Head Coach John Grass
Thoughts on the game
“It was a great win. It was really good to see our guys so excited. Tonight was the most excited I’ve seen our guys in the locker room in a long time. Winning never gets old. Celebration in the locker room was really good. It’s really a dominating game when you hold someone to 15 yards rushing and you rush it for over 300. We knew those short, three and four-yard runs would break into long runs and that’s what happens. I have to take my hat off to Tennessee State because they played really good in the first half. They have a lot of talent and fly to the ball defensively. Our players just played really well and dominated the line of scrimmage all night.”
Thoughts on the following week
“To get a bye week would be huge. To play on a Thursday night, that really gave us a longer stretch of time to get healthier. Those guys are really excited about the postseason.”
Thoughts on possible playoff seeding
“You never know what the committee is going to do. We felt like we did as much as we could do tonight. We dominated statistically. Tennessee State opened the season by beating Georgia State, which is a bowl-eligible team atop of the Sun Belt, so you think that might have to help us. There’s a lot of football to be played Saturday, but we did what we could do. It should be a slam dunk that we are a top-four seed. I’m more interested in who will be on our side of the bracket. It’ll be a great second-round opponent, that’s for sure.”
On the defense
“I think we knew that was going to be our strong suit coming into the year. We try to shorten the game a little bit. We are just playing great defense. We usually have an extra hat stopping the run, and that’s because we have good guys in the secondary. When you make a team one-dimensional, that really opens up the possibility. To hold them to 15 yards rushing was a big task. We just have to keep doing it.”
On the offense
“It’s like a boxing match with two heavyweights giving body blows. We are going to run the football. Eventually it’ll break down a defense and we’ll have success. The good thing with Bryant Horn, tonight, was that he showed he can make explosive plays. Tennessee State didn’t do that tonight and he made them pay for it.”