Panthers Arrive in Charlotte for Continental Tire Bowl
12/22/2003 12:00:00 AM | Football
Panthers Arrive in Charlotte for Continental Tire Bowl
12/22/2003
Walt Harris Quotes
Continental Tire Bowl Day 1
On being in
?We are glad to be here, safe and sound. Some of the guys? planes got cancelled so we missed around 10 guys at practice. We?re excited about our opportunity to put the last game we played behind us.?
On
?They are going to present big problems for us. They have an outstanding quarterback, probably the best quarterback we?ve faced in the last two years. When he is there, they win. We recruited him. Their defense is very unique because they play a 3-4 (defensive set). That makes it a tough challenge because most people don?t play that. They are one of the taller teams we are going to face, too. They are very sound in special teams, as you would expect with an Al Groh football team.?
On both teams having great offenses:
?I try to stay away from predicting. If they score a lot, then we have to score a lot. We have to run the ball and play physical. If it means a low-scoring game or high-scoring game, we just have to find a way to win.?
On the crowd being a Virginia-based attendance:
?When you have sold at least 20-30 thousand tickets and we haven?t come close, then we are going to be at a disadvantage.?
On
?I know we?ve played the last four games in front of sellouts, but I know people are disappointed. I would think that more people would want to support us, but we are in a professional town and that is the way it goes.?
On Larry Fitzgerald:
?When the ball is in the air he has the ability to make a quick study on when the ball is coming down, and that is the best I?ve been around. His strength and jumping ability along with his size makes him a formidable challenge when the ball is in the air. He is not someone you want to throw the ball deep too. You want to throw it to him to gather and so he can go up and leap for the ball. Once he puts his fingers on the ball, it?s his. He is a power receiver. The one thing he needs to improve on is his speed.?
On
?We liked the way we did it the past two years. We try to learn from it. The bottom line is we have good players.?
On
?I was on the same coaching staff with him at Air Force. Bill Parcells was the head coach. He?s picked good places to go.?
On the interior line on defense:
?Both guys (Vince Crochunis and Dan Stephens) on the inside are both academic All-Americans so it is easy to keep those guys up because they are very smart. They know it is a team game and it takes more than just those two guys to be successful and play good defense. We?ve worked hard during the last couple of weeks in bowl preparation to play better. We feel like we are better than we were going into the
On playing in the Continental Tire Bowl compared to the
?We have no one to blame but ourselves. We got beat by a team that played better than us. We have no complaints there. Our football players don?t like the feeling of losing their last ballgame. We have good leadership by our seniors. They did not want to come to another game and lose. They have to decide that we aren?t going to lose it. It?s still a great opportunity and a great place to be. We wouldn?t be outside in