MJ Morris and Thayer Thomas Met with the Media After #24 NC State’s 22-21 Win Over VT

Freshman Quarterback MJ Morris and Senior Wide Receiver Thayer Thomas met with the media after #24 NC State’s 22-21 win over Virginia Tech last night. You can watch it here, or check out the BULLETED breakdown below.

Quarterback MJ Morris

• There was a lot of things going in my head [beginning of 2nd half], but the 1 thing I tried to focus on was just doing my job for the team.
  • Just encourage everybody to do what they got to do because if we just do our job then everything’s gonna take care of itself.
  • The O-line, I told them you’re doing a great job up front.
  • I kept on telling the receivers, I’m gonna keep giving them the ball, you just got to make plays.
  • And then it just took off from there.
  • We had a whole different energy coming out of half.
  • We just got a whole lot of love for each other.
    • We’ve got a whole lot of faith and we knew that we were never going to just lay down to anybody. So that was the conversation we had.
• He did. [Cyrus Fagan called him Superhero when he was leaving the room] He did call me that.
  • I don’t know if I feel too much like a superhero, but I do feel really great right now.
  • I feel like a kid in a candy store. I’ve never had this feeling before.
    • 1st college game, I feel like I got hit by a freight train out there my body hurts so bad.
    • But I do feel great. I feel happy for this team. I’m really happy for myself. You know, we put a lot of work in to get here.
• I was just making the right decisions.
  • Just taking what the defense gave me, just going through my pre-snap sequence, find out what the defense was doing and what I was coached to do.
• Just the adrenaline in my body was through the roof [when he went into victory formation at the end].
  • To see that score and that we had came back from down by 18, we kept fighting every play.
    We go out there, risking our bodies, just going out there doing what we’ve got to do to win.
  • We’re all just extremely happy, all extremely joyful.
• He [Devin Leary] tells me the same thing every game, every practice, every time I see him.
  • He says ‘As a Freshman you’ve just got to protect the ball and go out there, have fun and just play fast.’
  • He said ‘Don’t think too much when you go out there because thinking’s gonna get you in a bad place. Go out there, see what you see, do what your coaches want, go out there and ball.’
  • I love Devin Leary to death. He treats me like his little brother and I see him as a big brother.
  • Just trying to pick his brain on little stuff every day.
  • Hearing what he has to say just makes me a better player, even though I’m young. Just trying to get to where he’s at one day.
• I feel like the thing I improved most [in the last year] was definitely being more vocal as a Quarterback and as a leader.
  • Even though I’m younger, I still try to bring out those leadership ways and be more vocal to the team.
  • I know how the team’s gonna react off my energy and if my energy is low then everybody else is probably gonna be low. So I just tried to keep the best energy out there.
  • And then the 2nd thing is really from the coaches, just learning defenses and learning how to process defenses.
    • I know I still have a lot more work to do. There’s just sometimes out there where I was unsure.
      • But just taking the little things that they give me each day, just learn out there, just go out there, just know what I’ve got to — find the Free Safety, trying to see what the coverage is from there.
      • So I already know where I’m going with the ball, just making my game one step faster. Those were things I improved from most from high school.

Wide Receiver Thayer Thomas

• To be honest with you, I haven’t even like this whole season, taking really many reps with [MJ Morris] him at all.
  • So during the bye week, they really interchanged the Quarterbacks just to get a feel, try to build as much chemistry as we can in a short week.
  • It’s just a blessing that he went out there and played the way he did, especially in the 2nd half.
  • Looking forward to his future, for sure. Really great player.
• You can go back the last 3 years and I just I feel like every time we played home, we’re in the game.
  • We have a chance to win.
  • Even going back 2020 at Pitt, I feel like our backs were against the wall. No timeouts.
    • I don’t I don’t think we had a timeout in that last drive that we scored.
  • We just come together as a group and I think that when we’re as close as we are, that really helps you win games when it comes to 1 possession games and when it comes to the 4th quarter.
  • We just know that we’re going to win just based on how close we all are and the chemistry we have as a team.
  • Not just like offense chemistry, defensive chemistry, like we generally love each other, like both sides of the ball and we don’t take that for granted.
• Gibby [Grant Gibson] usually doesn’t cuss. He usually doesn’t scream at us. He’s very quiet.
  • But when he says something, people listen, and he started cussing us out on the sideline.
  • It was in the second half that he came over and called the offense up, and he was getting on us pretty well.
  • When he did that, I sort of knew that we needed to pick it up.
  • That’s what I feel sparked us. And that really helped us turn it on.