Sept. 19, 2006

Opening Statement
Florida Atlantic is a pretty decent team that obviously we need to play well to beat. Almost every game is a struggle for us it seems, we will see what happens this weekend. We are going to practice a little tougher, little harder; see if that will help us play a little tougher, harder this week. We started that yesterday. As far as quarterbacks, Syvelle (Newton) is ready and Blake (Mitchell) is ready. Those two will probably be the ones doing the playing. It just appears that playing both of them may give us the best chance to win; we will see how it works out. Right now we have Syvelle ready to start and Blake ready to come in and hopefully do what he does best. We are fairly healthy; Emmanuel Cook may be out this game, he sprained his knee last week. We are looking forward to our third home game. It’s a very important game, like I said; our goal is to win more than we lose. We avoided an upset last week. We were very careless in that fourth quarter, hopefully we all learned a lesson including me, with a 17-point lead we probably should have not even attempted a pass in our own territory, that sort of got it started, a botched punt added to it and this, that and the other. Hopefully we learned from that.

On Syvelle Newton at quarterback
“Syvelle is a very smart young man. He is very capable of doing this, he just hasn’t been trained. Last week, we tossed him out there and said `Let’s play.’ In practice, every now and then, he would drop back and throw and look pretty good doing it. You have to have confidence. The other night when we had a pass called on about the 10, 15-yard line, he tucked it and ran. We had a guy cutting over the middle against a two-deep zone and he didn’t throw it. He didn’t feel comfortable getting it in there and was afraid someone might pick it off. I said you have to trust it. He just hasn’t been trained to do that; hopefully we can train him up a little better. He’s an excellent passer; gosh he’s about as good a passer as anyone on the team. He just hasn’t been trained to throw to an area, but he made some beautiful throws.”

On Platoon with Syvelle and Blake
“I have a feeling both will play and really Syvelle is ok with that. He understands that this is all new for him, and maybe playing two of them might be the best way to go. We need some kind of spark; certainly Syvelle gives us the ability to run the ball out of there. Looking back at the game Saturday night, we should have had him running more in the fourth quarter than whatever we were trying to do. He’s an excellent runner and we need to use that part to help us win.

On Offensive Line
“We are trying to get Matt Raysor ready to play some. Raysor deserves a chance in there; he’s been over there going on his third week now, look for him to play left guard. I told Coach Hunt today let’s think about starting him if he has a good week of practice.”

On Syvelle and Blake
We know we have a combination guy who can run and pass (Syvelle Newton) and you are hoping that Blake through two years of now of training and looking at coverages and making decisions, can do that a little bit better than Syvelle.

On Blake Mitchell
“He’s apologized to all of us and so I think he has handled it as well as he could. In the long run, maybe it will be good for him, something needed to shake him up and maybe his direction now is a lot better in life. I think he was really, totally embarrassed by what he did and he has apologized and will try to do things better in the future. Only time will tell.”

On Making Changes
“We know where we are. Anytime you start four, five freshman players, especially two in the offensive line, you know it’s going to be a little bit of a struggle. The effort level last week was not very good, especially up front. It wasn’t good enough. When linemen fall on the ground in the fourth quarter trying to block, there is something wrong somewhere. I told our guys last night, `You guys play harder blocking each other in the inside drill, our defensive guys, we come off the ball and hit harder than we do in games.’ I don’t understand that. We really have to emphasize more effort and so forth if we are going to be any good around here. We are going to practice tougher and hopefully we will get a few guys complaining saying, `This ain’t fair and so forth.’ I think we just have been way too nice on our guys and they don’t understand the importance of every game around here.”

On Andy Boyd returning
“We think he is going to be ready to play so he is going to start at tight end. We brought Robert Pavlovic back from the scout team after a week off, he had a very difficult game against Georgia, hopefully he will play with some more effort and act like he cares from now on. Andy (Boyd) can block. He is by far the best blocking tight end that we got, so if he’s able to play, we can run the ball towards his side.”