Notebook: Week 7 Press Conference

Coming off a bye week, Jimbo Fisher and the Aggies met the media on Monday afternoon as they get ready for another road trip--this time to South Carolina--on Saturday night (6:30 p.m., SEC Network).

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Jimbo Fisher's opening statement:

Off week last week came at a good time. Got your nicks and nacks, and guys getting healthy. We had some good practices, got back to some fundamental work, worked on some future opponents and South Carolina, plus other things. 

South Carolina is a very good football team. Playing very well right now, they're 4-2. They're doing a great job in all three phases of what they're doing. They have experience on defense up front. Pickens and Birch up front, plus their D-line, do a great job. Backers are active. Secondary does a really good job. Spencer Rattler's doing a good job at quarterback. The running back, No. 1, can really run the ball. He's running really, really hard. Receivers are making plays. Experienced offensive line. Special teams always does a great job. They've blocked five punts on the year. Good returners, good kickers, those type of things. South Carolina is always a very tough place to play. Great atmosphere over there, great environment, especially being a night game. So they'll be juiced and ready, and we need to be able to bring our A-game, be able to play well and finish out the second half of the season and play good football.

Week 7 Press Conference Quotables:

• On Haynes King's status: "He's going."
• On Haynes having a better game against Alabama than he did in the season's first two: "Well, in the first game, he had a mistake or two. And in the second game, he could have made some plays at the end, but there were a lot of plays he made early in the game that didn't have (anything) to do with him, that other people need to finish up. And like you see now, we're all a byproduct of the people around us in how we play, especially at quarterback. I mean, what are we saying right now? The two greatest quarterbacks maybe of our era, Tom Brady and Aaron Rodgers, have the lowest QB ratings or the lowest win records or lowest whatever. I mean, you have to play well, but my point is it shows you those two is as good as anybody in my time...but you've got to play well around them for them to be able to function and do things. And then in time, as they get older and more experienced, they learn to, as I say, clean up the messes of other people more and more. It's still a team game, you know what I'm saying? But I think he's grown, he's matured and he's practicing. And he took that time off, he didn't pout, he worked on getting better knowing that if he got another opportunity he wanted to play well. And he's still got to continue to play better than he did, because you never are good enough. Good enough is never good enough. But that's just who Haynes is and who he is as a person. He's going to work and grind and play as best he can."
• On the challenge South Carolina will present: "It's going to be an extremely tough game. All the games in this league, I don't care who you play, everybody's got players, and especially on the road and in the SEC...man, they're tough. At home they're tough. Just SEC games in general. This team's playing very well. In the Kentucky game, they got turnover on the first play, they blocked a punt in that game and got points off that, so they're very opportunistic in what they've done and and how they play. They have a very good football team."
• On how to maintain momentum through a bye week: "You go back to fundamentals. The reasons of the things you did wrong, the things you did right, are fundamentals. We had good, spirited practices, and executed well. We need to look forward to that today. I'm anxious see how we come back out there today."
• On any maturation gained from the performance at Alabama: "Well, like I said, there's no moral victories. I think it shows you what we're capable of and how we can do things. But we have to find a way to make those plays to get over the hump in any of the three phases of what we do. But hopefully we can build at least from a confidence standpoint, knowing who we were on the field with. That doesn't take any precedence for what you do against South Carolina. You've got to go back and play well and prepare well, and remember the things you did well and things you made mistakes on in the Alabama game. You can you try to build on everything, but hopefully that'll give us some confidence and be able to keep going."

Player Quotables:

• TE Max Wright on Coach Fisher's message after Alabama: "The message was the inches are where you win and lose those games. And we had opportunities. We had opportunities throughout that game that could have given us a chance to win it. And I think that our defense performed phenomenally. Getting all the turnovers that they did was huge and super crucial. But he was like, we just played with the best team in the country. And it shows that we can do it. We've just got to go out there and build to do it more consistently."
• Wright on the offense taking a step forward in the game: "I think so, yeah. Just some young guys have really been taking some steps. Kam Dewberry, for him to come in that game, get some crucial reps and be able to help us out on the offensive line was huge. We've had some guys go down on the offensive line and being able to have some young guys step up is definitely really crucial. You've got to be able to have depth, especially in such a long season in the SEC. You're going to have guys are going to get hurt and banged up, and you have to have young guys come in there, step in and not just fill the role but also perform really well. That is super important."
• DB Antonio Johnson on emphasizing stopping the run: "We don't look at the stats. We just go out there and play. And we know going into the (Alabama) game that the run was a big part of their offense and it sets up the rest of their offense. And we just had to dial in to make sure that we can stop their best player, who was in the backfield. So we knew we had to stop him to even have a chance to win the game. And going into the rest of the season, we know we're going to see some good backs. I know South Carolina's got a good back in there. Ole Miss the following week has three good backs. So you know it's a big emphasis on the defense right now to stop the run."
• Johnson on the bye week being a turning point for the season: "For sure. We didn't want to start the season off having three losses this early. But you can't look at that. You only learn from those losses. And that's what we have. As a team, as a leader, you've got to keep everybody's head on straight. Tell everybody keep their head down, just keep working, stay humble. And I feel like we as a team worked hard during the bye week. When we had practice, we practiced hard. And you can just see the hunger a lot from the team."