Bobby Petrino Quotes (84 Quotes)

It was good to see Michael be able to turn on that extra gear and be able to sprint into the end zone after 27 carries and a couple of catches. That says a lot for how hard he worked all summer and the condition he's in.

When we got behind, the sideline was great. There were guys on offense who talked about how we'll come back and get it done and the guys on defense had a lot of energy.

It's really important for us to keep the best player in the city of Louisville here every year. I see (Henderson) right in line with Michael Bush, Brian Brohm, Mario Urrutia and Earl Heyman. He continues that tradition. His movement and maturity give him an opportunity to compete early for a spot to play. He's got an advantage that he'll be here all summer working out.

We hope (our home-field advantage) is really big. That's what we want, ... We want to get where it is a real tough place to come in to play. Our guys are excited about it. It is our first time at home and it is going to be a good crowd. It's going to be loud.

I was disappointed we were ever in court. It's been a lot of, I guess frustration this week and a lot of energy, a lot of stress and I'm glad it's over with.

It was great. I thoroughly enjoyed it. I learned a lot of football from Tom Coughlin and the other coaches I was able to work with. Any time you're locked up in the bottom of a stadium for 16 hours a day, you better absorb something.

We don't say it's more important. We do understand the stakes are a lot higher this year because if you win the conference you're in a BCS bowl game and that's certainly one of our goals. I can't say that this game is more important than the next one or the previous one because as of right now, there's a lot at stake in every game we play.

You hate to see kids watching on TV at home see something like that.

It's really unfortunate. You hate to see something like that. You hate for the kids at home watching on TV to see something like that. I don't know how the whole stadium could see it and none of the officials do.

I think being a leader is something that's important to him and he's been working hard at it. He's got a great personality for it he'd talk to the wall if it would talk back to him. Now we'll see if the players think as much of him as I do.

I wish the whole team would play with that kind of motor.

He did get frustrated at times. But he kept fighting through it, kept playing hard. And in those games he made a lot of plays against the run, which is something that goes unnoticed.

It seems like every time we get into this first game, that I'm relatively conservative. We get a lead and we feel like, 'Let's run the ball well and complete the short pass and not give it back to them.' We've just got to be more aggressive and that's my job.

We didn't do everything right. We still have things we need to improve on. We've got to make sure we get touchdowns, and then getting an extra point blocked is something we can't have happen.

That's something that's really important for us because I do feel that we'll have a lot of games this year that will come down to the fourth quarter. And how well you take care of the ball and how well you run it will make the difference.

Special teams are a major concern, ... We have not done well on special teams in all phases. We're going to work hard and get better at it. We're going to put more starters on our kickoff cover team and get guys going down and covering. We have no choice.

At halftime Jeff was chewing him out in the hallway. So he's been coaching him for a long time.

Brian threw the ball real well, ... He was very accurate today and I thought he did his best job of reading and taking what the defense gave us because they played us a little bit different than we thought they would coverage-wise, dropped guys a little deeper, blitzed us more on first down. So they had a pretty good plan coming in and we had to adjust a little bit.

It was good to get our first Big East victory, ... I was proud of our players the way they came back. It was a very difficult week for all of us, but we did work extremely hard and we got some extremely good leadership. It wasn't easy we didn't execute on all cylinders, but our players certainly played with great effort, really stuck together and had a lot of energy and enthusiasm.

We're going to have to do a good job of executing, getting lots of completions, getting some big plays, ... That will be critical in this game. We will have to get big plays because they put so much pressure on you, they don't want you to sustain long drives.

I told him we didn't have a scholarship available. We talked about how a walk-on gets a scholarship and that his best chance would come after two years.

I was pleased with energy that the players practiced with this morning. The focus was good and the players worked hard. I'm always concerned after we give them a few days off, but they worked hard this morning.

I think Brian grew up a lot as far as leadership goes,

We were a little more aggressive today, ... and I think we hit a little harder than they did.

The biggest thing Mike does is communicate well with the players,

He's certainly a guy who can make a lot of plays. He's extremely fast and long. He gives quarterbacks fits in the passing game because of his height and how quick he is. He had a great year for us and we need him to do it again.

