Maryland Head Coach Randy Edsall Postgame Quotes

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Oct. 13, 2012

Virginia vs. Maryland
Oct. 13, 2012
Maryland Head Coach Randy Edsall Quotes

Thoughts on the game:
“You can hear that you have a pretty happy locker room right next door. They just keep playing, they keepplaying hard and giving everything they have for 60 minutes. When you do that you give yourself a chance and I’m very proud of them. Our execution can still be better but again, bottom line is we’re 2-0 in the ACC and 4-2 overall and we found a way to come on the road and get another victory, which I think is very, very important.”

On opening kick return for a touchdown:
“As I said to the team today at the hotel, the one thing we have to do is start fast and finish strong. I just didn’t know we were going to start that fast. The problem is I forgot to tell them to play in between the start and the finish. With Stefon (Diggs),nothing he does surprises me. Someone told me it was five-yards deep in theendzone and I figure he’s going to go down and then I see him start and I go, ‘No, no, no. Go, go, go! Yeah!’ It was one of those deals. That was a great start, and to get the first three scores, to put 17 up. Give Virginia credit, they are a good football team. They want to win, so to start like that and finish strong, again outscoring our opponent in the fourth quarter, making plays we needed to make, that’s kind of what this program is about, playing as hard as you can each and every play, never say die, just keep battling to impose your will on people.”

Thoughts on win in rivalry on the road:
“We compete against each other in recruiting. We don’t want them coming to Maryland and taking the kids we want and we want to be able to come down to Virginia and take the kids that we want. When it’s your crossover game and you take a look at how many times each of us has played against each other, it’s significant. What’s even more significant is when you are able to come in their house and beat them. To me that’s tremendous credit to these players and to the assistant coaches.”

On juggling the offensive line:
“To tell you the truth it wasn’t much of a problem because we anticipated and practiced certain ways during the week in terms of possible scenarios that could happen. One of the scenarios we made in practice on Thursday, because I always meet with the specialty coaches on Thursday, but just in terms of substitutions and how we were going to pack things in, the one thing we said was if anything happens to Sal (Conaboy), we’re at the point now that we’re going to take Evan Mulrooney and let him go in and be the backup and we’ll evaluate his play afterwards because we have Bennett (Fulper), who has played there, and we put Josh (Cary) in because of what we’ve seen of Evan at practice. He has elevated himself, so when Sal went down, give Sal credit because he tried to sneak back in, showing you the kind of player he is, but Evan went in, I’ll have to look at the film because I’m sure he made mistakes, but we’ll put in whoever we have to put in to get the job done. That’s what I like, everyone has to contribute when it’s their time.”

On his defense performance:
“We gave up some big plays but Virginia is a good offense. If you look at their numbers they are a good offense, and they present you with some problems. The bottom line is, I think they were seven of 20 from the third-down line, but we made some plays when we had to and that’s all I want from my guys. They can move the ball all they want in between the twenties but our tight red zone defense was outstanding today. We block a field goal and we hold them to two field goals, that’s something that I’m really proud of in terms that they hung in there and found a way to get it done.”

On Rocco coming in over Sims at the game’s end:
“As I evaluate them, watching them on film, I think he is the best passer that they have so it didn’t surprise me that when they got into that situation where they had to throw the ball that he would come in because, as I said, I think that he is the best pure passer of the two so I’ll leave it at that.”