Week 1: Tyler Van Dyke

played in Miami for a number of years man oh yeah no doubt um you know it's when you get used to uh the heat I mean it's pretty easy to you know adapt to and your hands don't get as sweaty and um but I mean it's been really nice here mid 7s for the past 3 weeks and when you go back out there in the heat you you definitely notice a little bit um so definitely takes some getting used to um and then once you lose it a little bit come here um you got to get back used to it so so so first game what what are you looking forward to just the atmosphere I'm excited to uh you know play in front of this crowd and um you know excited to just get out there with my teammates we've been practicing all all year long um you know working together um on the field in the way room um I think we built great communication a great Bond off the field as well so yeah just excited to get out there and and play have things changed a little bit for you since being named a starter just being able to take a little bit maybe more control of uh of the offense and assert yourself a little bit more as a leader yeah I mean I think uh I think I did a pretty good job when I was an Nam starter as well U but yeah it definitely is different perspective in some people's eyes the way you look at it um definitely you know gives the start of the power a little bit more um when some people look at it like that so but yeah I think when you're you're named the starter it definitely gives you a little bit more power in terms of leadership speaking of leadership coach was saying that he really liked how your leadership has grown over the preseason how do you hope that translates to game 10 yeah you know the biggest thing is um you know fighting through adversity and responding through the adversity and you know being the quarterback you have to you know be the leader that the team needs when adversity hits and um you know that's the biggest thing so you got to some guys might crumble and and whatnot but you got to pick guys up especially younger guys in those adverse moments so that's probably the biggest thing that um I need to do in times like that for a long is there another metric you use to kind of evaluate how you play do you look at the stat sheet actually I mean everybody looks at the stat sheet um essentially um but you know the biggest thing is winning as a team you know getting that win uh that counts as a win for me as well obviously if you don't play well and you still win you still want to you know look back at the film and um you know get better from that um so obviously you want to win and obviously you want to play well and my job is just uh to distribute to to play The Playmakers and do what I got to do to put those guys in the best position too well pass rating look at that yeah I mean it's it's out there so I mean I'll I'll check it out and see what it is so uh try not to look at all that stuff um during the season but you know it pops up on your screen so sometimes you look at it how confident are you and where this offense is at right now yeah I feel very confident um you know We Came Out Swinging in in Fall Camp I thought we had some very good days on offense um you know the first week or two and um you know the defense did a good job you know swinging back at us and um giving us some new looks and and blitzes stuff like that so um you know the competition in practice you know makes us extremely confident in what we can do on offense especially going against a defense um like ours so where they mix up a bunch of stuff bring a lot of pressure so I'm really uh confident in what we got um coming it you look at the quarterback history at this place yeah I've seen um few names obviously Russell Wilson is probably the biggest name um you know Alex hybrook and um I mean I'm I'm not too familiar with it but uh yeah I mean there's definitely been some great quarterbacks here in the past that have you know LED um you know Wisconsin on some great runs and and good wins so personal history yeah I mean it's a little bit different um obviously in the past year it's been a pro style deal and Coach Longo it's more spread air raid type deal so you know coming here offensively I was really looking at that part um for one I wanted for myself offensively um obviously the culture here the winning atmosphere the defense the o line um I also came here for that as well you feel like it takes some pressure off each game with 12 teams making the playoff you know like a little bit of pressure off you know um if you don't if you if you lose one game like it's might be okay I mean if you do lose one game I mean you still have an opportunity um you know biggest thing if you do you can't you know you know go go in a shell and be like all our season's over now um like you kind of did with the the four team playoff a little bit um but you know you never know what can happen in college football now I mean the number 10 team just lost to uh Georgia Tech uh this past weekend so um you know no matter what happens you just have to keep fighting with the 12 team playoffs so um just keep going no matter what kind of going off of that because you know there's the rankings but nobody really knows who is what what is who how much excitement does that give you coming into a new situation to kind of show people kind of what you guys are made of and what this offense can do yeah it's exciting um you know we have a really good opportunity uh with a really good schedule uh play some really good teams so just excited to you know showcase what we got on offense and obviously the defense as well so just very excited um obviously it starts Friday but for the rest of the season as well Chris Brooks is a guy that has dealt with some injuries during his time here but it seemed like he had a pretty good PA camp and we saw him in the two deep what stood out about him for you yeah obviously he didn't practice in the spring and um dealt with some injuries and had some adverse moments and he's done a great job you know coming back and um doing what he has to do to understand the offense understand you know what he has to do in in his position and uh he's made some really good plays really good catches and he's only going to grow from there