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On the offense, getting the run game going, and the offensive line…
“I thought Drew [Bobo] did great. I’ll tell you what, he went in there, and he’s worked his tail off. People don’t realize how many snaps that kid’s snapped to get his chance for the first start. I never really even worried because when Jared [Wilson] was out I was like, ‘Drew’s going to go in there and do a great job,’ and he did. He plays really hard, He plays really physical, and I thought the run game was good for us. I thought we were really close to hitting those explosives, and I feel like we left more out there. We have good backs. We have a quarterback that gets us into the right run, and we’d hit some of those for 20 and 30, and we’re not – and that’s frustrating. A couple of those times I thought we could cash them in, but we did make a lot of plays in the run game.”
On defending the line of scrimmage…
“I think their back [Jarquez Hunter] is the best back that we have played, maybe the best back we will play. I don’t know that, but he is elite. He has embarrassed us for three-straight years. He runs through armed tackles, and I’d advise anybody in the NFL that wants a really good back to get that kid. He’s a special player. But we did rise up. We bent and didn’t break. We had several times that the same thing happened to us during the year, and we have opportunistic stops. We had some fourth down stops that were huge. The fourth down, they tried to run the play that [Jalen] Milroe and Alabama ran and Jalon Walker made the play, and we had big fourth down stops in the second half.”
On Dan Jackson’s performance and what he means to the team…
“Dan’s very consistent. He understands leverages, he knows what offenses are trying to do to you. He’s getting better and better. Dan’s a good football player, and we always thought that and I’m just proud of him. But the blocked kick was something we worked really hard on this week. We worked really hard on protection, and that’s why I sent the field goal team out there at the end because I trust those guys to do it right.”
