Boston College 42, Wagner 10: Steve Addazio Postgame Quotes

Following yesterday’s 42-10 victory over Wagner, Steve Addazio addressed the media briefly, in what felt like an unusually short press conference by his standards. Obviously, there wasn’t too much to say; as expected, BC won. Now we move on. Here are the quotes, as always thanks to the fine folks at BCEagles.com:

Opening Statement

“It's great to get a win. It was a good team performance. We have a lot of work to do. Obviously we made a decision today going into the game, we felt like we really hadn't run the ball well yet, up to what our standard is. We wanted to emphasize really running the football today. We did that. We had no turnovers on offense which was a good thing. We rushed for 300 (yards). We wanted to establish that.

The opponent had 107 yards of offense. They had a touchdown on a broken play and then three points on a drive that was continued after a 4^th-and-11 from a foolish penalty. Penalties today were very, very costly early in terms of momentum. For instance on the punt return, we had a penalty that was not germane to the play that cost us close to 60 yards in field position. The style that we play, we've got to shake these out. So we had a penalty that sustained a drive that the defense was off the field. We had a penalty that lost a lot of yards. We would have had the ball on the 18-yard line as opposed to the minus 29. We just had a series of penalties so we just have to get rid of those. They don't show up in practice. They've shown up here in the game. I think it's really important for us to obviously eradicate that.

We're a young team that's growing. There are some nice signs of things. We've got to continue to fertilize this team and grow this team, let this team learn how to win, learn how to mature, learn how to close things out and we'll continue to grow and get better."

On the penalties:

"They don't occur in practice. We bring officials in. I'll bring officials in and purposely say, 'I really want you to call the pass interference penalties close.' And we don't have them. You see less of that with more experience. I think we'll gain that as we go. Sometimes penalties can be extremely disruptive to your flow. We opened the game up on the first drive and had a holding penalty. That's the kind of stuff that we had a week ago as well early on. We've got to continue to coach it. I think that with experience these things have a tendency to lessen. Guys get into battle, into competition and everybody wants to make a play. Everybody is so anxious to get out there. That's what I love about our team. They're so competitive. We have to learn how to channel that and funnel that in the right way."

On QB Patrick Towles’ rushing:

"I'm a big believer that you have to move the chains, move the chains. At Florida, we won a national championship just moving the chains. We had a lot of breakdowns on third down and Tim (Tebow) would find a way to move the chains. Every time you move a chain you get another series of downs. Every time you get another series of downs, it gives you another opportunity to help the offensive coordinator call the game. When you're three-and-out, you can't call the game. It's hard to call the game.

The objective of the quarterback is to move the chains. When you have a chance to move the chains, move them. Go get first downs. That's something that we try to emphasize. If the pocket breaks down, or you don't like your look and you've got a chance to go get the first down, go get the first down. A couple of times today we were out on the edges a little bit; bury that thing. Don't just throw it out of bounds, unless you have to, to avoid negative yards. We're continuing to work on that."

On the passing game:

"We had a nice deep strike to Jeff (Smith) today. We had another one that we had a great opportunity for a touchdown. So, we're going to continue to work on that throw game, which means that on those third downs when things break down, we still have to have the ability, which we did a couple of times today, to go get a first down, or in one case obviously go get a touchdown."

On the offensive line:

"I would say to you that it was consistently inconsistent. I need to watch that. It's the same thing. We're young at wide receiver and on the offensive line, and this is what goes part and parcel with this. There were times today early in that game where we were literally blowing guys off the ball like six yards, but losing sight on a gap scheme… getting so much push that you're not used to getting that all of a sudden you've lost vision on the linebacker. And all of a sudden you say, 'Oh my god, they're hitting us at the line of scrimmage.' That's why. The double team was getting so much push that we didn't snap off for the linebackers; just getting accustomed to that. It just takes a while for these guys to get accustomed to making these calls and have a feel for all of that.

That's why we wanted to kind of keep running the football a little bit because we felt like we don't have that feel yet. The first two years we had a real feel for that up front. We don't have that yet. It's very much a work in progress and being consistently inconsistent there stalls many drives. We're trying to get that better and it is getting better. There's really good young talent there. It just needs to soak and grow, and each week get a little bit better and it will."