OPENING STATEMENT (NOTE: JOINED CALL 2 MIN IN): “[On defense] we gave up 12-run plays for 285- yards and 3-pass plays for 165-yards. We couldn’t get off the field on third down; they were 5-of-9 and 2-of-2 on fourth down. We couldn’t stay on the field on 3rd down, we were 4-of-14 and 0-for-2 on 4th down. It gets back to defensively, this was the first time guys saw this offense defensively, but we just didn’t do a good enough job of taking care of our assignments. That’s why we gave up some of those explosives. We had some penalties because guys were not looking at the right things.”

YOU’VE TALKED ABOUT JACK [ZERGIOTIS] NEEDING TO MAKE FEWER MISTAKES AT QB, IS THERE ANY WAY HE WORK ON THAT OTHER THAN GETTING MORE EXPERIENCE?: “He reminded me of the Indiana game with what was happening. I don’t know why it happened. Granted, the speed of the game against Navy was a little bit faster than it was the week before, but everybody has bad games and he had one of those. He’s going to learn how to be a quarterback. What I mean by that, he needs to understand that every time you go out there, you’re not going to make this big, spectacular play, just play within yourself. As I told him, ‘when you throw the ball across your body, you don’t need to do that, just throw the ball away, let us punt it and if nobody is open, nobody is open. It’s not your fault if guys don’t get open, just throw the ball away, rather than turning the ball over and giving them the ball where you’re going to give it to them.’ I think that’s something that young kids have to understand. Sometimes they have to go through things like that in order to grow up at that position. On the 3rd down play, there were a couple different things. You could see he was uncomfortable pretty much the entire night. Even on the 3rd play, we have Art [Thompkins] wide open and he’s moving around in the pocket when he doesn’t even have any pressure. I tried to tell him during the game to just settle down, but he could never get on track. It was unfortunate for him and unfortunate for us.”

NAVY BROUGHT A LOT OF PRESSURE OFF THE EDGE, DID THAT CONTRIBUTE TO SOME OF THE NERVOUSNESS IN THE POCKET?: “If he just did what we told him top do during the week in terms of checking and putting the protection and sliding it to that and knowing it, or if we weren’t going to do that, he knows that he could take his back and move him over there if he was going to run a play to throw the ball off the fake. He was his own worst enemy. All that stuff, we worked against and had answers for. He didn’t handle it very well.”

HE’S ONLY PLAYED A FEW GAMES AT THIS LEVEL NOW, BUT DOES HE HAVE THE AUTHORITY TO MAKE ADJUSTMENTS AT THE LINE OF SCRIMMAGE, PARTICULARLY IF HE RECONGIZES SOMETHING IS COMING FROM A PRESSURE STANDPOINT TO CHECK DOWN TO A QUICK THROW BEHIND THE BLITZ OR SOMETHING ALONG THOSE LINES?: “He’s done it. He did it against Tulane where he got pressure and ran that play for a touchdown. He sees it. Sometimes you get into those situations and you don’t keep your wits about yourself. He just needs to settle down and do what he’s supposed to do and let other people do their job. If he does that, we’ll be fine. We also try to make sure we don’t have too much in for him, but like I said, we had things in to take care of those things and we didn’t execute it. Sometimes we had guys that didn’t perform well enough up front either, in terms of being as stout as you need to be in pass protection, but those are the things that we just need to get better at.”

TE DONOVAN WILLIAMS HASN’T PLAYED IN A LONG TIME, IS REDSHIRTING SOMETHING THAT IS IN THE REALM OF POSSIBILITY?: “He’s rehabbing, but still has some issues. I don’t know. I would say that he wouldn’t be ready this week, but we’ll see if he can get ready for after the bye week. He hasn’t been able to practice yet. I don’t know [about an extra year], I’m just trying to win one game at a time. I want him to get out there as soon as he can. If he can’t and can’t play then there are options. We’ll worry about that at the end of the season.”