Steve Addazio’s Weekly Press Conference Talks About Talent Of Defense.

Steve Addazio held his weekly press conference yesterday in Chestnut Hill. While many of his talking points were the same, I thought his comments on his offense were very interesting and worth noting:

“Offensively, we had 344 yards of offense. We threw the ball for 191, rushed it for 153. We had seven explosives in the passing game, which is pretty good for us. We scored in the red zone: one touchdown, one field goal in the red zone. I thought we played hard. I thought offensively we needed to run the ball better than we did, so I thought that was important. We’ve got to get that going, so I was disappointed there. I was happy with the way we closed out. I’m happy with the development of our throw game.”

Totally agree with the coach here, the passing game is coming along nicely, and he mentions later that they are becoming more comfortable with it, so hopefully they will use it more frequently against VT. As I mentioned here before, if the passing game is used more, the run game will improve with it.

Young offensive line, gelling and coming together. We’re just young up front. We played most of the game with Elijah Johnson at left guard. He’s a true freshmen. We’re still young. (Aaron) Monteiro is a still a young player. He didn’t play until week six of last season. It’s just that. I told you guys that from the beginning it takes a while to develop an offensive line. The only true anchored in, developed guy on that line is Jon Baker. Chris (Lindstrom) has been hurt, rolled that ankle in camp, and hasn’t been able to practice. He plays in the game but hasn’t been getting his practice reps. When you’re a young player and you’ve got that ankle and you’re not practicing much, it’s hard to play at your level you need to play at. Then (Jimmy) Lowery had a shoulder contusion last week, didn’t practice all week long. So your inserting a true freshman, Monteiro missed Wednesday’s practice, those other guys missed the whole week. And then you come in there and you’re not gelled up really good. And we’re young to begin with. Those guys need to be healthy and play together a little bit. The good news is nothing’s serious, but the bad news is it’s just enough to keep us from working together. I’d say that’s where our consistency issues lie right now. Certainly in our throw game, our play-action game, our drop-back game, we’re making plays and we’re complementing our runs good, and giving us the opportunity for good hits in the run game. We’ve just got to be consistent. We’ll get there. That’s going to happen. We’ve got to get everybody back firing at practice this week. I hope we can get everybody practicing. That’d be a start in the right direction. That’s a by-product of the first game tore us up a little bit. But we’ll get there”

Glad Addazio addressed this and in detail. He has mentioned before that the offensive line has been banged up in an earlier press conference, but he got specific with this. Hopefully after the UMass game some of the starters have healed, and can get back out there. No offense to Elijah Johnson, but I’d rather have a more experienced offensive lineman out there against Virginia Tech.

And finally on what we can expect from Bud Foster’s defense

“Pressure. Pressure. Man coverage. Man. Zero man. Man free. Pressure. He attacks what you do: finds your formational tendencies, your personnel-grouping tendencies and comes with a lot of pressure. It’s been the same for years”

You can read the rest of Steve Addazio’s press conference here.