Mondays with Bobby, featuring Mitchell Henry

Bobby Petrino met with the local media Thursday to discuss Saturday’s contest at South Alabama.

Bobby Petrino

    Ball security: “We’re working hard at it. The guys have payed great attention to the details. We’ve had our gauntlet drills and our proper carrying drills, so now it’s just about going out and doing it in the game. We need to take care of the ball to win the game.”

 Focus this week: “Most definitely. We’re hurtin’ a little bit from the loss and from our performance, the way we performed – more so than the loss is the way you go out and perform and don’t play to your capabilities or play to your best.

“We’ve had a good week. It’s been very, very competitive. We’ve opened up a number of spots for competition throughout the week for practice. It’ll be interesting to see how that all plays out. We get the effort grades after tonight’s practice. But it’s been fun. Been very competitive in practice.”

    Lineup changes coming? “Yeah, definitely. What we did is open it up for the guys that give the best effort in practice will start the game.”

    Put importance on the first SBC game? “Yeah, we have. We’ve been really focused on it. I can’t say more importance, but our players understand what’s at stake. We don’t have a lot of conference games, so you have to win every one of them – and we need to get back on track.

“They’ve focused and they’ve practiced hard and they’ve done a good job in the meetings. I think we have a good plan. We have to get better from now until kickoff with our focus and our understanding of the gameplan, and then go out and play.”

    Keys to victory: “There’s a lot of ‘em. Obviously, offensively, we gotta take care of the ball. We’re gonna need run the ball with power and make some plays down the field. Defensively we gotta stop the quarterback, he’s dual-threat, has the ability to run and throw the football.

“Then we gotta get some pressure on the quarterback with the four-man rush. That’s something I haven’t been happy about and something that we have to develop and get better at, is pressuring the quarterback with just the four-man rush.”

Filed under: Football, Talkin’ bout the Tops