QB Jerod Evans Hoping to Rebound from Uncharacteristically Turnover-Laden Performance Against Irish

The Hokies made plenty of mistakes in their 30-20 loss to Georgia Tech, but few loom as large as the four turnovers the team gave up to the Yellow Jackets — naturally, that's now a prime focus for the staff before they head out to Notre Dame.

The Fighting Irish haven't exactly created a ton of turnovers year (they're tied for 105th in the country with just 11 so far) but QB Jerod Evans is well aware that he can't afford to be careless with the ball in the road matchup.

He's generally been exceedingly interception-averse in his first season under center at Tech, but after doubling his INT total with two picks last week, he's doing a lot of hard thinking about how to avoid that sort of result.

"I know I have the ball in my hand 100 percent of the time, so whatever I do with that ball is pretty much, I wouldn't say life or death, but I feel that way," Evans said. "I feel very proud when I have that ball in my hand. I'm confident in my ability to do what I do with a ball."

Offensive coordinator Brad Cornelsen was certainly a bit perturbed by Evans' sloppiness with the ball, but he feels confident that those sorts of errors are "correctable." He wasn't overly hard on his QB, however, largely because Evans seems to be taking those turnovers quite personally.

"I made the plays worse," Evans said. "Instead of tucking it down and running or throwing it out of bounds, I made the play that was called worse. They play that was called, I made it worse. The coverage, they had a good coverage and the play that we called, we thought we were gonna get a different look and we didn't. I wouldn't say it was a bad play call, I just made the play that was designed for something else worse by throwing it up to Bucky too far and then I thought my guy was gonna do something different. I made it worse."

Complicating matters for Evans is that defenses seem to be catching up to his propensity to take long shots down the field, particularly after one prime time matchup.

"They definitely try to take all the big shots away with Isaiah (Ford), Bucky (Hodges), and Cam (Phillips)," Evans said. "After what they saw what happened to Pitt, a lot of teams are starting to play the deep ball more because of that."

Cornelsen isn't excessively concerned with that development either, but he does admit that it puts a bit more pressure on Evans to be consistently accurate on shorter routes.
"It certainly opens up other things for you, but it creates more execution involved with the offense," Cornelsen.

The Irish will undoubtedly present a test for the Hokies in that department — they currently rank 15th in the country in pass yards allowed per game, just one spot ahead of VT.

But they'll also have quite the home field advantage to work with. Most of the Hokies have never been to 80,795-seat Notre Dame Stadium, with a few viewings of "Rudy" as close as they've ever come to playing the Irish.

Yet it would seem that Evans isn't worrying too much about being overwhelmed by the tradition out in South Bend as the team tries to get back on track.

"It's another game that we're trying to win that we're trying to get a bad taste out of our mouth," Evans said. "I respect the heck out of their tradition, don't get me wrong, but I could care less about the tradition. We're here to play football, and the tradition doesn't go on the field.

"So do I care about it? Does it mean something to me in that sense? Yes, because tradition means a lot to me in just my facet of life and how I've been raised. But tradition's not gonna win the game. I'm not gonna be worried about tradition when I put on the football pads."

Bud Foster

ON NOTRE DAME QB DESHONE KIZER:

"I see an extremely talented guy. He reminds me of (Josh Dobbs) from Tennessee in a lot of ways. Physical stature, ability, can throw the ball, can spin it very good, can run, he's their second leading rusher. Just a big dynamic guy that you see getting better and better every week that he plays. It's a talented football team. I know they've had some of their issues, more early probably than later, but they're — from an offensive standpoint — they haven't had many. You see great skill kids. You see a big, physical group up front that is strong and has good feet. It's gonna be a tremendous challenge. It's gonna be our first time playing up there. My first time in my life being up there, even being a midwest guy. But it's about a football game and obviously they're extremely talented and we've gotta go play extremely well."

ON WHAT HE REMEMBERS OF BRIAN KELLY:

"Well-coached football team. That's what I remember. Their tempo, they're doing what they did. Good quarterbacks. They had a quarterback that wasn't the running threat that they have now, but they have a talented group of kids, obviously. They went to the Orange Bowl. I thought they played really well that night and put together a good package. That's what I remember."

