Oct. 22, 2013

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Sophomore linebacker Marcquis Roberts

On Missouri football…

This is the first time a lot of us are going to Missouri. I think we are prepared. They have a very good offense and a lot of very good skill players.

On Missouri being the top team in the SEC East…

I am not surprised. They always had the talent to do it, they were just getting used to the SEC.

On finding out Missouri was good…

I think the first game I really paid attention to was the Georgia game; they played really well. They had played really well up until that point too.

On getting back in the mix in the SEC East…

It’s possible. We know we have to win ever game from here. We put ourselves in that situation; we have just got to make the best of it.

On having a chance to get to the SEC Championship…

Yeah (we do have a chance), but for the most part we are just worried about this weekend, playing Missouri. Then we will worry about the following weeks as they come.

On the mindset of the defense…

Get better each week. We had a pretty good game last week, but it wasn’t good enough, so we have to just keep getting better.

On the defense playing harder in the 4^th quarter…

We are in the process of doing it; we are still working at it. We still have a lot of room to get better.

Freshman Linebacker Skai Moore

On how much he knew about Missouri football before this week…

I didn’t really know much about it. This week will be my first time watching any type of film on them. I never caught a game out of high school or previous years, like watching it either. So this is my first week really getting to know about the Tigers.

On being surprised they lead the SEC East…

Yeah. I was surprised when I found out the news. Anything could happen, so we are just going to go in there and play our game.

On preparing on defense…

Just a lot of film study, trusting in Coach Ward’s scheme. That’s the main thing that matters. We all have to follow the scheme and trust it, because they put us in the best situation to win.

On what he was thinking when he found out Missouri was leading the East…

When I first found out that they were in the lead of the East was probably on the bus after. We were talking about it, like I said I really didn’t have any prior knowledge about Missouri or anything. I was just going in there expecting it was going to be cold. That’s pretty much all I know about it. I think we will be ready.

On getting back into the SEC race…

Definitely. We are confident and we feel like we can go in there and take care of business this week. But, we are all just taking it one game at a time and focusing on the opponent each week. Anything can happen, so we are just going to go in there and do our thing.

Junior offensive guard A.J. Cann

On Missouri being undefeated…

You know it’s the SEC; all the teams are built tough here. Every team in the SEC is pretty good. We will prepare for them like we do every team.

On playing a top-5 team…

We aren’t really paying attention to how they are ranked and how good they are. We just want to prepare for them like we do any other team. Come out, and play the best way we can – try and win this game.

On the offensive line last week…

Well, we played decent. I don’t think we played our best game. There are a lot of things that we could get better at. We looked at film yesterday; there were a lot of things that we can handle. I made mistakes, to be honest, on the first play of the game, I honestly messed up. But there are some things we can get better at, and we are going to fix those mistakes that we made.

Head Coach Steve Spurrier

Opening Remarks:

OK, let’s talk about Missouri a little bit. Missouri is the team that has caught everybody off guard a bit. They weren’t picked to win the East, and yet, they’ve got a two game lead, I guess on all of us right now. But they’ve got a lot of games left, I think we have three left. I think they’ve got five left, something like that. But they’ve beaten Florida and Georgia, obviously, and they are in pretty good shape. If we are fortunate to go out there and get a win, we’ll be in pretty good shape, well, not great shape, I think we would have hopes, as we all know. So it’s a huge game for us, it’s a game that is going to decide whether or not we are in the division hunt. Simple as that. I think all of our players know that and we’ve talked about that briefly. Hopefully, we can regroup and go out to Missouri and play our best game of the year. We didn’t play quite our best last week. Our offense probably had its worst game of the year, but give Tennessee credit for playing some good defense and stopping us. We turned it over a couple of times, didn’t get any and they won the game. But that one’s history, and to beat Missouri we’ve got to take care of the ball better and we’ve got to stop them, also. It should be a heck of a game. I told the guys the weather should be a little bit like the Clemson game last year, late in the season, maybe 40-45 degrees, 50, somewhere in that neighborhood. So that’s good football weather. They’ll have a full house out there. They are all fired up and they are a good team. They’ve got some explosive players all over the place. Their defense is probably the fastest defense we’ll have played thus far this year. So give Missouri credit. Coach Pinkel has been there awhile, I think he’s been there 13, 14 years and this appears to be one of his best teams he’s had there. So we are looking forward to going out.

