OU POSTGAME QUOTES HEAD COACH LINCOLN RILEY Opening statement: Very excited about the win today. It s a game that definitely had our attention. Like we talked about Monday, nothing but respect to Florida Atlantic. It was one of those games where we got on a little bit of a run. Really proud of how we played, first downs, especially that kind of opening surge defensively, holding it down even after the first personal foul penalty toward the end of the first drive. Offensively, taking it and scoring and stopping them again and then we got the punt blocked for a touchdown right after that, which was kind of one of the biggest special teams plays and that we ve been looking for. Lee Morris did a great job on that block and Curtis Bolton recovered, and there was kind of a surge of energy from there, and we just rode that wave of momentum the rest of the way through. Very proud of the way we handled it, and that s a good football team. They re going to win a lot of games. The (quarterback) is really, really impressive. We made it tough on him, which I think was the key to the game. If he starts getting loose and throwing, it becomes more of an issue, so the yards that he did get, we made him earn it. That was a big key to the game made it a little bit one-dimensional, and like I said, we got on a pretty good run on all three sides of the ball. Excited about the win, very much appreciate our home crowd. I thought the atmosphere the entire first half was really good, really electric. Our guys fed off of them, they fed off of our guys and that s how it should be at a place like Oklahoma the crowd should be great, the team should be playing well and they should feed off each other and create a great environment, and we absolutely had that today. Very appreciative of the Sooner Nation. Injuries, don t know anything on Austin Kendall yet we ll see how he s doing, but I m optimistic. One other one that I do want to announce at our Friday practice, (Addison) Gumbs had a knee injury, a noncontact knee injury. He ll miss the season. So, had to make some adjustments there, which we did. I hate that for Addison because he was really coming on and starting to do some really nice things for us, but this is where our depth has to show up, and so we ll get him in rehab and get him back. On redshirt junior Kyler Murray in his first start: He handled it well. There were definitely some nerves. Everybody has nerves before the first game it doesn t matter if you ve coached for this long or had this many starts, you never know exactly what the first one s going to be like. Even though he s played and that helped, the fact that he s played here and he started at Texas A&M, that probably helped, but there were definitely some nerves. Our guys played well around him. He played very well himself very efficient. He played very much within himself, threw the ball well. I think he only missed one throw the entire game, one ball on our sideline there. I thought he was very efficient. On what the Sooners learned about their team in the win: It s like I told them in there after the first game, everybody wants to come to these conclusions about what you are and what you aren t. Did we learn something today? Yes. I think we ve got some quality guys. I think we ve taken some steps on special teams that I think will continue to be a weapon for us throughout the season. We had some young guys step in there and play very well and the team s competitive nature is really good right now. Now, after that, we ve got so much left to go, so much left to get better at. It s a long, long season, and so this is a great start nothing more than that, nothing less than that. On the Sooners defense: We just tackled ok for us, I would say. Average, not awful. The thing we did well at tackling was, we had multiple guys to the ball all day, so the majority of the time, when we missed a tackle, the next guy was there to clean it up. We were really flying to the football. Too many times where we were trying to get a guy s shoulder we ve got to wrap it up and we ll continue obviously to get tested there. I thought we covered well. We had people on them the entire day. I think that was part of it was us being able to shut down the run and part of it was I thought our (defensive backs) did a good job and our young safeties did a nice job communicating and also handling (FAU s) tempo was going to be
OU POSTGAME QUOTES HEAD COACH LINCOLN RILEY an issue and I thought our guys really did well with that. On playing freshman quarterback Tanner Mordecai: I hoped that we could play him. With the (redshirt rule), there are still some options in play there, so it was good to see both (Tanner) Schafer and (Tanner) Mordecai there. Even had the (Austin) Kendall injury not occurred, I probably would have done it the same exact way. On the team s youth: It was fun to see those guys. Creed (Humphreys) came in and played well we had several. There were a lot. Kennedy Brookes had a big run, TJ Pledger ran hard, Drake (Stoops) did a nice job. Obviously, Bookie (Radley-Hiles) there were a lot, and it was fun to see them. We re going to need them. We re young, but we are talented and it was good for them to get this first one under their belts and we ve got to continue to grow.
