On how the defense has played
“I think in those first two games, that group of players has played well together. We’ve played some man, some zone, some match defense. We’ve blitzed a little bit. I think against Cincinnati, they played really well. I thought they played very well this past weekend. You saw Cincinnati this past weekend; they threw for 65 yards against us, and he (Brendan Sorsby) went out and threw for 350 last weekend against Bowling Green. Obviously, I think that’s one of the strengths of our group. Individually, I think we have players that can play man-to-man. Then we’ve got enough guys with multiple skill sets to play some of the other concepts we’re playing. So, so far so good.”

On what a shutout means
“Nothing, honestly. I didn’t know until after the game that it had been since 2009. That’s pretty cool. It doesn’t mean anything, but we’re trying to play to a standard. I think that at times against Cincinnati, we played to that standard, and at times we didn’t. Against Akron, we played to that standard more. But, we still have a ways to go and a ways to develop. On defense, ultimately, your job is to prevent them from scoring, so zero points is outstanding. I don’t really ever care about yards. I care about explosive yards. Giving up explosive plays leads to winning or losing a game. Obviously, giving up points leads to winning or losing a game. I think it’s pretty cool we had the shutout, but I didn’t know until hours after the game that it was the first since 2009.”

On run defense improvement 
“It’s a work in progress. It’s a combination of how we play and the schemes that we’re calling, combined with the execution of blitzes we’re running. If you go back to the Cincinnati game, 96 yards of it were quarterback run, quarterback scramble, really. It comes down to keeping guys in the pocket. Last week, we gave up six 10-yard runs, and no excuse for any of them, but one was a call I made right before the end of the half. I was playing cover two and they ran the ball and we were just trying to get out of there. The other one was the last play of the game. At the end of the game, we felt like overall our run defense got better. We put some things in to help us schematically. It’s about our collective defense. I don’t think anyone needs to get hung up on ‘they run it, or they can’t throw it.’ They need to get hung up on, are they scoring points or they are effectively moving the football on a switch. They were 1-14 on third down and scored zero points.”