On Michigan

Michigan is a really, really good football team. They will expose you if you're not fundamentally sound, if you don't take care of the football. Let alone it's our first road test on going on the road, playing in front of over 111,000 people. How do we handle the crowd noise? What's our composure like? All those things, our cadence, all the different things that go on top and in addition to playing the defending national champion.

On if he's able to draw anything from Texas playing Michigan last week

Make no mistake about it, Texas is ranked where they are and Sark does a great job. They played one of the premier teams in the SEC and in college football. You look at schemes, you look at all those things. For us, as coaches, we've got to put our players in the best possible situations to succeed. A lot of that is scheme-oriented. How can we create angles, how can we do different things? The fundamentals of getting off different blocks, With all that, football never really changes. It still comes down to fundamentals and details, it comes down to blocking and tackling, it comes down to making the routine plays routinely. We have a receiver open, we gotta get him the ball. We gotta be able to protect Jaylen in the pocket. All those things. You watch other games you try to formulate a gameplan, which we will. Football is a game of match ups and you just said it. It's a week-to-week season because it's really how your team matches up with their team in terms of personnel. How can you overcome some mismatches? Do we have an advantage anywhere? All those things that go into it. If you really think about it, in critical moments of the game, there's three choices the coaching staff has to make: Are you thinking players over plays? Can we get the ball to our best player? Those are gotta have it, those are critical moments in the game. That's one option. The next option is we're just going to run what we run because it doesn't matter what they do our players have confidence in executing it or the third choice is trying to have the best play possible and check it and go against their scheme and their look. Those are all things in critical moments of the game as a play caller, as a staff, you gotta look at those situations, what gives you the best opportunity to succeed? I think the other thing is, as big of a challenge is they are, this will be probably the most challenging special teams game that we'll have. They have bigger bodies in their four core special teams. They have defensive lineman on their punt return that actually hold up, they do a good job of that unit. Not only is it offense and defense, this is our biggest challenge to date and probably one of our biggest challenges since we've been here in terms of the special teams game.

On growing up in Michigan molding him as a coach

It molded everything. I grew up probably two-and-a-half hours from Ann Arbor in a resort town called Saugatuck right on Lake Michigan. My father was the Chief of Police for over 35 years, my mom was the hospital administrator. We go back there, we have a place there. My mom is still alive. The whole town shuts down in the summer in terms of Fourth of July and we go back. Everyone who is a business owner I went to high school with, very familiar with the University of Michigan. Best man in my wedding is an Assistant AD there who is charge of the Big House and Crisler Arena and all those sports venues. Obviously, have a relationship with the Chancellor, very good friends with the Athletic Director, a lot of guys on the staff. That only goes so far. We're going there to play the game. We're in football but we're in the business of winning. That's kind of a mindset, it'll be good to see everyone in passing. Thank goodness we've had more ticket requests and all that, that's all cluttered distraction. It'll be great to go there. Really, you're focused on the task at hand and that's the defending national champion.

On getting his team ready to play in the Big House

You can't worry about external factors. The length of the football field, the width of the football field is the exact same as it is here in Centennial Bank Stadium. I think that's the big thing is having the maturity and the rogue focus to not get caught up in things that don't matter. The clutter, the distractions, the composure that it takes to go on the road. How are we going to be able to handle and control the noise? The momentum swings. I've been on the other side of it, too, for a long time. I know what we would tell our teams about having to start fast and get a big momentum play early and push the ball down the field early. All those things. Really, just matters what we can control and that's just today and being 1-0 today in terms of our preparation and our practice.

On where Michigan poses the greatest challenge on offense and defense

I think, first of all, they have really talented, good, football players. It's why they have top 10, top 25 recruiting class every single year. They have talent across the board, they have depth across the board. On defense, they've probably got possibly three first-rounders on defense. Offensively, very familiar with the running back, I recruited him when I was at Alabama, Donovan Edwards. He's right from Michigan, I think, West Bloomfield. All these things there's a lot of familiarity there. They're a good football team, there's a reason why they won the national championship last year. They'll be one of the premier teams in the Big Ten Conference, they're well-coached, have a lot of respect for their coaching staff and what they do. There's plenty of challenges but we have to control what we can control and that's our effort, that's our fundamentals, that's our details, that's our mindset going into this game. All above. You just try to hang around. You just try to hang around and keep playing. We're going to have to have maturity to weather the storm early. When you go on the road, that's part of the road focus and knowing how they're going to attack you and the poise that goes into it. I think it'll be a big but a really good test for us in terms of being able to go on the road and perform like the expectations that we have against a real quality opponent.

On whether he's coached at a game at Michigan

I have. I have when I was a coach at Central Michigan, I want to say it was our first or second year. I've been there a number of times and grew up going to the stadium. Grew up remembering the Rick Leach's, the Rob Lytle's and the Harlon Huckleby's and all those individuals and great players. It's been a while since I've been back.

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