OU POSTGAME QUOTES DEFENSIVE COORDINATOR MIKE STOOPS Defensive Coordinator Mike Stoops On the overall performance of the defense: Well first of all, I thought Florida (Atlantic), looking at all the tape from a year ago, thought they did a lot of good things defensively. Lane (Kiffin) has always been a tremendous play caller. They moved the ball on a lot of people. It just didn t feel like they played anybody the caliber of a Power 5 conference team. That s where you likely see the size and the strength of your team. I thought that was a part of it today. Just our overall depth and physicality I thought was good. I thought we ran to the ball. Early on, I thought we did miss some pits and gaps a little bit, and then at the end got a little disoriented with all they flying motion. We gave them a lot of formations that our 2s and 3s had a little bit of an issue with. Overall, I think it will be a good learning experience. So many young players Justin Broiles, Bookie (Radley-Hiles), Mark Jackson, Ryan Jones. You just name it. We got a group of young players that got viable experience. It s a good team to work from. I thought the preparation was good. It s going to prepare us for a lot that we see in this league. We re going to see, obviously, some very good teams offensively, but good start. I was glad to see we were able to control the game that well. he ll be able to get his year back. It will be a process for him, but he ll do well. I think he ll benefit in the longrun throughout this whole situation. It just limits our depth a little bit. We moved Jon-Michael a few weeks ago, and that s probably a good deal for him and for us. We ll continue to mess with the front, whether it s Perkins, whether it s [Kenneth] Mann and put them out there on the ends, on the edges as well. We ll look at our options. I think the development of Isaiah Thomas. We ll see how that goes. You ll have to see how we progress throughout the rest of our defense to see what our best moves will be short-term and long-term. On the team s effort: It all starts with effort. We ve talked a lot about that. That s where it all starts your attitude and your effort and I thought that was all good. Structurally, I thought for the most part we were pretty good. There were some missed assignments out there. Overall, I thought we hustled. Tackling was just kind of so-so. That can happen in the first game. We have to tackle better. But overall, pleased with our overall effort against a pretty good offensive football team. On the look of the defensive line: I think it has a chance to continue to get better. I think Ronnie Perkins, the upside is pretty limitless. I think it s a group that can continue to improve. We have some depth we can lean on. Obviously, we ve lost some depth too throughout this camp. It s going to be tough, but just our overall depth of quality players at that position. On adjustments from Addison Gumbs situation: First of all, it was a sad deal I ve seen. [Addison] put a lot into his last year in preparation and to get hurt your last practice was devastating to him and to us. Addison,
OU POSTGAME QUOTES PLAYER QUOTES REDSHIRT JUNIOR RUNNING BACK RODNEY ANDERSON On the way Kyler (Murray) handled the offense today: I think Kyler did a great job. You would not be able to tell that was his first real start so I was really excited for him. On the dominance and depth of the offense: I feel like the sky is the limit. Obviously we have to keep working and keep grinding every week to keep improving. I think that the depth is an amazing thing to have on the team, on either side of the ball. I think that we like to keep players fresh and ready to play. On the big opening drive: I feel like the whole game was kind of like a statement drive. It was a really good thing to drive with the offense and get in the end zone again. On the performance of the younger guys on the team: The young guys are great. They had a bunch of tough runs. I know that TJ (Pledger) did not get in the end zone but his running is amazing. On the offenses capabilities without Baker Mayfield: I have been telling people all summer and all spring, the whole year, that just because Baker is gone does not mean that our offense has fallen off or anything. We have been grinding just the same. I feel like we are making steps forward. On staying ready: It is just something that we practice. We practice playing fast and scoring fast and our defense did a great job pushing us in the off season. On being a captain: I think that it is a tremendous honor. I cannot thank my teammates enough. I am just really humbled, blessed and honored. JUNIOR DEFENSIVE END AMANI BLEDSOE On FAU s first drive: It s all about mindset: stay calm as a defense, how fast can we reset when they re going that fast. On defending FAU s offense: Coming off a 10-plus win season, great offense, great head coach. Still a lot of things to learn from, but I think it s a great start. On OU defense: We ve been working in the off season on keeping a great extension as a d-line and getting off blocks and having the mentality that you can t be blocked and won t be blocked and things like that. On starting with FAU: There s a sense of urgency no matter who we play the first game. We re just excited to hit guys that aren t our own teammates. On defensive pride: It s definitely some sense of pride there and there s still some things to work on. Bringing the younger guys along, teaching them things that we know, maturity, things they can work on so they don t make the same mistakes. We know our defense has been slept on a lot, especially (the) D-line and that s something we kept in our mind, but not harped on too much. There s definitely a big chip on our shoulder coming off that Georgia game. On building confidence from this game: It definitely helps, but the mindset has to be to stay hungry the rest of the season. REDSHIRT SENIOR LINEBACKER CURTIS BOLTON On scoring a touchdown on a blocked punt: It s always good when you re a defensive player and you re getting hands on the ball, regardless of whether that be on special teams but it s a good feeling. It s not a feeling I get to experience too often.
