Gary Pinkel Quotations

There are certain things that you have to do to play that position,

What a great game that was to end his career. It was a glimpse of why he is such a special player.

What happens when you lose a great player, it opens the opportunity for somebody else.

Shoot, when I was in Seattle, in our 15 spring practices when I coached at Washington, 13 of them were like this. So I just I felt like I was back at home.

I feel so bad for (Coffey) because he's had such a great camp, ... You have a player that works so hard and you get an injury like that. He's been doing just a great job for us. ... Somebody's got to step up. That's the way it is.

Getting his 2,000 yards passing, 1,000 rushing, all that stuff?s great, ... but Brad will ultimately be judged by winning football games, and he understands that.

If I told people I thought he was going to play like that, I'd be lying. I told many people behind the scenes that this guy is a remarkably talented athlete with remarkable poise. To play like that, first game, 18 years old. I'm just glad he's on my team, and I'm glad he's a freshman. Just remarkable.

He has been preparing for this season since January.

He just worked hard and got back in, so he's ready to go.

I think we'll see a combination of everything. I think they'll do what they do. They're good coaches. They're smart. I think we'll see a mixture of things. They're multiple in the attack that they present to us. So we'll certainly see some of those things.

Our recruiting was almost over by the time we played our bowl game. Everything's so much faster now and it's amazing how quick things go.

I thought he played really well, really well. I'm not sure what his numbers were, but I think they were pretty good.

That was a great effort by Chase. The guy's a winner.

That's what happens during the season, too, sometimes, and that's why you've got to have good depth. I think we have pretty good depth. Marcus was having a great spring until he turned his ankle. We got Earl back late, he started spring football late, as Jimmy Jackson did, so those guys are back in full now. Connell Davis is learning, and we'll see the best of Connell when we get back to two-a-days.

We're certainly disappointed that we're still having problems in that area, because there's no question that it's hurting us,

We didn't do as good in-state as we wanted to. I've felt very good in the past that we've done a good job of recruiting the state of Missouri. It certainly wasn't a lack of effort.

We're doing some significant things different on offense, but there is enough carry-over that it didn't phase him. It's just one game, but he was just so excited to get out there and have a chance to play quarterback again.

We had a touchdown called back, but we fought through that. We got first down going in and had a huge penalty on that and we still fought back. So there was a lot of stuff my guys overcame.

We wouldn't have made the changes we did if it would have affected him,

When you have a game like that, I think obviously everyone realizes the importance of the game and where we're at, and we can't afford another loss, ... But I also think you've still got to focus on playing well.

We were doing pretty good until this year and I'm very proud of what we've done to this year. This year we're not pleased with it and we expect to make it better.

Those quarterbacks love the shovel pass. They've got a choice to shovel it and take the passing yards or pitch it and let that guy take the yards.

We have 28 practices until our next game. The best guy's going to play. We took the same approach when Brad Smith was a freshman. We're not going to shut it down and declare anyone a starter.

The one thing we're trying to do is back him off a little more to not being too over-aggressive. You have to back them up and make sure that you keep everything in front of you to begin with. Then slowly, with the experience that you get, you allow them to choose their moments. With him (Moore), we're trying to be a little more cautious just so he's taking care of the middle of the field in terms of leveraging the football and deep footballs.

Brad's been waiting since January, and you can see it. There was no guy in our program more excited about the season getting here than Brad Smith. I think he wants to earn some respect back . . . He worked very, very hard.

Brad's been waiting for this day. That kid is on a mission. What we can in this offense, we can just do a lot of things for him.

Brad felt he had a lot to prove, not only about this team but about himself. I don't think there was a young man out there more excited about the start of the college football season.

Could be 0-12. Six and six isn't all that bad. The moral of the story is go to bowl games.

There's some glaring numbers. He's done things no one else has done.

Things weren't good. Wow. I can imagine what they were saying about me in the stands.

I've never seen a freshman like this, including Brad.

Sometimes you have to go that low before you can decide what you want to be and what you want to do. The players just started making plays, they just started competing. ... It was neat to see Brad drive this team back.

They were hitting on every single thing they did, there were a lot of things that did not go our way. You just try to maintain your poise and be positive with your players.

They did some good things with the top two guys out. There's going to be a lot of competition, so let it continue when we come back in August.

I told the guys at halftime, let's have the greatest comeback in Independence Bowl history.

It was not just that we were down, it was all the other stuff that just kept getting thrown in our face. In my background I'm used to getting wins like this. Maybe not that far from behind, but I'm used to being a part of that. And it's nice that they'll get a huge confidence level from that.

I've known what his weight is every single day since I've been here,

They've played our offense in the past and they'll also have a game to see exactly what we're doing, and maybe Arkansas State didn't. They maybe guessed on a few things based on reading articles.

That's Brad Smith. He's never thinking of himself. He's always thinking of everyone else. That should have been one of the happiest moments of his career, and instead he's trying to tell me about this incident.

I'm very pleased with the class. What we wanted to do was to make sure we had some balance, and I think for the most part we got that. If you look at our class, also, I think there's a lot of speed in the class. I feel very good about that.

In the last game we had a really good game physically up front. ... I think we're making progress.

In their offense they do that, anyway. They always have some gadget plays. That's part of what they do. That's part of what he does. We do our share ourselves.

His first couple of years he was really hesitant to say a whole lot because I think Brad is really hesitant to push his beliefs and opinions on anybody, ... He just tries to live his life and do the right things. Certainly, you'd like to have a little more vocal leadership, and I think he's doing that this year. He feels more comfortable.

I don't know if he lost any games in high school - this guy's used to winning.

He's without question one of the best receivers in the country, what you would call a national recruit. In other words, a player that pretty much can go anywhere he wanted to in the United States.

He's got a great arm. There's not question about it. He's got an NFL arm. The things we're doing right now and that we'll do through two-a-days will get us there.

You can't triple-cover a guy the whole time or you leave other people open. They're smart about how they do those things. But certainly he is an impact player, to say the least.