Oklahoma head coach Lincoln Riley and LSU head coach Ed Orgeron met with the media one final time Friday morning ahead of the College Football Playoff semifinal at the Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl.
Here are the highlights of the joint press conference between the coaches of the two programs.
On the LSU offense:
LINCOLN RILEY: I see a really, really good offense. They’ve done a great job.
The quarterback has certainly made them go, like a lot of great offenses. He’s a tremendous player. We’ve thought that for a long time, even when we offered him many years back.
So Joe’s been phenomenal for them all year and they just don’t have a ton of weaknesses. Offensive line has obviously played well. They’ve got weapons on the outside, weapons at running back, and they’ve got a scheme that’s very creative in the way they use those guys and create match-ups. So a lot of respect for the way they’ve played.
You watch them, there are certainly some things that are similar and then there’s a lot of things that are different that make them unique.
So, I mean, the whole thing to me, it doesn’t matter where it came from. It’s how you package it. How do you make it fit the strengths of your team and your players, and they’ve certainly done a tremendous job of that.
On Jalen Hurts not trying to become the past two quarterbacks:
LR: I think his maturity has shown in that he hasn’t tried to be those guys. He’s been in big moments. He’s been in big games, big scenarios. I don’t feel like that was much of a factor with him, which as a coach, that’s exactly how you would hope he would handle it.
I think he’s learned from them, certainly. Studying the tapes, different things we’ve done, how we’ve done it, I think, has helped him.
But he’s also added his own flavor to it. So I think he’s handled it well. I think he’s tried to be himself, tried to learn it and do the very best he can. And he’s a guy that’s got a pretty singular focus, and that’s probably helped him in this situation when you’re following two pretty decent players.
On team improving throughout the year:
LR: Yeah. I mean, I don’t think you’re sitting here at the College Football Playoff if your team hasn’t gotten quite a bit better. I think we have.
I think we’ve had different challenges throughout the year and we’ve been able to face most of them and come out on the good end.
So probably more for me right now would be the preparation we’ve had in the last several weeks. Our goal has been to play our very best game, and we put forth a schedule that had that and only that in mind. And our players, coaches, everybody have executed that extremely well.
So that’s been our goal from day one, when we found out that we were going to be in the playoff and playing a really good LSU team was: Let’s play our very best. I think we’ve done the work to get that done.
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