OU POSTGAME QUOTES PLAYER QUOTES On the Sooners defense: We work so hard to try and come out and put our best foot forward on the field and we just wanted to go make a statement today and show our coaches, our country, our fans and the media that we can play some real big defense and we re looking to continue that. We ve got a lot of things to clean up, of course. With every game, it s really, really rare that somebody goes out there and plays a perfect game and even more rare near impossible to play a perfect game from a defensive perspective, but I think we did a lot of good things out there. I think a lot of the young guys stepped up. I think a lot of guys showed that they could play ball and we ve got a lot to work on, but that s what our coaches are for and that s what practice is Monday through Friday for. On OU s special teams performance: I ve been here since 2014 and overall, we ve been alright, but our punt team in 2015 was one of the top in the country. We ve had some of our special teams be elite. But bringing in Coach Beamer He s a great mind, a great coach. He knows what he s talking about. He knows how to teach it to us in an easy way. I think it s not so much more of an emphasis on special teams. I think it s less of a burden on Coach Boulware bringing in a coach like Coach Beamer to come in and take off the load from him and really let us dial back and try to hit specific points. It takes a lot when you get another coach in. I think that was the biggest reason in our special teams showing up today. On how it felt to play after sitting out the 2017 season with an injury: Honestly, it feels good. Of course, I feel like I can play better, and I need to play better, and that s what film is for. I m going to try to get in the film room and get a lot of things corrected, but it was good to get back out there. I ve been out for a year and I haven t started in even longer than that, so it was just good to get out there and play ball again. Just try to fly around there and build my confidence back and get back after it. REDSHIRT JUNIOR WIDE RECEIVER LEE MORRIS On his emotions when going for the blocked punt: It was really exciting. The fact that it paid off, got the block and we scored. We were all overjoyed and excited. I was excited for (Curtis Bolton), and he was excited for me for getting the block. On the touchdown catch: It was just a basic throw and catch from me and Kyler (Murray). I guess the guy tried to wrap me up and slipped off me. It was hot out there, so I can see why. I saw those two defenders coming at me from both sides and I knew that if I split them, I was going to do the rest and score. JUNIOR WIDE RECEIVER MARQUISE BROWN On not missing a beat today: We reload here. It is always going to be the next man up mentality, so whoever is in we try to execute. On the offense s toughness: It can be as tough as we want it to be. If everyone continues to do their job, week after week then we should be in a good spot. On building team confidence from this win: They are a very good team. On film, they are athletic, they fly around, and it just shows that if we play complete football then we can do good things. On Lee Morris s touchdown: Lee was in game breaker mode. He really showed up big today, on special teams, offense, and that play he just showed that he can be a playmaker. SOPHOMORE LINEBACKER KENNETH MURRAY On how the defense played overall: I thought we played pretty good. We got some stuff to build on. I think this is a good start. We came out here and we did our jobs consistently, and I think that s what happened today. I think we have some stuff to build on, we just gotta go back and do the work, so just be here next week for UCLA.
OU POSTGAME QUOTES PLAYER QUOTES On having something to prove this game: I feel like we don t have anything to prove to the outside world. We have something to prove to ourselves, and that s what we play for. We play for our teammates, I play for my brothers, and so, I mean, I feel like as long as you do that, as long as you play for your brothers and your teammates, it makes it easy to go out there and do your job because, you know, you care about the person that s playing next to you. On whether he found out something new about the team: I feel like we played tremendous on all three sides of the ball. So you know, obviously we haven t played a game, this is the first game that we ve played all year, so just seeing all three sides of the ball, you know, not really going against each other but going against somebody else, I think we did an excellent job. So I felt good with the way the game went. I feel like we ve got some stuff to do, get ready for next week. On the passing game: Coach Riley wanted me to settle in. I didn t take anything too fast and went at my pace. Like I said, I thought today went well. On the depth of offense: Great. When the first team is in, it s our job to go score. We felt like nobody should be able to stop us. That s just the mindset that we have and the mentality, as far as offense goes. When the 2s go in, it shouldn t stop. We have a lot of guys that can go. This is the University of Oklahoma. We recruit well, so there shouldn t be any drop off as far as scoring goes. REDSHIRT JUNIOR QUARTERBACK KYLER MURRAY On the game overall: I felt it went well. Obviously, for me I know the offense, we want to come out fast. I believe we did that. My job is to come out and execute. I felt we played well. Running backs ran the ball well. Line blocked well. I thought it was a good day. On the run in the first quarter: Nothing was really going through my mind other than make the play. I think that s something I bring to the game that nobody has been able to see for the past couple years. For me, it was just make the play. On being tired: I was gassed. It was hot. My adrenaline was going. It took a couple drives to settle in. As far as the body goes, I just caught my breath. I was pretty tired.
