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Here are the highlights from Auburn coach Gus Malzahn’s weekly press conference leading into the team’s Week 5 matchup with San Jose State.
On Sean White’s first game: “Pregame, I really watched him close. You could tell the moment wasn’t too big for him then. He didn’t have that wide-eyed look like he was scared or anything like that. Then, right before he went out for the first drive, you could tell he was ready to go, and he just needed to get hit once.”
More on White moving forward: “He did a good job for us. We feel like he’s going to get better. He’s our starting quarterback this week, and we really feel like he’s got a chance to be a very good quarterback in our system. We’re just going to take it like that.”
On not being able to get the ball to playmakers: “We have targeted our playmakers. There’s been some issues, either not being able to get it to them or double coverage or pressure or something like that, but we’ll continue.”
On not getting the ball to D’haquille Williams: “There’s a lot of focus (on him), and we were trying to get the ball to him early (against Mississippi State), and there were some double-coverage issues with that. Sometimes the protection broke down or the reads, but he’s one of the impact players, there’s no doubt, and we need to find a way to not only get the ball to him, but there’s three or four others that I feel like we need to do a better of getting the ball to also.”
On frustration with offense: “We take great pride in scoring points around here and playing well on offense, and we haven’t done that yet. There was times that we’ve done some good things, but we haven’t been consistent. Usually by this time, we have a good idea of what we have, don’t have and can build around our strengths, but the change in quarterbacks, that kind of puts them a little bit behind, but I still feel very confident that we can be a good offense.”
On not coming up with big plays: “We’re a run, play-action team. One of the Achilles heels this year has been explosive plays. We haven’t had the explosive plays that we’ve had in the past. That’s what we need to do as coaches, figure out how to manufacture those things with our guys and within our system.”
On RB Peyton Barber: “He’s going to start. Peyton has shown a lot of toughness. He’s done a very solid job for us. He’s protected the football.”
On how inexperience has affected offense’s progression: “When you got new faces at a lot of new positions, you don’t want to give too much where you can execute, so we’re kind of trying to figure all that out.”
Born and raised in Gainesville, Talal joined SDS in 2015 after spending 2 years in Bristol as an ESPN researcher. Previously, Talal worked at The Gainesville Sun.
