Following an emotional, thrilling and exhilarating win over then No. 21 Missouri, Dennis Erickson and the Arizona State Sun Devils began to prepare for their first road test of the season.
The Sun Devils (2-0) will travel to Big Ten country, where they have struggled recently to take on the Illinois Fighting Illini (2-0) on Saturday. Here are some highlights from junior quarterback Brock Osweiler’s and Erickson’s weekly press conference.
Dennis Erickson: "It was a good win, but we are facing a football team that is awfully talented in Illinois. They’ve got a lot of good athletes on that team. Probably faster and more athletic than most teams in that league. First game on the road, we will find out what we are all about. You can’t rest. We are just anxious to go play again."
"You travel probably better when you have some veteran leadership like we do. This is a pretty good group of veteran players. We will be focused and ready to go."
"We won two football games. We got 10 games left. We just got to take them one at a time."
"They got an extremely good quarterback. Very, very athletic. Very talented, got a lot of leadership, very competitive. Moves around a lot."
"We got a lot of improvement to make. We tackled very poorly in that football game the other night. That’s obvious is you watched it. Normally we don’t tackle like that. We will tackle better in this football game. It wasn’t our best football game defensively by any means, but we made a stop when we had to."
Brock Osweiler: "We just want to thank the student section, the fans for coming out in all black and supporting us, being there hours before the game. They were truly the x-factors in that game and we can’t thank them enough."
"It will be an energized environment, but nothing changes from the day to day basis. We just have to be locked in when we get on that plane on Thursday and understand what we are going to Illinois to do, which is play a great football game and hopefully come out with a win."
"There defensive line really impressed me. They’re big guys and they’re athletic. The secondary and linebackers also impressed me."