Super Bowl Update

Some stuff from coaches on preparing for this last week and next year as myself and a writer from the Montgomery Advertiser had our weekly sit-downs with coaches and players.

Head coach Larry Blakeney wasn't happy, to put it nicely, that Corey Robinson's quotes about the officiating appeared in the paper. I reminded him that I gave him two chances to retract his comments, but even then, I'm not sure it sunk in too well.

"I’ll say this, he was upset, he’s a competitor and if he said anything negative about the officials, he was wrong," Blakeney said. "Wrong."

Blakeney, on using this game to prepare for offseason momentum:

"I ain’t worried about no offseason right now," Blakeney said. "I’m worried about trying to find a way to win a game or go up there and not get embarrassed or whatever. We’re beat to death. I know those guys are going to try, but they’re not exactly on top of the world. You understand?

"We’re going to try to get ready to take that trip. We’ve won up there before, and there’s no reason we can’t win up there this year, but they have a very, very good football team. Very good. They’re undefeated in our league. They look like they’re at a different speed than all the guys I’ve seen them play on field. They’re tackling better than anybody in our league right now. Against ULL and Middle and FIU and all the teams that I’ve seen them defend, they’ve gotten after it. They look like a different speed. We’ll have to counteract some of that with something, whatever that is."

Defensive coordinator Jeremy Rowell, on addressing needs for next season: "We’ve got to get some more bodies in here. We’ve got to go recruit and get some guys to come in and help us, JUCO and high school alike, you see where we’re at on people, we’re depleted on having guys to play. We thought going into the year that we were going to be better with numbers and we ended up having guys that didn’t make it and you’re back in the same boat where you’re thin on numbers and it’s tough to play a 12-game season and be good game in and game out."

Depth in front four? "Always, we’ve got to address that and address depth on the back end in the secondary because we’re down to the same thing we are up front. We’ve got to get some guys in and we’re out looking for those guys right now so hopefully it’ll happen."

"We’re going to try to sign some linebackers and what-not, but that’s the two main areas, there and the defensive line."

Offensive coordinator Kenny Edenfield on this week's game and getting ready for 2012: "Right now to be honest, I’m more excited about getting ready to play this week. In the offseason, we’ll take a look at guys, we’ll bring in some other guys, we’ve had good recruiting up to this point. We do have some guys returning, we are losing some guys who are pretty good for us. James Brown will be gone, Zach Swindall at center has been really good for us and probably played beyond what we thought he would do. Those are some really big losses for us.

"I am excited about the young guys coming into their own, some guys have played in 10, 11 games, the more reps they get, the more practice, the better they’ll get."