FAU POSTGAME QUOTES HEAD COACH LANE KIFFIN On today s game: We re 0-1, and we played as bad as you could play as I told the players. It s discouraging in all phases of the game: offense, defense and special teams. Obviously we didn t score until the second half, which is ridiculous. We gave up 650 yards, which is ridiculous, and we gave up a score on special teams so we hit the trifecta today, which is very discouraging. But at the end of the day, we re 0-1, so we just got to go back to work. We ve got the same record we started with last year and get ready for another difficult opponent in a different way. Credit to them I d be shocked if there s a better team in the country. Their defense is much improved and obviously that was their area of weakness last year. I d be shocked if that team isn t playing in the playoffs. On QB Chris Robison s return to OU and first start: I think there was (some nerves). He s a freshman in his first start and also coming back to the school that he went to, so we tried everything with him to keep him calm. He actually was in a rhythm there early and he kind of looked good. We got a couple rare penalties that killed momentum that were on some bigger plays too with some outside blocking. That s what happens with teams like this, they can knock you out real fast. Once you get rolling, all of a sudden you look up and it s 21-0 before you know it, so a lot of credit to them in all areas. On the positives of their opening possession: That s how I thought the game would probably go. I thought they re as good of an offense in the country as there is and I thought how the game started would be like that, up and down the field on both sides. A number of people probably thought that it would be like that. But I didn t think that we would perform this poorly, tackling-wise on defense, which is supposed to be the strength of our team. On what caused them problems defensively: They have great, skilled players and we didn t tackle them. We tried to shoulder tackle, which works at service team in practice, but you have to wrap versus good players. That happened to us last year against Wisconsin and we tried to show them that from last year. When you play really good backs, you ve got to wrap and tackle or you don t have a chance. On if there s any quarterback battle: I don t know that right now, I think it s too early to figure that out. All three guys (Robison, De Andre Johnson, Rafe Peavey) obviously got to play, but also at the end of the game they had their backups in so you re not playing against as good of players. It s hard to fault Chris (Robison) he did miss some throws but he didn t get a lot of help around him either. We didn t get some protection at times on throws when there were some guys getting open. I think his anxiety and nerves showed. He missed a couple throws there early that would have changed the momentum in the game. In these games, you need to get a few explosive plays like that early. They made them and we didn t. A surprising stat you would think is the first downs were 26 (OU) to 20 (FAU), if you heard that you d think the game was somewhat close. It wasn t close, because they averaged over 10 yards a play because of all their explosive plays and we had very little explosive plays. On if their defense was outmatched: I can t predict that. We didn t play a team like this last year to compare to. Teams can beat top-10 teams, but those teams play different styles, like Wisconsin. Wisconsin doesn t play a style that wins 63-14 or gets 600 yards a game and stuff. That s the danger of these teams. When they get rolling, it can get ugly really quick. You can play poorly and hang around and lose by just two or three scores to some other top 10-teams. On how his team can bounce back: I think that there s some good leaders in there that were talking in there after I got done talking older guys that don t want to see pouting around or being worried about this or that. You ve got to get back to work. I told them, one game is not going to define your season. I ve been saying all week, this game is not going to define us or our defense because that s a really good team, and we probably weren t going to beat them.
FAU POSTGAME QUOTES HEAD COACH LANE KIFFIN On coaching against Lincoln Riley s offense: He does a great job. I ve said it, Baker (Mayfield) is great and was the No. 1 pick and Heisman winner, but watching film I said during the week that I don t know that it s better to play against Kyler (Murray) because he s faster and harder to get down and we saw that today. Thank God they took him out or he could ve broke every school record there is.
FAU POSTGAME QUOTES VISITING PLAYER QUOTES SENIOR LB AZEEZ AL-SHAAIR On what about OU threw his team off: I just think it was more execution. It really wasn t anything that they did. They really just came out and beat us and we didn t execute and tackle well. For the most part, I think we ll watch some film regardless and it s going to be on our execution. The effort was there, we were swarming to the ball, you just have got to make plays. On rebounding from this game: We can t let one game define the season, so we are going to learn from it and we re going to digest it and keep moving forward. On not forcing any turnovers: Our gameplan is always to try and create havoc. You always want to create turnovers and if you lose the turnover battle and don t create turnovers as a defense, it s hard to win games. On what the challenge with Kyler Murray is: We said it all week he runs around a lot and is a very mobile guy. He made some plays and you saw him out there running around making plays on his feet. That s what he does best. We had a few chances to bring him down, but he s a slippery guy. If you ve got him in the backfield and stopped, you ve got to tackle him. Tackling and execution is what we have to do better as a defense. On what he said to the team afterwards as a senior leader: We spoke together as a team and I let them know a few things which is between us and the guys, but we ve got to go back to work. At the end of the day, win or loss, it s the 24-hour rule. You ve got to let it go, learn from it and go back to work and get ready for next week. JUNIOR RB DEVIN SINGLETARY On feeling added pressure in today s game: Not really. We just missed a few details. On what he learned about the Sooners: Obviously, we knew that they were very good and they outplayed us.