Postgame Quotes: Green and Gold Spring Game

April 23, 2016

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Head Coach Mike Bobo
(on overall thoughts)
“That was a great day. I loved the fan attendance. I loved the clinic they had for the kids. It was great to come in and see the kids giving our guys high fives. It’s always good when you can play any type of game; I know it’s a spring scrimmage but the support there for our football team was good to see and I thought the guys came out and competed hard. It was a little bit of a different format, nothing I’ve ever been a part of, but I thought they did a nice job."

"The No. 1 defense, I thought, did a nice job early on. They did a nice job at creating some turnovers. I thought they got tired a little bit as the day went on. It was the hottest day we’ve had and were pretty thin defensively, but I’ve got to look at the tape. Offensively we obviously started out a little slow and I thought really Collin Hill, Faton (Bauta) and Nick (Stevens) were pressing a little bit at the beginning. I thought all of them were playing a little bit tight. We were able to get the running game going with Dalyn Dawkins and they loosened up and had some good drives and some success there which was good to see."

"Overall, I thought it was a very good spring. We got better every day individually. I thought we got better as a football team, offensively and defensively, and got some good work in on special teams. We’ll take the first part of next week and meet with our players and talk about things that they’ve got to improve on, finish out the academic year strong and then get ready to have a great summer.”

(on the turnovers forced by the defense)
“It’s kind of your catch-22 there. Turning the ball over offensively is something we don’t want to do, but I like the aggressiveness of our defense. They’ve done a nice job all spring of making a concerted effort to attack the football and try and take the ball away. I believe I said it the other day that you are going to turn the ball over some. We don’t want to turn over any but we need to get more takeaways to offset some of the turnovers that might occur during a game.”

(on the play of the quarterbacks)
“Like I said before, all the guys were a little tight early on but I thought we did some good things. I really got to go back and watch the tape to make a true assessment, but Nick Stevens did some nice things on a couple drives, getting us into the right run plays. You know, he forced a couple and a really good interception by Demontrie Taylor kind of bated Nick so we’ve got to look at some things and improve on that, but I do think he stayed locked in and relaxed and did some good things. Faton also started a little bit shaky. I thought he was aiming the football early on, trying to catch it for him, but as the game went on I saw more zip, I saw the ball coming off his hand. Collin Hill was looking like a freshman for probably his first three series out there and I think as the scrimmage went on he started to relax and you can see that he’s got some arm talent. I am really excited about him, and J.C. (Robles) did some nice things in his zone-read package. To sit here and say that I have an answer, I don’t. It’s a big summer for all of those guys. It’s a big summer on learning what to do and it ultimately comes down to who can take care of the football. That’s what it’s going to come down to. I said many times that were 120-something in turnover ratio and we’ve got to cut those in half and give ourselves a chance to win more ball games.”

(on where the quarterbacks stand)
“I see them, and I might change my mind once I go watch film, but I would say that Nick and Faton are co-No. 1s. That’s how they’ve been practicing all spring and I would say that Collin Hill is third.”

(on the play of Dalyn Dawkins)
“I was proud of Dalyn. We’ve been coaching Dalyn hard and it’s not because he doesn’t give effort, not because he doesn’t go 100 miles per hour, not because he’s the best pass protector… Sometimes he runs a little bit out of control. He doesn’t run the zone tracks. He’s just not a patient runner; that’s not his style. But I believe he got better in the spring and took coaching from Coach (Bryan) Applewhite. He basically changed the spring game today. You know, that little catch on third down to get the conversion and those big runs, and I’ve said it before, he’s the toughest guy we’ve got on this football team.”

(on the difference this year compared to one year ago)
“I believe they’re more in tune to what I want and what our coaches want in how we’re going to practice and how we’re going to approach a game and try to exert our will and be physical. You’ve got to be physical to win a championship, in my opinion, especially in this league. This is a physical football league and last year the most physical team went undefeated in the league. This year, I thought we got better every day at practice and some days were a little more than the others, but we got better. There was a focus to get better. There was accountability, and that happens sometimes when you take over a program that’s had success and you’re doing things a little bit different, you know, there’s questions. Not that we had any bad kids and people were disrespectful but I don’t know if there was total buy in with everything that we wanted.”