Injury wise, Connor Shaw, we don’t know about. He may be able to dress and be a back-up, we don’t know. But Dylan (Thompson) is definitely going to start the game, and it will be his game to go with. Otherwise, I believe Ronald Patrick possibly could be back to play. I doubt if Cody Waldrop will make it back for this one. But other than that, compared to a lot of teams around, we are pretty healthy at this time of year. A lot of injuries, as we all know, have happened in football all over the place, it seems like, but we have ankle sprains. That’s probably our biggest problem, which can heal in a couple of weeks. So we are looking forward to it and it will take a good effort, but hopefully we can do it out there.

On Kelcy Quarles status…

Kelcy’s coming around. I didn’t have my list here, he’s probably doubtful right now, but he’s walking around OK. He’s off his crutches, and if he’s not back this week, he should be back maybe in two weeks.

On Connor Shaw…

Yeah, the doctors and trainers feel like a couple of weeks, two or three weeks. He might be close to a hundred percent. I probably should let them come in here and do the talking, but the trainer did say that he thought by the latter part of this week that he might be able to run around a little bit.

On Missouri getting attention…

Basically, when they beat Georgia they got the attention of everyone, and of course, follow that up with a victory over Florida last week. They are a sound team, they play good zone defense, they are always in position, pretty fast team, too. Their offense has been outstanding, they’ve got their wide receiver who was the number one recruit in the country, their quarterback was, I think, the Gatorade Player of the Year. So, they’ve done some really good recruiting there at Missouri, which you have to do if you’re going to be a top team, as we all know.

On Missouri putting up high numbers…

Oh, there is pressure on us every game to try to stay out there on the field and try to make a bunch of first downs and try to score. We didn’t do it very well our last game, obviously. We’ve got to really play well and our defense has really got to play well. And hopefully, the kicking game will do something positive. Hopefully, that will happen, all those things have not quite happened at the same time this year.

On being surprised that Missouri and Texas A&M established themselves quickly in SEC…

Not really, those are two good teams, they’ve been good teams in the past. A&M, their defense is struggling this year, they lost a lot of their top defensive players from last year. So they’re a different team, I believe, somewhat than they were last year. Their offense makes about 600 yards every game, but it seems that the other teams they are playing are making a bunch, also. But Missouri has really come around. Last year, they were 5-7, they were competitive, but it just seems like nothing good happened much for them last year, they’ve got the same coaches, I think, and just a few new players, but they are a really good team.

On the offense sharpening…

Oh, who knows until we go and play the game? We did have a lot of praise about our offense last week and the players and so forth, and we didn’t do very well. But then again, we didn’t coach very well either. Anytime you lose a game, you always second guess, I could have called this play, could have called that one at this time. But the way it happened, it happened.

On the passing game…

Connor ran out quickly a few times, he admitted to that, but he has made so many yards and first downs, sometimes he just feels that that is the way to go. We were watching the game of Missouri last year, he had 20 out of 21, seems like statistically at home, he has really been good, but of course, he was really good at Arkansas.

On knowing Coach Pinkel…

Yeah, I know him a little bit, met him when we played the bowl game against him in Shreveport after the ’05 year. Well, what, nine years ago, we played him and got to know him a little bit. He’s a veteran coach, I guess he and I have done it quite a while. He’s been at the same school, 13 or 14 years now, I think. So, obviously, he is doing things the right way. You don’t last that long anywhere unless you’re a good coach and running your program the correct way.

On having Dylan Thompson as a back-up…

Yeah, I think Dylan is ready to go. He hasn’t had the opportunity for us to say, “Hey, this is your game, let’s go play.” He’ll prepare as hard as he can this week, he will be ready to go give it his best shot, we know that. So, this is his time this year, it’s coming up.

On what went wrong in Tennessee…

It was a game that you always look back and wish you had done something else. That’s the first time we fumbled an exchange from center. The first time the ball slipped out of the center’s hand and rolled back. It was the first time for a lot of that kind of stuff. Guys went the wrong way. We obviously weren’t as sharp mentally on offense maybe as we are most games.

On Missouri’s pass rush…

They are very active. I think they lead the conference in sacks and they’ve got some fast (guys), they don’t have any big, fat guys – they’re all fast guys that fly around, they slant around and they are really quick. Of course, we played them last year and we hit a lot of passes, but they play a good zone defense. There doesn’t appear to be many openings down there with a good pass rush. But I would say they are probably the quickest group we’ve faced thus far.

On Mike Davis being the best weapon…

We’ve got to run, we’ve got to throw and we’ve got to mix it up. Mix it up, stay on the field, all that kind of stuff. But yeah, any time we win, we generally run pretty well. Last week, we actually won the rushing yard battle, but we had a couple long runs, when we needed a good five, six yard run, we didn’t quite get it. But we also lost the turnover battle last week. That probably evened out the most rushing yards.