OPENING STATEMENT:

“After watching the film from yesterday, as I said after the game, I thought we played aggressive and competed for 60-minutes, but if you watch the tape, we left a lot of opportunities out on the field. By competing the way we did and by being aggressive the way we were, it gave us an opportunity to win the game in the 4th quarter, but if we would have taken advantage of some of the other opportunities that we had, paid a little more attention to some of the details that we needed to do, the outcome could have been tilted in our way. It wasn’t, so now what we have to do is worry about ourselves, try to continue to get better this week, pay attention to the little things and execute at a higher level. If we do that, we’ll put ourselves in a position to win more games as we continue through the season. Injury wise, we came out of it healthy, didn’t lose anybody. Hergy has the should that is a little sore, but other than that, we expect everyone to be ready for this coming week.”

HOW WOULD YOU EVALUATE THE SUCCESS OF SOME OF THE SCHEMATIC CHANGES DEFENSIVELY?:

“I thought Rob King went in and did a good job. I thought when we had Tyler [Coyle] and Oneil [Robinson] in there at the same time, we did some good things. There are things we need to get better on, but football is a game of situations, it’s a game of matchups and what you have to try to do is put yourself in the best possible position to matchup with the people you are going against based on what they do. The one thing that I liked, we played 8 defensive linemen and for the most part, they played between 20-and-39 snaps which was good. We didn’t really have anyone that was, other than some of the defensive backs, that had more than 50-snaps in there which I thought helped us and was good for us. We are going to do the things necessary to put us in the best position to win a game in whatever personnel groupings we have to employ, we’ll do that in order to give us that best opportunity to try to win.”

RUSHED FOR OVER 300-YARDS, WAS THAT A SIGN OF IMPROVED O-LINE PLAY & DAVID PINDELL BEING HEALHTY?:

“I thought Matt Peart and Ryan Crozier, really the whole offensive line played well, but I thought Matt & Ryan played real well. I thought Cam [DeGeorge] had his best day. I thought we were more physical upfront. I thought we did a better job of coming off the ball and moving the line of scrimmage and getting to the 2nd level to the linebackers with the offensive line. I thought John [Dunn] put together a game plan that got a lot of those guys blocks, created advantages for us to allow David to run the ball. David was healthier than he’s been since the Syracuse game and we did a good job blocking. I thought our tight ends did a good job. I thought Jay Rose went in and did a really good job for his real first time playing, he did good things there. We had a lot of people involved. When you rush for that many yards, you have to be blocking people. I even thought that because of the man-to-man situation that we saw, I thought our wideouts did a decent job on the outside. One play in particular, Kevin had a big play. We did a good job there, but still have a long way to go to get some things cleaned up though.”

IS THERE ANY ONE THING LAST NIGHT THAT YOU CAN POINT TO ON WHY LAST NIGHT WAS MORE COMPETITIVE?:

“I don’t know. I would hope it’s because of maturity. I’m sure it’s because of some things out there with Eli, maybe that helped a little bit too. I wish that it was all intrinsic where it comes from within. I felt we had a better week of practice. I thought the week off helped them to clear their minds and get their minds right. I think there was a lot of factors involved, but now what we have to do is be consistent and be better this week than what we were last week. That’s my challenge this week as a head coach.”

CAN AN EFFORT LIKE YOU HAD WITHOUT A WIN, TRANSLATE TO WINS, WAS THIS A TURNING POINT?:

“We’ll find out. I just think some of the things that we’ve been stressing for the last year and a half here is starting to sink in a little bit. I think guys are starting to understand just how you have to practice, the work you have to put in and the preparation that goes into trying to win, is important and it’s hard. I saw a little more of that last week. Things built up. I hope it would. I hope it shows these guys that if you, we talked about it in our team meeting, when you play as hard and aggressive as we did, I saw a defense going out there running and trying to take their shots. We gave up too many big plays again, but we weren’t discouraged, we kept doing it and now we have to clean those little things up and now more attention to detail and doing things the right way. If we do that, things can snowball and get better for you.”

