Between the electric environment of the Big House and the unknown of Michigan’s quarterback battle, Fresno State has had a lot to prepare for this Saturday night:
When Fresno State coach Tim Skipper sat down to address the media earlier this week to preview his team’s matchup with the Michigan Wolverines, a question he anticipated was immediately thrown at him: “How are you going to deal with playing in the Big House?”
Compared to the Bulldog’s 40,727 capacity stadium, the Big House is quite the daunting environment. Nevertheless, Skipper and his team have embraced the upcoming challenge.
“I love hostile environments to be honest with you, I think that’s the magic of college football,” Skipper said. “You get 110 (thousand) in a stadium and it’s loud and it’s rocking and you can’t hear, you want it to be as hard as it can possibly be, that’s the way how I think of it. We did a lot of stuff with noise (in practice this week), we played crowd noise over the speakers and things like that.”
It’s one thing to inject crowd noises over the loud speakers, but it’s another to take on a 110,000-person rowdy crowd. Still, Skipper and the Bulldogs are not shying away from that.
Another challenge Fresno State has spent considerable time dealing with is Michigan’s quarterback situation. With the first game of the season just around the corner, the Wolverines have yet to settle on their starter. The unknown presents quite the challenge for the Bulldogs, who subsequently need to prepare for both Alex Orji and Davis Warren.
“College football, every year the roster’s gonna change, and they still haven’t decided on who their starting quarterback is gonna be, so we’ve had to practice against different styles,” Skipper said. “We’ve been doing that since last week, so we’ll see what happens during the game. We’re anticipating seeing both and we’re ready to see both.”
Skipper understands there’s no way to know what will happen, and the only thing they can do is try to prepare for either situation and make adjustments as needed. Specifically, Skipper emphasized the need to make adjustments series to series, because if they wait until halftime, “the game will be over.”
Fresno State has a tall task in front of it that no other team who faces Michigan this season will have. Not knowing which quarterback the Bulldogs will face is a unique dilemma. Furthermore, neither Orji nor Warren have much experience, making it even more complicated to prepare.
“It’s difficult because you don’t have the body of work you normally have on a quarterback going into the game,” Fresno State defensive coordinator Kevin Coyle said. “But with that being said, we can still kinda get an idea of what their core plays are, what they might do with someone that’s more of a running type quarterback as opposed to a drop-back passer. They have it all. We’re exposing our guys to all those things.”
Until Fresno State takes the field on Saturday and Michigan runs out its quarterback of choice, all the Bulldogs can do is prepare and anticipate what they may face. And once play begins, it will be up to them to adjust as they go.