ON IF HE'S WORRIED THE DEFENSE WILL CARRY SOME OF LAST WEEK INTO THIS WEEK'S GAME:

"No, my biggest concern is hangover, disappointment. We've gotta put that behind us. We still have everything in front of us that we want. It was in the cards. Not just for us that day, but a lot of teams it seemed like across the country. A lot of the ranked and favorite teams (lost). You have a weekend like that, it seems like for whatever reason, in college football and even in the NFL. The top dogs get knocked off. Have a lot of respect for Georgia Tech. Their back's against the wall. They had to win to continue to be bowl eligible. Obviously that offense is a pain in the butt. As I said, going back and looking at it, you take away a couple of plays, really they didn't have much. You had a couple of plays that would pester you, but that's part of what that offense does. We need to eliminate the explosive plays. We were 4 for 14 on third down, so we were getting off the field when they're a team that's over 50 percent on third down efficiency. We had some opportunities, but we just gave up a couple of big plays. The biggest thing is to move forward. It's such a unique game and it's good to get back in — the three yards and a cloud of dust, that offense is a pain in the tail — it's good to get back to modern football, I guess."

ON IF TERRELL EDMUNDS HAD A HARD TIME GETTING GOING AFTER SITTING OUT A HALF:

"I don't know, you'd have to ask him. I didn't sense anything like that. We had him watching the game and came in at halftime making sure he knew any kind of adjustments that we were making. He's a sharp kid and it's extremely important for him. He was tuned in."

ON IF IT'S A STRUGGLE TO GO FROM GEORGIA TECH'S OFFENSE BACK TO A NORMAL OFFENSE:

"Not very hard. I think it's harder now to go to that offense than it is what we're doing now. Just because you're seeing so much of what we work against our guys everyday, what we're gonna see this week, what we see week in and week out. I think, as football's trending towards spreading the field and doing those type of things, I think they're sticking true to what they do and Paul (Johnson) believes and that makes it a difficult offense to defend."

ON HIS THOUGHTS OF BRANDON FACYSON AND HIS ROLE THIS WEEK:

"It's gonna be extremely important. Our corners are gonna have to play really, really well. I think their receivers are dynamic. They've got a couple of kids that reminds me of the (Mack) Hollins kid at North Carolina who I think is a very explosive and dynamic guy. When you watch him on film run, you kind of say, 'That's an impressive dude.' They've got about three or four guys like him on this team. You're talking about 5-star U. They've been in the top two or three recruiting classes for the last 50 years. Or at least for sure how long they've been rating recruiting classes. They've got those kind of guys. Our corners are gonna have to play really, really well. They do a lot of deep shots, they run a lot of deep comebacks, run some double moves; we're gonna have to do a good job on the perimeter. Having a guy like Brandon who's got a lot of experience is obviously a plus."

ON HIS THOUGHTS ON LINEBACKING PLAY OVER THE LAST FEW WEEKS:

"I think they've played well. Look at Tremaine (Edmunds) and Andrew (Motuapuaka), I thought they played very well. I know they'd both like to have about two plays back from the other night, but that's gonna happen in that offense. But prior to that, I think they've been playing very well. Obviously they're both leading our team in tackles. Tremaine is a guy that's creating a lot of plays behind the line of scrimmage. As I've said, I still think he's at the tip of the iceberg of how good he can be. I've been pleased."

ON GREG STROMAN:

"He moved around a little bit today, and then I got focused in on what we're doing. I didn't pay a whole lot of attention to what was going on with him. I know he did some stuff. We'll just see where he goes and where he is tomorrow."

ON NIGEL WILLIAMS:

"I know he's fighting through it. I don't know if he's 100 percent, but being a senior, he's really working hard to get back. He's had such a — early part, before he got hurt — phenomenal year. I know it's helpful for those guys if we can get some guys in there, because it's so physical inside, that we can give a little bit more of a blow. If you're not careful, you get beat up a little bit if you play too many plays."

ON IF KEN EKANEM IS STILL HAVING SHOULDER PROBLEMS:

"He's always gonna have that. He's got his shoulder, his pec — it's more of his pec. He's battling through it. It's gonna always aggravate him, I believe, until the season's over. With a lot of guys, whether it's a wrist here or an ankle here, or a shoulder there, that's gonna be part of it. But I will say this, our guys have done a great job of pre-hab or rehab, however you wanna call it. There's been time that's needed time in the training room. Obviously Mike Goforth and those people are the best in the business, in my mind. Those guys are working hard like they would professionally. I appreciate them wanting to be out there and they're leading by example. I'm talking Nigel, I'm talking Ken, those guys like that that are seniors that have been beat up. A Sam Rogers, those guys are warriors. I appreciate everything they're all about."