ARE YOU GUYS STICKING TOGETHER MORE, WHEN DAVID TOOK A LATE HIT, GUYS STEPPED TO HIS DEFENSE, DID YOU LIKE THAT?:

“I thought that was great. I thought they did a good job of doing what they needed to do and then showed restraint over by their bench and not doing anything more than what they did. I was kind of proud of that, that showed me something. As a coach, you’re always looking for those little signs. I’ve said they need to want to do it. I can show them and tell them, but if they don’t do it and it doesn’t come from within themselves, it doesn’t matter. Maybe this week was a start to that, we hope so, but the bottom line is we didn’t win and so that means it wasn’t good enough.”

WHY DIDN’T MARVIN WASHINGTON MAKE THE TRIP TO TAMPA?:

“Marvin didn’t make the trip because of Marvin’s own actions. His actions this week didn’t allow himself to travel because of some of the things that he didn’t do that you are supposed to do within our program, so he didn’t travel. He’ll be back to where he was last week going into it, but there are standards that we have here, standards that guys need to live up to and if they don’t do those things, then they have to be held accountable. I think that’s one of the things that Marvin is learning that he’s going to be held accountable here. He’s a good kid he wants to do well, but he has some lapses at times that he’s his own worst enemy. As a coach, parent or teacher, when those things happen with your students, kids or players, then their needs to be repercussions because if not, then they’re going to continue to make the same mistake or do the same thing and they won’t know that it’s wrong. That’s not the way we run our program here, he knows that and you talk to kids all the time and you tell them that they need to do things the right way and if they don’t, here are things that could happen. Based on Marvin’s actions I took the action to not travel him.”

YOU’VE BEEN STRESSING PLAYING WITH GOOD TECHNIQUE. ON OMAR FORTT’S INT, IS THAT AN EXAMPLE OF IF YOU DO WHAT WE AS COACHES ARE ASKING YOU TO DO, YOU WILL BE IN POSITION TO MAKE A PLAY?:

“There’s no question and that’s exactly what I said to him when he came off the field. I told him when you do it the right way, those are the things that happen. He was right with his guy, in the right position and turned at the right time to look for the ball, got his head around and made a very nice interception. Those are the things that we talk about. We had too many eye violations in the secondary, when they go to drive the guy, they look back for the ball instead of driving to the upfield shoulder and then their on a bad angle to the wide receiver and that hurt us a couple times yesterday. But Omar made a very nice play, had good technique, was in position and when you do that you give yourself an opportunity to make plays. That’s what you try to tell the kids, if you just do your job and do it with good fundamentals and good technique, you’re going to put yourself in a position to make plays. When you have the opportunity to make the play, then make it and Omar did that.”

HOW MUCH DO WINS AT THE END OF A SEASON CARRY OVER TO THE FOLLOWING YEAR AS PART OF THE BUILDING PROCESS OR ARE THOSE TWO SEPARATE THINGS?:

“My whole thing is I just want to get better week-to-week. If we do the things necessary, those things will take care of themselves. I just think anytime you win it helps the confidence of the players. For me, the winning will come when we start doing everything the right way consistently, day-in and day-out. When you do that, then the wins will come. We are getting better at doing things consistently, we aren’t any where near where we need to, but if they keep working and doing the things we are asking them to do and they work hard to improve each and every day, then you’ll start to see the wins on the field. When you see that then it all comes together and then it builds confidence.”

WHAT WAS GOING THROUGH YOUR MIND AFTER YOU RECOVER THE ONSIDE KICK, BUT HAVE HERGY’S OFFSIDES?:

“That goes back to the little things. We had a guy on the outside, he should never be offsides because he’s the guy that can see the kicker the best. As soon as the flag went, I knew what the problem was and you tell the guys all the time, you practice it, but that’s just a lack of attention to detail and doing the right things. We had a good kick, got the bounce we needed, but the second kick we just didn’t get that second hop and when you don’t get that hop, it makes it a little bit harder. If we do what we’re supposed to do and then the kick is right, then we have the opportunity. Because we didn’t pay attention to detail, we were maybe trying to get an advantage, we didn’t get that opportunity. In that situation, that’s the one thing you can’t do, you can’t be offsides, you need to stay behind and make sure you’re onsides. Those are the little things that will prevent you from having the opportunity to win. It was disappointing, I know the young man was trying to do his best, but you can’t have that in that situation.”

MATT SCHONVISKY / SITE CREATOR