Quotes from Pac-10 football media day

July 24, 2008

The Pac-10 held its annual Pac-10 Football Media Day on Thursday, July 24 with representatives from all ten schools attending in preparation for the upcoming 2008 season. Representing Arizona State were Head Coach Dennis Erickson and quarterback Rudy Carpenter who spoke on behalf of the Maroon and Gold.

Arizona State Head Coach Dennis Erickson

Opening Remarks:

"It is a pleasure to be here and to have a guy like Rudy [Carpenter] who has been around the program a long time. When you talk about a Sun Devil, you talk about Rudy. As far as our football team is concerned, when I signed a contract a couple years ago, they didn't show me this year's schedule, they showed me last year when we played seven games at home. It's a little different this year. Offensively, our strength is with Rudy at quarterback, we have a lot of our wide receivers back. We lost three starters on the offensive front and we need to get better. We have Keegan Herring back, he played extremely well. Defensively, we have a lot of experience coming back. Troy Nolan is the key to our defense, he is a huge leader and we look for great things from him. I'd be remiss if I didn't mention Thomas Webber who only missed one field goal last year. I usually don't coach kickers, but i did last year. When you have a weapon like that, a lot of good things can happen."

On the offensive line:

"We're going to be young, but a little more athletic. We're going to throw the ball, we are going to go four wide. I've run every offense that's been invented, but we are trying to take a little pressure off the offensive front. A lot of the sacks we had last year was because of play action passes and we were taking seven step drops. We didn't protect well and we didn't get the ball off quick enough and Rudy would the be the first to admit that at times."

Arizona State QB Rudy Carpenter

On facing USC last year:

"I think for one, it was a big game atmosphere, we got the chance to play USC on national TV. We'll take that experience from last season into this season for other big games. We have a tough schedule so we'll need that experience."