Opening remarks:
A: This young man was attractive to us for many reasons. Obviously his speed, you have a 4.4 running back. You have a guy who’s the ACC Player of the Year, 1700 yards rushing, kickoff returns for a career over a thousand yards, 1300-plus yards, caught the ball out of the backfield. Needs some work in some of the other areas. You know, pass protection and that kind of thing, as do a lot of these young guys. And also the question comes up about ball security and we’ll remind him of that right away. But I think every team has done that with him and he’s very, very much aware of that. He has great energy when you speak to him. He is knowledgeable. He presents himself very, very well. You’re probably well aware of that. But he’s the kind of guy that we felt would add very much to our present situation in terms of the big play potential. He’s one of the guys that has the speed and maneuverability to make the big play and that’s what was very important to us at this time. We were fortunate in that the players that we had set aside were all of need, need positions, and this guy was the highest rated.
Q: When you have a 5’9" running back with trouble blocking, do you feel better that Ahmad Bradshaw was similar and came along?
A: When you look at the great runners that have come along in the last 25 years, you do have a few of those people that are in that category. I think, according to David tonight, he was 208. He’ll probably be 210, 212 when he gets in this program. I know Virginia Tech has an outstanding strength program. When he gets here and gets a little bit more physical maturity I think he’ll be a little bit heavier. But there’s a knack to these individuals, to these guys that don’t appear to have that kind of size to match up, there’s a knack and there’s a way in which they go about their business. It will be something that will be of a concern for us right away, but I think he’ll pick it up fast. He seems to be that kind of a young man and hopefully he’ll be as much a threat coming out of the backfield as it is for people to make decisions on whether they want to rush and how they want to go about rushing.
Q: You were last in the league in rushing last season. Were you saying, ‘We need to fix this.’
A: That, but also we’re looking at the fact that Brandon [Jacobs] is no longer here and we do have to try to balance that out. We believe that you do have to have multiple runners or at least two that can effectively take the field at any time and this young man we thought was one of those that can be a big play threat