He gives you a comfort zone. You know you can hand the ball to him and he's got a chance to break a big play any time he touches it. The last game we played he wasn't full speed, and he carried it 25 times. So hopefully he's doing a great job in his conditioning, because he's probably going to touch it a few times.

You need to get up early and get started, ... That's nice too. You don't have to sit and wait all day long for the game to come. I would anticipate us to come out ready to play and fired up and be real aggressive. Of course, they are going to be a real good football team too so it will probably be a real good battle.

That's tough on you, ... You go four weeks preparing for the first game, practicing against each other and now you come back and have to take two more weeks before the next game. It's hard, but I thought our players handled it pretty well.

I have no complaints at all, ... We knew exactly what we had to do. We had an opportunity to do it. We just fell a little bit short. We knew what the rules were.

I'm certainly not worried about the play-calling, ... I know we can move the ball. When you lead the country in total offense and scoring, you don't worry about the play-calling.

I've always liked the way George runs the ball, ... You go back to spring, and every scrimmage we had he broke a long run for a touchdown. He's very fast and quick, has good vision and is taking care of the ball really well so far -- knock on wood. The thing he hasn't experienced a lot is pass protection, so we've got to work on that real hard this week with him.

To be honest, I wish we would've played somebody else,

All year long, everyone's been talking not the players and the coaches but they've been hearing all year long words like 'undefeated' and 'run the table,' ... What we need to do is focus on beating Cincinnati, and that's it.

Hunter did a great job. That's his second college football game and he was going against the No. 1 defense in the country who were very physical, very fast and hit him harder than he has ever been hit. He's a tough kid. He hung in there and got us to the fourth quarter with an opportunity to win the game and then we just didn't finish it.

We're very excited about Michael's decision to return to the University of Louisville. He's such an integral part of our offense and I look for him to have a huge senior season.

The way you win games like this, your players do what we call ring the bell. They give best performance to date. I think that's what it is going to take for us to win the game.

It's really unfortunate. You hate to see stuff like that. You hate to have kids at home that are watching the game on TV see stuff like that. You don't know how the whole stadium sees it and none of the officials did.

Our guys can play with anybody. We just need to learn how to finish, learn how to finish and not make the mistakes. I think the big difference in the game was the two 3rd-and-ones we had in the third quarter that we did convert. That's on me that we didn't get it done.

Hass is big, very strong and physical. He does a good job on the line of scrimmage, runs really good routes, has good hands and adjusts to the football as well as anyone I've watched in awhile. We've got to make sure we know where he's lined up because they move him all over the place, much like we did when we had Arnold Jackson. Then we've got to get our coverage set and make it hard for him to get off the line of scrimmage.

It's a good thing Elvis was in the house. He does a great job of getting his arms on the offensive tackle.

I thought our players handled it pretty well. they practiced hard and practiced fast. We got better. We were able to come back last night and get a game preparation practice in for Oregon State and that went really well. You like the preparation time, but you also like getting into a game week rhythm. It is hard to keep practicing against each other all the time.

If he ever gets a coach who calls more passing plays, he'll be OK. He did a great job of executing what we called. I think he also grew up today with his leadership.

That's going to be important for us to stay fresh and rush the passer because they're going to continue to throw the ball, ... They might throw it six, seven, eight times in a row.

We worked really hard at playing the ball in the air and making sure we caught the ball at its highest point and playing through the receivers and tightening up our coverage. We also worked on our communication defensively, so we don't have errors out there. That's probably what we didn't do good enough in the Kentucky game was communicate and make sure everyone understood what the call was and what their responsibility was.

We need to concentrate on the Cincinnati game and win the Cincinnati game and not think about one other thought.

Any time you get up in the morning and get started it's easier, ... It's easier on your stomach, that's for sure.

Watching them on video, it's scary how fast they are. They are big, physical and aggressive. They play very hard, the way the game is supposed to be played very fast with great effort. Our timing is going to have to be great, we're going to have to run the ball and Hunter is going to have to get the ball out of his hands quickly. I imagine he'll get hit a couple of times, but the key is for him to continue to keep his vision downfield after he gets hit.

With the opportunity to play for a BCS game, ... our players have been very motivated and truly believe we are moving into a tougher league.

I think he's got an opportunity to come in here and contribute right away. That's one of the reasons he chose (Louisville) is so he could play right away, immediately and hopefully have some impact.