ORLANDO, Fla. – UCF Head Coach Scott Frost spoke to the media on Monday morning for the first time since the team’s narrow win over Navy, touching on the Governor’s motivation, the physical standing of his team and how Saturday’s playing time will play out.
Here are some of Frost’s Monday morning highlights:
Austin Peay is Highly Motivated and Extremely Multiple
“This is a good team, I think they’re really multiple, which makes them difficult. They run more formations personnel groups and plays than I think we have in our whole offense this year.”
“Defensively they get a lot of guys up close on the line of scrimmage, make it hard on you to run, give you a lot of different looks, bring pressure, really impressed with a couple of their edge rushers that are active players and very productive. They play hard.”
“This is going to be like the super bowl for them. They’re coming down here and treating this like a bowl game and I’ve been on a team like theirs when I was at Northern Iowa, and when you get to play an FBS team there’s nothing in the world you want more than to knock a team off and beat them.”
“I know that they’re going to come down here hungry and our guys have to be ready.”
Noah Vedral Will Get Significant Playing Time
“We feel great about Noah. On the sideline I’ve kind of marked all of the plays that I felt good about Noah running. There’s probably some things that we would run with McKenzie that we wouldn’t run with Noah, but there are probably some things that we’ll run with Noah that we might not with McKenzie.”
“He’s going to get a bunch of reps this week, like he does every week, but Noah and Darryl have both had unbelievable progression this year. they’re both head and shoulder better than they were in fall camp. If that maturation and improvement continue I know we’ll have a couple of really good quarterbacks on our roster.”
UCF Starters are Still Recovering From a Physical Battle with Navy
“It’s good that this game [against Austin Peay] fell when it did. The guys are a little bruised and battered. Every time you play a team like Navy, you’re going to come out a little bit sore. It was a bloodbath out there, especially for our defense. But this is the time of the year anyway, where we start rolling it back just a little bit as far as practice time goes. I feel like the guys know what they’re doing well enough where we can take a couple of reps off them and try and let them recover a little bit physically, while still getting ready and preparing for the next opponent. We’ll start that process of backing off just a little bit this week and the onus is going to be on the players to make sure that they’re just as prepared even if they get a few less reps than they usually do.”
McKenzie Milton’s Hamstring is Fine
“I’m sure he’ll get a lot of massages and whatever else they use to take care of minor strains, but he was out running and looking fine today. I don’t see any problem going forward.”