Brandon Facyson

ON WHAT STANDS OUT ABOUT NOTRE DAME:

"What stands out about their offense is they're a spread team. They like to air it out a lot. They have talent at every position, but we do, too. We're gonna go into this game, practice hard, and do what we do."

ON IF IT'S EXCITING TO GO UP AGAINST HIGHLY TALENTED PLAYERS:

"It's always exciting when you go against the guys — I've been going against good guys all year. It's nothing really new to us. We're just gonna approach it like every other game. Get better in practice. Just do what we need to do, read our keys, and get as much film work as possible. Just go out there and play."

ON IF IT'S A STRUGGLE TO GO FROM GEORGIA TECH'S OFFENSE BACK TO A NORMAL OFFENSE:

"Not necessarily. We go into every week with a gameplan. We do our best to execute that game plan. The next week comes and we have to switch back to another game plan. We have to be able to change it up and do what we do."

ON IF THIS IS THE HARDEST CHANGE:

"We've been going from triple option to normal football every year. I wouldn't say it's any different."

ON IF HE KNOWS MUCH ABOUT THE HISTORY OF NOTRE DAME:

"I know it's a great tradition there. They've had a lot of great players come out of Notre Dame. I don't pay too much attention to it. I do know they have a great tradition of sending players to the League and just a great overall atmosphere there."

ON IF HE'S SEEN "RUDY":

"I have."

ON HIS OPINION OF "RUDY":

"No comment on 'Rudy.'"

ON HOW HE THOUGHT ADONIS ALEXANDER DID IN PLACE OF STROMAN:

"I think he did a good job. Every week, it's gonna happen. Injuries are gonna happen every year. It's inevitable. When someone goes down, you just have to adjust and the next person has to step up. That's for any position on the field. I think he did a great job. I think we all did a pretty good job. He did a great job of stepping up."

ON HOW HARD IT WAS TO DO THE SHUFFLING IN THE SECONDARY WITH EDMUNDS OUT:

"It wasn't too difficult. We're DBs, if one person goes down, we have to do our best to step in and challenge ourselves to make plays in another spot. I think we do a great job with that. I think we do a great job with watching film and repping it in practice enough for us to go out and do it in the game."

Brad Cornelsen

ON IF HE'S EVER SEEN "RUDY":

"What a great movie."

ON IF TEAMS ARE CHANGING THE WAY THEY APPROACH THE OFFENSE:

"I see differences every week. I think as the season goes on, teams have more film and certainly they're trying to slow down what you do the best. It's something every season, as it evolves, you try to stay one step ahead of it. At the same time, you're trying to get your guys in the best position to make the plays with the right guys and defenses understand that and they're trying to make those adjustments, too."

ON THE TWO INTERCEPTIONS JEROD EVANS THREW ON SATURDAY AND IF THEY ARE PART OF THE MISTAKES THE TEAM SHOULDN'T BE MAKING THIS LATE IN THE SEASON:

"That's one example. As you guys know, there's examples every play of a guy here or a guy here. Sometimes it's not the guy that has the ball or the guy that's covering the guy they're throwing to. That's certainly one example of an execution mistake that could have been prevented."

ON IF THERE'S A CONCERN WITH THE LACK OF ABILITY TO RUN BETWEEN THE TACKLES AND IF THAT CHANGES THE WAY DEFENSES APPROACH THEM:

"I don't think so. I don't think they care if it's your quarterback or your fullback or your tailback. They're gonna try to stop wherever that's going. If it's a scheme inside or a scheme outside, that's something that they're gonna look closely at. Absolutely we wanna try to be as balanced as we can. When you do run your quarterback, you have better numbers and you create some better match ups, but you've gotta be able to do both. We've certainly gotta be able to do a better job of running the ball, not just with the quarterback run game. The ability to spread teams out, the ability to show pass and still run your quarterback, it is a huge element of college football — it's a huge element of what we're doing and what kind of quarterback we have. We're not gonna shy away or go away from that. Any time you can get your running game going without the quarterback, then you really have something going."

ON IF IT WILL BE COOL TO SEE NOTRE DAME'S STADIUM:

"It's my first time. It'll be neat. It'll be one of those things you don't really get to enjoy as a guy going in there to play a game, just like our players. It'll be cool afterwards, down the road somewhere, get a chance to think back on it."

ON HIS THOUGHTS ON SAM ROGERS AFTER HAVING COACHED HIM FOR A WHILE:

"He's a treat. I don't know if we'll ever coach another one like him. He's multiple at what he can do. Such a smart, intelligent player. He's got good instincts, he's got some skill, all of the other things that come along with him being a guy on your team, he's one of the best I've ever been around."

