Head Coach Randy Edsall

Opening statement:

"We have a tremendous challenge ahead of us this weekend as we go out to Camp Randall in Madison to face Wisconsin. Wisconsin is a very good football team and very well coached. They have good players and are doing a really good job offensively running the football, 343 yards per game, 7.38 per attempt. They're eighth in the country in time of possession. They utilize the clock and keep the opposing offenses off the field. We have a tremendous challenge in trying to stop Melvin Gordon. He's an outstanding running back and deserves all the credit that is being laid upon him this year. They have a veteran offensive line and they give you a lot of different looks, use a lot of tight ends and play two different quarterbacks. Again, it's going to be a tremendous challenge. Defensively, they are a 3-4, three-down team, and sometimes go to four down. They just play aggressive, good, sound, solid defense. They play a lot of man-coverage. They are very sound and very solid in special teams. Like I said, it is going to be a tremendous challenge this weekend."

On having won five straight road games and playing in a hostile road environment:

"I don't know if there is any special formula. We haven't done anything different in how we go about it. We just try to get the kids focused on what we have to do between the lines from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Central Time and 12 p.m. to 3 p.m. Eastern Time. For me it's just preparing the same way each and every week and guys believing that they can win. We are not changing anything this week in the way we prepare for a home game or an away game. We are going to go about our business and hopefully we will be able to do enough things on Saturday to come away with a victory."

On Wisconsin's run game:

"[Melvin Gordon] is very special. He is a very good running back. He's got speed and good vision. He's got good explosiveness and power to him as well. He's an all-around back. What they try to do is gain leverage on you and outnumber you. You have to be really good in terms of making sure you protect the edges and you have to get everyone to fit properly versus the runs that you are going to see. If you don't, he's got all of those qualities that I just mentioned to be able to hurt you if you make a mistake in terms of a fit or in terms of leverage."

On Wisconsin's defense:

"They're very sound and very solid in what they do and what they like. They have a scheme they believe in and they have good players that play within the system they have and are very active. They can play man coverage and be able to get an extra guy in the box to be able to do things. I'm just very impressed with the way they run to the ball and how they execute the scheme that they are playing."

On traveling to Camp Randall Stadium:

"I don't know. I've never played there and I've never coached there. This is going to be the first experience for me. I know they jump around during the third and fourth quarter. We'll play our crowd noise during the week and hopefully we can play well enough to make it where the crowd isn't a factor."

On linebacker Yannick Ngakoue's development:

"He's grown up. I just had him in my office before I came up here and we were talking about his academics and how he's doing a good job there. It's just maturity. He's growing up and continuing to grow up. He understands what the expectations are and understands his ability and what we are looking for out of his ability. As I told him today, I'm very proud of him in terms of how he's listened to what we've said as coaches and how he's more coachable. He's really developing into a great all-around person. He's a really good student, a really good player on the field, and a good person off the field. He's not where we want him to be yet, but he's making the strides and he sees the value of the program and what we are doing for him."

On wide receiver Jacquille Veii and his performance:

"Jacquille is a young man that we knew had that kind of athletic ability when we recruited him. We have an offense and a belief in what we do and what Mike [Locksley] puts together with the offensive staff. The offensive staff is just taking the guys ability to make plays and give them the opportunity to be able to make those plays. He's a guy that can run the ball, he can catch and he can be a return man for us as well. Again, what you want to do is not be one dimensional and utilize all your pieces to be as productive as you can. That's what we are doing with Jacquille. He's a productive piece for us offensively and what we've been able to do as a staff is come up with ways to get him involved to utilize his ability and be more productive."

On the team's recent success on the road:

"I think what happens is you have to learn how to win on the road and we didn't learn how to do that until Virginia Tech a few years ago. We went down to Blacksburg and beat them. When you do something like that you gain confidence and I think that's what happened. I think our guys just gained confidence in terms of what we needed to do and we just been able to go and prepare and block things out. That's the biggest thing, you have to be able to block things out, and you have to have a chip on your shoulder. You don't have many people cheering for you. It's a mindset, focus and belief that everybody's got to hang together and find a way to get it done."

