defense, they do a whole lot of stuff. It makes it hard to prepare for and then offensively, I know their coordinator pretty well, Travis Trickett, does a great job. They’re well coached.”

On upgrades to AmFirst Stadium at Burgess-Snow Field
“I think if you walk into our AmFirst Stadium, you’re going to recognize a few new things. This building first (Loring and Debbie White Building), and the ribbon board just goes underneath that. On the visitor side, we’ve got some outdoor suites, and they finished that up. That was pretty good. I think the first thing you notice is our new turf, which I think looks really good. I think it the stadium looks clean and sharp, and I’m hoping we’ll have a great crowd. I mean, obviously, to have the Marching Southerners, we should have a great student turnout, because it’s a Thursday night and class has just started, and so I think we’ll have a great crowd. It should be a really, really good atmosphere. Everything in this facility, obviously is, really nice. So, we’re very blessed to have what we have right now.”

Sean Brown, R-Sr., TE

On the new guys and QBs
“We got a lot of the same guys from last year that are coming back and some new guys coming in at tight end, the running back room, but for the most part, I think we have a bunch of experienced guys. Like Coach Rodriguez was saying, with Tyler coming in, Zion coming in they have a lot of playing experience, but we’re confident whether any of them get into the game. I kind of talked about this a couple weeks ago with our media days, they all have a different kind of style, they all have a different way. They all have different mindsets about it and everybody’s confident, you know, in catching the ball from any of them.”

On blocking or catching passes
“Everybody wants the ball, but to put your nose into somebody else’s chest, you kind of take some pride in that aspect of the game as well. It’s really just kind of doing whatever it takes to win. It’s no secret that we like to run the ball, and everybody knows what we can pass, but when you run the ball as well as we do, I don’t really see a reason we would need to force anything like that. So, Like Coach Rod was saying with the receivers, everybody takes pride in it, you know, because everybody knows that it really helps us win.”

J-Rock Swain, Sr., Bandit

On the excitement of opening a season
“What excites me is playing on TV. Every time you get to play on TV is fine. You get to show new faces. People that haven’t seen Jacksonville State play football. They can see us on TV.”

On leadership
“You just have to listen to your coaches and do your job. You’ve got to come out and play football, no matter if you play FBS or FCS football. I think football is the same.”

On the new defensive changes
“You Just got to adapt to the culture. You got a lot of coaches that coach different. Coach Alley, he just coached different than the culture that we have now. You got to be able to just with life, everything is going change. You just got to be able to adapt to what it is.”

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