Below is the transcript for the Bobby Wilder press conference.
Hey, good afternoon everyone, thanks for coming, and a special welcome to our guests from Optima Health and the Virginia Lottery, great partners for Old Dominion University and our athletics department. We're coming off an extremely frustrating loss at Middle Tennessee on Saturday, in a game where we had the most yards we've had this year, 423 yards on offense. Defensively, we gave up three points and 100 yards in the second half. Offensively, we had 261 yards in the second half and just could not put the ball in the end zone in the second half. This was really the tale of two halves on Saturday. We just did not play well defensively early in this game, particularly in the back end, we had three starters out for this game. Tobias Moss, Calvin Brewton, and Harrell Blackmon, our starting corner and two of our safeties. We gave up three touchdown passes on plays that we should have defended in this game. Then, offensively, we hurt ourselves early with some penalties. We had a penalty on each of our first three drives that set us back.
Speaking to the units, special teams played well in this game, we won the battle for field position. We tackled their punter early on the 15-yard line, that led to a touchdown. We covered kicks well. Blake Watson, who is number two in the league for kickoff returns, only got one opportunity and had a really good return. The one thing is that we missed one field goal, Nick hit the upright on one of our field goals.
Defensively, I mentioned the first half was poor. The second half was dominant, and again, the biggest difference was in the coverage. I do believe we'll have two of our starters back this week. Both of our safeties that were out in this game, Brewton and Blackmon. I do want to compliment Will Brocchini, who played his first game ever at safety, he moved from corner to safety for this game. He played well, he had six tackles in the game. He was primarily the safety coming down in the box, and for a little guy, stuck his face in there, and I thought he played a very good football team. Lawrence Garner led us in tackles with nine, he's got 104 on the year, he's number two in C-USA right now in tackles.
Offensively, clearly a very good football game by Hayden Wolff. It's only his third game and he continues to develop and play at a high level. He was 39-for-65, 321 yards, had a touchdown pass, his interception came off a dropped pass by one of our receivers, which unfortunately fell right to their linebacker who returned it for a touchdown. In three games, Hayden is averaging 245 yards per game passing and each game that number has gone up. If he had enough passes, he'd be fifth in the league right now in passing in only three football games. The good news about it is that he gets better every week, the great news about it is he'll be a freshman again in 2020 because he's only going to play in four games. Aaron Moore set the school record in this game for catches with 14, he had 193 yards receiving and a touchdown. He's really starting to remind me of one of the great receivers we had here, Larry Pinkard. Larry Pinkard was a guy who was long, he was tall, tremendous speed, just really fluid, and Larry learned how to run routes, and that's when he became an impact receiver. People are wondering, "okay, how does Aaron Moore have eight catches in ten games and then have 14 catches in one game?" Well, obviously, the big difference is the quarterback, but he's just continued to get better and better. We saw at Marshall, he had a touchdown catch, last week against San Antonio he had a 58-yard touchdown catch, and then this week he has a 63-yard touchdown catch. He just continues to get better and better. You think about that combination of Wolff and Moore and then you throw in Eric Kumah, who I believe will be the best wide receiver in the league next year, that's really exciting. I also want to compliment the offensive line. Each of our starters played 92 snaps in this game, which is the most of the year. It's a difficult position to play without any rest at all, and for the first time this year, we had zero sacks in this game against a team that was a heavy blitz team. Our guys did a good job of picking it up, Hayden got us in the right protection. Then you also saw with Hayden Wolff, even on a couple of blitzes where we were unblocked, we didn't have enough to block for him, he got the ball out quickly, which is going to make Charlotte see and recognize that, that if they blitz him, he's going to get the ball out. It allows us to do a much better job up front. For the first time since Virginia Tech, we were over 100 yards rushing and that's with Kesean Strong out in this game, Lala Davis went out early with his shoulder, Blake Watson is finally healthy from his ankle, he had some really good runs in this game. But I feel like with Strong back this week, I feel like if we get Davis a little healthier, we can continue to grow the run game.
This week's opponent is Charlotte, they're 6-5 right now, they're probably the hottest team in the league right now, they've won four games in a row, all league games. Offensively, Chris Reynolds is a quarterback similar to Asher O'Hara, the quarterback we just played. Chris has the ability to run the ball, throw the ball, he actually had 25 carries for 150 yards in this past week's game against Marshall, a game that was played in difficult conditions, there was a lot of rain and a lot of wind, but he's a duel threat guy. Benny Lemay, who had missed the past three games, came back in the Marshall game and had over 100 yards, he's one of only two running backs in the league averaging over 100 yards. Then their wide receiver Victor Tucker has 730 yards on the season. This is an explosive offense; they average nearly 430 yards per game.
Defensively, they're allowing 392 yards, they have the two best defensive ends in the league. That's really their strength up front. Alex Highsmith is a candidate for defensive player of the year. He leads the league in sacks with 10.5. Markees Watts has 7.5 sacks, the other defensive end. It's a situation where you've got to pick your poison, who you're going to double, and how you're going to protect, so we're going to do a really good job with those two guys up front.
This is the final game of 2019. This is one we want to win for sure, especially playing at home on senior day. I know our guys will be excited to play, they'll come out and play good football.
We also have a special announcement. We've finalized our non-league schedule for 2020. For the first time in six years, seven of our 12 will be at home, we'll only play five on the road. Three of those four including two Power Five teams in Wake Forest and the University of Virginia, both of those teams are 8-3 right now. That'll give us seven at home. The schedule sets up this way, we'll open at home September 5 against Wake Forest, week two we'll play at home against Hampton on September 12, on October 3 ,we'll play at the University of Connecticut, and then on October 24, we'll play home against Virginia. Those are the four non-league games next season, and we won't know the league schedule until early next year. But I'm really excited about this schedule, to have seven at home, the quality of the opponent we have at home, two Power Five teams coming to our place, that's not something you see, I don't know anyone else that's a group of five team that'll have two Power Fives coming to our place. I'm very excited about that, and with that, I'll gladly take questions.
Q: How did the UConn game come about? I know they're going independent, so they're looking for games. You had North Carolina, Virginia.
BW: Yeah, that's something that Wood, Bruce Stewart, and I talked about with this year's schedule is that if there's an opportunity to not have three Power Fives on the schedule. The model we like to have is to have one or two Power Fives, another group of five, which UConn is, and then one FCS opponent, we like to try to play someone local if we can, so it was really a three-way scheduling work with UConn, North Carolina, and ourselves. Bruce Stewart did a great job handling that, and he had the ability to make it so all four of those weren't at the start. We'll have some balance throughout the schedule with the non-league. You look at some people's schedules and the non-league is all upfront, so this allows us to not play eight consecutive league games, which really helps.
Bobby Wilder Press Conference (Transcript and Video)
