What Miami Is Saying
Miami LB Shaq Quarterman
On what it took to hold Notre Dame to 2.6 yards per rush:
“It took every person that was out there and every person that as rotating. It took effort throughout the week preparing for this team because they were and they are a great rushing team, so we prepared and prepared some more. When we came out, it was almost as if we were over-prepared. We were on edge.
“I’ve never seen our players like that before, just with all the disrespect that we go and feeling like we were just overlooked constantly. After every win we got, we were still overlooked.”
On speed advantage:
“It’s Miami. We have the speed advantage over a lot of teams. That’s what we’re known for. We’re known for playing with an edge and playing with a chip on our shoulder and the speed is just natural.
Freshman DB Trajan Bandy
On his pick six:
“I just came down and saw the quarterback look to that side and we were doing that play over and over in practice. Once he threw the ball, I saw green grass and took it to the house. I went in there, did exactly what he told me to do and the ball ended up in my hands.”
On the meaning of the pick six play:
“It meant a lot. Coach (Manny) Diaz always has faith in me and he put me in and told me exactly what to do and that’s what I did. I went in there, did exactly what he told me to do and the ball ended up in my hands.”
Junior DB Jaquan Johnson
On the dominant performance:
“We just came out and played to our standard. We wanted to come out and compete against a great offensive line and a great running back and quarterback. We wanted to hold them to as minimum yards as possible so that’s what we did tonight, we came out and competed and were able to dominate them.”
On wearing the chain:
“The turnover chain is an accomplishment for making a play and it means a lot because we made a play for the team. That’s the best meaning for me because we get the ball back to our offense and they can do something with it.”
On the importance of Ed Reed:
“Ed didn’t get a chance to play against Notre Dame and he wanted us to really come out and dominate them and I took heed and listened to him and I think we gave him the performance he wanted. He doesn’t come around that much like that, so it felt good and special to have him on the sideline.”
Senior WR Braxton Berrios
On being a senior and what all of this means to him:
“It’s incredible. This is why you come to Miami. This is why you play college football. We’re going to the ACC championship for the first time in the school’s history. That was our first goal of the year. That was number one. We knew we had accomplished that right before the game started but nothing was said about it. We had this to focus on. We had bigger things to attend to right now. To come out here and put on that dominating performance is why you play.”
On what tonight meant to the program:
“The U is back. I don’t think anybody can say we’re not. I don’t think we can get disrespected anymore. We still have to play two teams and we still have to win the ACC championship. There is still a long road ahead but I don’t think they can say it’s a fluke anymore.”
On when he sensed their performance could be as it was tonight:
“We knew we needed to play our game, fire on offense and defense. Both sides of the ball trust each other. Neither was depending on the other. We were each going to take our share of it. When you’re in the game, you don’t think about the fact that this could be a blowout. You just keep chopping away. We made sure going into halftime that everybody knew it was a 0-0 game. We don’t want to come out flat and we didn’t. We came out and we took care of the second half. I don’t think there was ever one point, but we never let them get the momentum.”
On what has changed on this team over the past few weeks:
“I think Coach Richt was going to have a heart attack, so we had to switch some things up in terms of how we played the game. I think it’s a culmination of things. I think we finally came out and started executing early on offense. Our defense has continued to do what they need to do. And I think that our special teams are getting better and better by the week. There wasn’t one moment when someone said something and something changed. It was a lot of work and preparing for the games, preparing for these moments.”
Defensive Coordinator Manny Diaz
On the game:
“We felt good about our week of preparation early on in the week after playing so well a week ago in a great environment in a big game against Virginia Tech. We noticed on Sunday night that the guys were ready to move on. I think they took offense to the assertion that we would have a hard time stopping the run game and that’s where it all began. The idea that could Miami’s run defense stand up to the fantastic challenge. Obviously, Notre Dame does a great job in scheme and talent, but our guys took that personal. I think that was what set the tone was making it hard to run on. That’s always a formula (for success) be hard to run on and force the quarterback into mistakes and that’s what happened.”
On holding Notre Dame’s run game in check…
“I think the credit has to go to our players. They had studied what they like to do and what they didn’t like to do. They just lined up and played with a tenacity that maybe they hadn’t seen so far before. We have a lot of respect for them, but we feel like we are pretty good ourselves and I think we presented some things to them that they haven’t seen.”
On the importance of the win:
“This is to me natural order restored. This is the way a Saturday night in Miami should be. It should be a big-time game with two great teams with an amazing atmosphere. The crowd absolutely had a role. They helped us. It’s still an inexperienced quarterback that has not played many road games. It was rough in there. It’s hard. I think some of the mistakes that he made early in the game with the crowd noise, it starts to snowball on guys, so our fans deserve a lot of credit in the way we played defense tonight.”
On predicting turnovers before they happen:
“You might have been talking about Trajan’s (Bandy). We had a feeling before the snap the way they lined up and the coverage that we were in that if the quarterback went with the ball the way we thought they would go with the ball, Trajan would have a chance to pick it off. So yeah we did say on the headset ‘Trajan, intercept this pass’ and lo and behold. The credit goes to Mark (Richt) because Mark walked into our defensive staffroom during the week and said, ‘isn’t it about time you guys scored on defense?’ And I told him how hard it is to go all this way and not score on purpose. So we’ll just save it for a big game like this. So Mark gets the credit for reminding us to score and really we were mad that Malek (Young) didn’t score on the other interception.”
On Ed Reed’s impact:
“He gave a great speech to the team last night about the mentality that great players play with. Things like that I think our guys loved hearing what he talked about and how he talked about it. We got a run of former players that have done a great job and if Ed Reed’s just standing there, how does that not make everyone want to improve their play and improve their game. So he’s limited in some of the things he’s allowed to do, but just his presence was important for us.”
On how this staff has been compared to previous staffs he’s been on:
“Because of the way that Mark Richt runs everything in this program and the way that he picked the staff on both sides of the ball. There’s great alignment. There’s great chemistry between our defensive staff and that’s not just the four full-time coaches, that’s all the way down to the quality control and the GA’s. You’ve got the same thing on offense and I think the way that it’s so hard, and you don’t see it behind the scenes, but when you watch a team sometimes it seems like, ‘Boy, they seem like they’re playing very well,’ there’s got to be that staff chemistry. The players sense it. The players love structure. And when everyone on the staff is singing out of the same hymnbook, the players revel in that. They know that there’s a structure and I think of all the great things Mark has brought here, I think to me that’s the greatest.”