On inexperience:
“It doesn’t matter if Kevin’s out, we’re still going to be playing with a lot of inexperience on offense. We’ve got to continue to shore up our fundamentals. It was interesting to watch young players get into that environment. You watch film with them and they can’t tell you why that happened. It’s what they refer to as the fog of war.”

On being 10-point favorites against K-State:
“We were underdogs, and that motivated us, the same will be true about Kansas State coming here. It will motivate them. To ignore that and act as if they’re not going to come in here believing and working and excited about making their own statement, then we’re crazy. We have too much experience on our coaching staff to not nail that point home and demand that we improve. It didn’t matter what happened at Tennessee, we need to improve. We need to improve. That’s the entire focus of the week.”

On true freshman quarterbacks having immediate success:
“I kind of hypothesized as I was flying home. I’m noticing, there’s Matt Barkley playing well, and TF for Michigan. No. 1, there’s so much pressure on the quarterback position and gameplans are so predicated toward the starter, that backup quarterbacks if you’re not careful, if you don’t have it really strategized, don’t improve over the course of the season.”

On entering college early:
“The other thing that’s happening is you’ve got a lot of midyear transfers now. I think both of those players joined their teams in time for spring football, as did Richard Brehaut. Now you accelerate the development of a freshman; he’s been not only in the system and learned, but he’s also been indoctrinated into the team. Those kids being given that chance have already earned that. It’s not unheard of to blossom early.”