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Published Oct 3, 2024
Q&A with Brian Borland: The keys against Arizona State
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Jon Kirby  â€¢  JayhawkSlant
Publisher- Football Editor
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@jayhawkslant

Defensive coordinator Brian Borland talked about playing Arizona State and the challenges of going against another mobile quarterback.

Borland talked about the Sun Devils offense and how the defense has played compared to last year.

You had some players out with injury at safety and linebacker…

I think everybody probably experiences that kind of stuff. For us, I think it's always like the next man is up, and I can't spend time worrying about it. We've got to have some contingency plans. And we do. And we use them. Sometimes you use contingency plans more than others. So, but again, I feel like our guys are really responding to anything that we're saying anything that we're requiring of them. They're responding well in a situation. Our back's a little bit to the wall. It’s a challenge, and I think our guys will respond really well.


JB Brown had the sack in the last game, how has he played lately…

He's really a guy that you can count on as an added pressure as a blitzer. He's pretty effective that way. We brought him a lot last week. He's fast and explosive. He’s got a good knack of slipping some blocks sometimes. He doesn't just run right down the middle of a guy, he's able to slip some blocks and put some pressure on. We’ve got to continue to find ways to use him in that way. But that can't be our only answer, because teams will figure that out too.

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What do you see from Arizona State…

They're concerning. I think they're ball control and want to really control the clock. With the running game and some controlled kind of passing game take shots down the field, though to keep, you honest. Their running back is really a good player. He's so hard to tackle. He really is a below deliverer and tackling, and he runs over, around through guys. He's a really good player, and they're smart enough to get him the ball. It's not just in their running game, but I think he's a good outlet for the quarterback and some passing game stuff also. And so, you know, they're good to use him.

I think the quarterback is really good with his feet, and very confident in his ability to drop back. And if something's not there, he's just going to run. He's been doing that really well. We really got our work cut out to limit them in the run game and get the ball back for our offense. We will probably try to make them pass the ball, make it be a passing game. And I think that would be probably more beneficial for us to have the best game on Saturday.


How has the defense played this year and how they have compared to last season…

I'd say statistically it's probably better in almost every area. But we know the things that we haven't done. Well, this year is to finish things all the time, so giving up too many points at the end of the game. We've got to fix that so. I don't think it's any scheme thing in my mind. It's not that we got the wrong players playing. We just need to play with effort all the time because that's going to make up for some mistakes.

But again, we've got to kind of just lock it in a little bit more and some of those moments, just do the right thing and we'll be in great shape.


With their quarterback running does playing past mobile quarterbacks help with that…

We’ve got to be concerned about rush lanes and I think we have a pretty good plan. We have had some of those same thoughts in the past, but I think it's probably a renewed effort of just keeping good ratios on the quarterback, so that there's not three guys over here and one guy over here, because any one of us would run through that spot. I think we've done a good job of that, talked about that and we've got some things hopefully devised that'll really help us in that area.

He may get away from us once, so we just got to stick to the good plan I think we have and trust the process that it'll work itself out in a good way.

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