ON IF HE'S SEEN A DIFFERENCE AFTER THE COORDINATOR CHANGE AT NOTRE DAME:

"They were pretty multiple before, and they're still pretty multiple in what they're doing between odd and even fronts and different blitzes, different coverages. There's a little bit of difference. It's not huge. I think when you start digging into the actual tendencies of the situations, you try to figure out what this guy likes in certain situations. They're overall playbook, kind of what they're choosing from to call, there's still quite a bit that they're doing that they did before."

ON IF HE'S PLEASED WITH HOW EVANS GRASPED THIS OFFENSE:

"He came in, he was pretty focused from day one that he got here. Any extra time that he got, he was in it. It was extremely important for him to make sure he was ready to go before spring ball, not when spring ball got here. He did a great job really diving into it. The season's such a different animal. It's a week-to-week process of really learning a new scheme that you're playing against and a whole new game plan."

Brian Mitchell

ON KIZER AND IF HE COMPARES TO ANY PAST QUARTERBACKS HE'S SEEN THIS YEAR:

"We've got one on our team. A guy that's a dual threat, a guy that can run some of the zone read powers, spread run game that you're seeing today in the game. Yet you look at their passing game, the guy has the arm strength to throw the 20 yard comeback and have accuracy on the deep ball. He's a complete guy. He's like some of the guys we've seen. Probably different styles, but probably the biggest comparison is to the guy we have on our team we see every day."

ON IF ALEXANDER PICKED UP WHERE STROMAN LEFT OFF:

"Those are the expectations. Nothing changes, whether you're the starter of the game, or you're playing 55 snaps in the game, when you're out there, the performance level, the expectations don't change. The expectations were the same for who is in there and who is not in there, it didn't change."

ON IF HE WAS PLEASED WITH ALEXANDER:

"There's always some things you can improve upon, but when you're playing an option team, that discipline down after down, play after play, I was pleased. Other than we didn't win the football game."

ON HOW HARD IT WAS TO DO THE SHUFFLING IN THE SECONDARY WITH EDMUNDS OUT:

"I think that speaks to Coach Foster, and the system that we play, that on any given play, our corners can be an inverted half-safety. Our nickel could be in the box in the run game. I think that versatility in what we do schematically, as to when you need to move guys around, they don't miss a beat. Unfortunately we had to play with some guys — like Terrell because he couldn't play the first half, or Greg because of the ankle injury — but the scheme itself will handle any adjustments that we need to do as far moving players from position to position."

ON IF HE THINKS STROMAN HAS PROGRESSED THIS SEASON:

"At that position, my number one goal is to always instill confidence not only on the field, practice, classroom, I give them a thousand situations and it may be the same question, but I'm gonna have multiple ways to the answer. My job is to prepare those guys along with what we do schematically day in and day out. That's a testament to Greg and the guys of going out there on gameday and executing. They've bought in, they play hard, they have great football IQs. There's very little that I question from a day-to-day standpoint that those guys don't do for me. They've bought in 120 percent and when you get a new coach that changes things schematically, technique wise and fundamentals, sometimes kids will go back or revert back to what the previous coach has done. Greg is my bell cow. I go to Greg and say, 'Greg, we're gonna install this today. I need you to do it this way, this way, and this way. I also need you to be the leader and say, "Hey fellas, this is how things are gonna go."' He's just another motivating factor out there for me on the football field."

ON HIS THOUGHTS ON BRANDON FACYSON:

"I'll tell you what, he hasn't missed a beat. If you go back and you look at the stats, he's probably played more than the other two. I don't know if that was by design, I think it's just he's been steady, he's been consistent, and he's been performing."

ON WHAT HE SEES FROM THE NOTRE DAME SKILL GROUP:

"They're talented. They're not gonna be any more imposing than say Miami or the number two receiver in the nation right now, or the number one receiver is the kid from East Carolina. He's a very good football player in (Zay) Jones. We've seen very good football players. The one thing you're gonna see from Notre Dame is they have depth. They can roll six guys in there and they're all gonna have good stats or good speed, good lateral quickness and good ball skills. We're just gonna do what we normally do. We're gonna line up and try to go 1-0."

Augie Conte

ON THE TALENT OF THE NOTRE DAME FRONT:

"They have some really good talent up front. I honestly don't know what their sack statistic on the year is, but it's definitely not for lack of talent. They've got a bunch of dudes up front that know how to ball. We definitely have to be on our A game if we wanna do what we wanna do against their defense. Just because they don't have a lot of sacks, I'm honestly not thinking about that because they have some serious talent up front."

