“We have a lot of players in their first year. Some of them are also in their last year.”
Bill Walsh
“We had nine first-year players against Montreal. Everybody knows our situation. We're limping.”
Ken Hitchcock
“We had just three players score in the first half. Scoring balance has been a problem for us all year. We really struggled with it.”
Dave Boots
“We brought in some very talented first-year defending players and a transfer. But it is going to take some time to get them organized. As for my expectations for the defense, I don't know. That'd be a better question to ask a month from now.”
George Gelnovatch
“I'm not too sure how you can be Big Ten [Defensive] Player of the Year, a unanimous first-team All-American, and not win the Butkus or Lott or Bednarik. He should have won them all, in my opinion.”
Bobby Carpenter
“[Defensively, the Wasps played shorthanded, missing both starting defensive tackles and playing several first-year players in the secondary, a fact that didn’t bode well against W&J’s shotgun formation and spread offense.] We played extremely tough at first, before they figured out what we were doing, ... We had to play a totally different style of defense with only three tackles.”
Don Montgomery
“Coach Howland was the first player ever to recruit me. My sophomore year when he was still at Pitt, I remember him being in the office at my school and saying one day he would recruit me. It's crazy now we are playing him in the national championship.”
Joakim Noah