On the play of defensive lineman Andre Monroe:

"It's really interesting, he went up against an all-American tackle last week versus Iowa and did a really good job. The thing with Andre is, he's kind of, a little bit like a possum sometimes. You sometimes think that he's kind of not going hard; and then all the sudden, he's a lot quicker. People take a look at his size and think the guy's at 5'11”, with heels on, and can't maybe play on the defensive line, and be as productive. But he's got a motor, he's got great quickness, he understands leverage; and if you talk about a guy that is playing with a lot of confidence, it's Andre. He's healthy, we had some other things that we dealt with him on that made him better from a sleep standpoint. He's just goes out there and goes hard and wants to play well. You talk about a guy that's come a long way, there's another guy that's really grown and developed in the time that I've been here. It's neat to see. It's neat to see him play the way that he's playing. And he's playing that way because he's working hard and he's listening and he's doing stuff on his own."

On the growth of linebacker Yannick Ngakoue:

"This gets back to what I've talked about before here is that he got built up too much in high school, in terms of what everybody thought of him. For a young kid that's hard. Then when you come in here and all of the sudden you're not at the top of the food chain, you're at the bottom and then some things happen to you on the field that have never happened to you in the last few years. In high school, you can dominate and do certain things but all of the sudden you get to college and that's not happening anymore. Then, there's a level of frustration setting in because maybe some of the things aren't happening; you're not on the field playing and those sort of things. We had to get him through that and we had to get him to understand that this is a process and he still had a lot to learn as a player. He was not where he is going to be, and the only way that he was going to get where he wanted to be was to listen to us; instead of thinking that we were the bad guys, we were actually the good guys. He needed to block out all the extraneous stimuli outside of the program and stop listening to those people and listen to what the coaches were telling him, and he'd be okay. He did that. So, it's a credit to him and that's the level of maturity that we're talking about. He's not even close to being where he can be as long as he stays healthy and he keeps working. He's getting better each and every day. I think he played okay against Iowa, but I think he can play better. He did good things in that game and there were things that he didn't do as well, just like everybody else. But I'm excited for him because of how hard that he's working and how much that he's taking in everything that we're telling him that he needs to do to get better. He's locked out those voices on the outside and he's really focusing on everything that's being told to him within the program."

On if the competition within the Big Ten is what he thought it would be:

"We knew it was going to be a dogfight, we knew that. We knew that it was going to be tough, and it's been tough. It's going to continue to be tough each and every week. What we're trying to do is to get our guys to understand that we have to go out and win the individual battles each and every play and when that's over we have to go out there and win the next one. The more individual battles we can win in all three phases then it gives us a better opportunity to win. But I don't think it's anything different than what we really expected."

On the status of quarterback C.J. Brown:

"He's feeling great. He's doing well. He's smiling and walking. As a matter of fact, he was just up here going to his car a little while ago. He's fine, he's doing well."

On the Baltimore Sun report that coaches' compensation is tied to academic progress:

"It's not in my contract, I know that. If you're talking about something that a committee within the board of regents is recommending to the whole board of regents within the university system to put it in new contracts for coaches that any bonuses would be tied to reaching the standards for academic achievement and if you don't you wouldn't get those bonuses. I think everybody knows how I feel about academics. What our main purpose is here as educators, teachers, parents, mentors, and I think my record speaks for itself on what we do academically and how our kids achieve in the classroom. I know I have them in my contracts, those things are in there but that's something that we should be doing. The institution should be doing everything they can to graduate because for the most part, there's such a small percentage of them that are going to go on to the NFL. I don't have any issue with that, if that gets passed by the whole board of trustees by the university system, I think that's great. We should be graduating our kids and we should be doing everything we can to help them achieve in the classroom at the highest level possible."

On the confidence of quarterback Perry Hills:

"I probably didn't emphasize this enough on Saturday, but Perry really went in there and did an outstanding job. If you take a look at it, he didn't really start getting reps until Wednesday. He would get individual work but then he was signaling, he wasn't even doing the scout team work; Shane [Cockerille] was doing the scout team work. For him to go in and do what he did and make some of those throws that he made and not turn the ball over, I think he did a really good job. Again, you see him get back in the swing of things. After practice I usually run on the field, and he was staying out there on his own. He was throwing with some of the receivers and then they went in and he was out there working on some things throwing into the net. He's a competitor. I think he even might have said that he probably should have been preparing even better than what he was knowing that the situation could arise to have to go in there. He'll be fine. He'll be fine, and if we have to use Shane he'll be fine. Whoever we have to use in any situation, any of them will be fine. They'll go in and do a good job."

-Maryland-