ON SAM ROGERS:

"Sam Rogers is probably one of the most hard working guys on the team. He's willing to do just about whatever it takes to win a game. I never hear him complain about carries, catches, anything like that. He's willing to do just about everything you need him to do to win a ballgame. You can't really complain about a guy that works his ass off and does anything necessary to win a game."

ON IF ROGERS IS MORE TALENTED THAN PEOPLE GIVE HIM CREDIT FOR:

"Don't get me wrong, he's pretty talented. He's one of those unsung heroes. He does a lot of the dirty work. Against Pittsburgh, we used him in pass protection a lot. Just because he's not making the big catches, or touchdown runs and stuff like that, doesn't mean he's not a huge factor in the offense when it comes to blocking and stuff like that."

ON IF HE GREW UP WATCHING NOTRE DAME:

"To be honest, growing up, I wasn't real big into football. I started playing in high school. It wasn't really on my radar. I knew that once i started playing football, they were OK. They were in the middle of — I think my freshman year is when their head coach got hired from Cincinnati. I kind of saw the transition of that. I heard that it was a real storied program. Don't get me wrong, I know about the tradition there, but it wasn't really on my radar growing up. And then high school, I wasn't really as big a recruit, so I wasn't on their radar. It's obviously a heck of a program. They've been real good for a long time. It's gonna take a heck of an effort to get the job done up there."

Jerod Evans

ON WHAT HE'S SEEN FROM NOTRE DAME DEFENSIVELY:

"I haven't watched that much, but they have dudes. Athletic, fast, big, strong, just like Miami. They had the same type of athletes on that side of the ball. But I haven't really watched them to dissect them."

ON IF HE'S NOTICED TEAMS TRYING TO TAKE THE DEEP BALL AWAY:

"Most definitely. They definitely try to take all the big shots away with Isaiah (Ford), Bucky (Hodges), and Cam (Phillips). After what they saw what happened to Pitt, a lot of teams are starting to play the deep ball more because of that."

ON IF TEAMS ARE TRYING TO TAKE THE RUN GAME AWAY AS WELL:

"I don't know about that. We're still trying to find our way in our running game from week one to now. I wouldn't say so much they're taking it away. We're still trying to find our way, what we like to do and what we don't like to do. I think the coaches are still trying to figure that out."

ON IF EXECUTION ERRORS ARE FRUSTRATING THIS LATE IN THE SEASON:

"It's a lot of frustration. So yeah, I would agree."

ON IF THERE'S A WAY TO EXPLAIN WHY THAT'S POPPING UP NOW:

"I don't know. I really don't know."

ON IF HE HAS A BETTER UNDERSTANDING OF WHAT HAPPENED ON THE TWO INTERCEPTIONS:

"I just made some plays — I could have made better decisions on the plays. I made the plays worse. Instead of tucking it down and running or throwing it out of bounds, I made the play that was called worse. They play that was called, I made it worse. The coverage, they had a good coverage and the play that we called, we thought we were gonna get a different look and we didn't. I wouldn't say it was a bad play call, I just made the play that was designed for something else worse by throwing it up to Bucky too far and then I thought my guy was gonna do something different. I made it worse."

ON IF THE TURNOVERS ARE HARD TO LIVE WITH:

"They're tough for me to swallow. I definitely am very judicious with the ball. I know I have the ball in my hand 100 percent of the time, so whatever I do with that ball is pretty much, I wouldn't say life or death, but I feel that way. I feel very proud when I have that ball in my hand. I'm confident in my ability to do what I do with a ball. For me to make those mistakes, like boneheaded moves to me, to swallow those kind of hurts because I believe after I threw the interception, they went down and scored with one minute left before the half. That hurt more than anything because I know better, making the play worse than what it should have been. I could have just easily thrown the ball out of bounds, but instead I wanted to make something happen because of the situation."

ON IF HE GETS THE VIBE THAT THE TEAM WILL BOUNCE BACK THIS WEEK:

"A little bit. It's more frustration than anything because we felt like we've passed that part of the season as a group, as a unit, to not keep going through these lulls. It's more frustration than anything and the more it happens, the more frustration you get, so there's more to get over it. It's harder to get over something that you know you should already be over. We thought we were over that part, but apparently not. I know this team will bounce back. It's more frustration than anything."

ON IF NOTRE DAME WAS ON HIS RADAR AS A KID:

"No. Not at all."