On the team’s COVID situation
“I feel good about what we’re doing. Our vaccination rate is above 80% at this point. Our kids have been really good inside of the building and obviously, what we’ve had to do protocol wise has changed here during the course of training camp. Masks are now required in all of our meeting rooms. The kids have accepted it and have done a really good job with it.”
On how fall camp went, and how comfortable he is for Thursday
“I like a lot of things that we’ve seen on the practice field. As a coach, you’re never completely satisfied. Good football teams continue to grow every single week. Someone asked the question earlier about managing the practice load that you put on your players versus having them prepare for gameday and being physically healthy. You’ve got to balance those two things, but you’ve got to do good-on-good during the course of the week to continue to sharpen yourself. We do that when we’re in our helmet and shoulder pad practices during the course of the week. We’re at the point now where you have to go out and play. It isn’t going to be perfect. This is not a game of perfection at any position for 60 minutes. How we handle those adverse situations will be a huge part of how our season unfolds. We’ve talked a lot about that with our team. You try and create adverse situations and teaching moments to be able to talk about those things, but it’s time for us to go play. We’re going to see how we handle it on Thursday night.
NEXT: Josh Heupel kicks off game week continued