(on the play of Jordon Vaden)
“I think he’s going to stay there for us at corner. Jordan’s a guy, we didn’t do it this spring but he could be a guy that could play both ways for us and play some offense and not just situational. He’s got good stamina and he can run, so we might use him in that way. If he did both, his primary would be corner, not the other way around. It’s easier to play receiver than it is corner.”

(on the most improved leaders from the spring)
“I would say Jake Bennet has done a nice job of that. Jake Bennet is getting healthy. He’s probably our most-improved lineman that we have from last year. Understanding what we are doing offensively, understanding what Coach (Will) Friend wants as far as calls and getting us in the right calls. Nolan Peralta is a leader by example in the way he attacks every single day to everything he does from school to the weight room to practice to the games. I love Nolan Peralta. If we had 10 Nolan Peraltas, we would have a chance to be very good just because he is what you want in a football player. Tyree Simmons has done a really nice job. Tyree doesn’t say anything, but he’s done a nice job of leading by how he’s tried to improve. Taking coaching, he’s done a nice job of that for us.”

Senior QB Faton Bauta
(on his first CSU spring game)
“Overall it was a great experience with the guys. I was able to come in and get adjusted with them this spring. We started off kind of slow offensively but we were able to come back and put it together in the second half, which was good to see.”

(on getting reacquainted with Coach Bobo’s offense)
“I think I took that step today. It’s all a work in progress. Offense is very rubbery. What you put into it is what you get out of it, especially in this system. The more you work with it, the easier it’s going to come.”

(on the quarterback competition)
“If you don’t have competition guys won’t push themselves. There’s just something about competition that you need to have. I’ve been doing this for the last five years of my life so it’s nothing new, and I’m going to go about it like I always do.”

(on the biggest takeaway from the game and spring season)
“The biggest thing was gaining this team’s trust and respect. I don’t know if I did that, but I hope I did. That’s where my focus was and making strides every day as a quarterback.”

Senior CB Tyree Simmons
(on the defense’s performance)
“I feel like the defense did a pretty good job. You saw people laying on the ground on offense, you saw interceptions and fumble recoveries, and you saw a little excitement. I feel like the defense came out here ready to play and we had a good day.”

(on the defense’s three interceptions)
“That’s been the goal for the last four weeks. Every day in practice we get about 4- to 5-minute sessions and opportunities to make interceptions, so we’re just capitalizing on them now.”

(on his confidence in the new starters in the secondary)
“People are always going to doubt us and have something negative to say, but it’s always our job to prove them wrong.”

(overall on the defense during the spring season)
“Coming into the year and learning the defense from (defensive coordinator Marty) English, it was a little shaky at the beginning and there were a lot of miscommunications, but the more we played and the more we practiced the better we got. It showed on the field and the offense could barely move the ball on us.”

Junior QB Nick Stevens
(on the spring game)
“I think people played hard; our guys on offense played really, really hard. The defense was hitting hard all day. I think we made some mistakes for being on Practice 15, but sometimes you are just going to have those days and we definitely picked it up the second half as an offense. We ended up playing pretty well in that half. We have worked as a team this whole spring, and I think that we have a lot of momentum heading into the offseason.”

(on understanding the offense this year compared to last year)
“I think last year was kind of learning plays and the very basic stuff behind it and now we are going to dive deeper into the offense and why we make certain reads, that we could not really understand last year because it was only Year 1. I think that we are definitely going to be more developed quarterbacks and be able to think like Coach Bobo would out there.”

(on the difference between the spring game this year and the spring game last year)
“I definitely feel like I have more experience at the end of spring ball this year than I did last year. Last spring was the first time we actually got to run those plays. I’m actually a lot more excited this year about the offseason and the work that these guys are going to put in. We definitely have a lot more momentum going in after our second year with our spring game. We have a lot to look forward to”

(on his performance)
“I was a little disappointed with myself. I think that the two turnovers weren’t necessary. I tried to force a couple things that weren’t there.”

Junior RB Dalyn Dawkins
(on being comfortable and familiar with the offense)
“That only makes things better; it’s all coming back.”

(on the spring game)
“It felt good. We got good weather out here on a beautiful day. This is a great way to finish the spring.”

(on how the spring season went)
“I think we did real well. We kept getting better and better each practice.”

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