On the performance of the defense “I thought periods were dominant but somewhat spotty. I told them at the half like 85 yards rushing at the half and we don’t do that. They did a really nice job in terms of the bye week. They were getting the tackle over and finding a way to pin, pull and put a tackle on Quinton (Newsome) and Newsome was coming off and setting the edge. You used to be able to cut that guy two years ago, you can’t cut him anymore. They had a couple runs but I thought saved that and Malcolm (Hartzog) is a safety and all of a sudden Tommi Hill gets hurt going into the half. So, Tommi (Hill) doesn’t go in the second half and Malcolm now goes back to corner. One thing we never wanted to do was put Malcom from safety to corner in a game. We just went back to Tamon (Lynum), who did a great job stepping up. Other than two big plays I thought the defense was close to dominant at times.”
On improvements after today’s game “We’re not going to play in fear, the passes were there. A lot of our passes were like, hey it’s a pass with a quarterback draw. The pass might happen and I said at one point we’re starting to get a little bit on hey we’re running the ball, we’re better when we are mixing it. We come out of a wheel route and Alex (Bullock) is wide open. We didn’t quite hit it today. I don’t know how we’re going to get better if we don’t call it and work through it. I don’t worry about things that, like three quick passes and our defense is tired. When the time of possession is tilted in our favor or when it’s close or even. The defense isn’t tired. I don’t worry about those things. If I was thinking that way I probably wouldn’t and I would say hey just run the ball, we have a lead. But we took the shot to Malachi (Coleman). We had some other shots in the game we thought we were going to have and made a couple of plays. I just think we have to continue to be aggressive and we just have to coach our way, and work our way through these phases of, you know what, hey it’s not super pretty right now just keep playing.”
On the maturity on the team as the season has progressed “We lost earlier in the year. It’s not really popular to say nowadays, but if you want to build a big building you have to dig a foundation. As I said I saw a lot of teams last week that were super awesome and they’re yelling at each other on the sidelines. We went through adversity and the players got to see that the coaches don’t change. The coaches got to see that the players keep coming in each week and the players got to see we battle each other. That doesn’t mean I want to lose those games, it just means that you talk to some of the players that were on the national championship team after losing to Florida State the year before… Tough times create strong men and we have a group of strong men there. The guys on defense, I’ve challenged them over and over again. Like what are you going to do if things don’t start off well early and they answered that call for me today, so we’re good with them.”
On player development as the season continues “The credit goes to players. I think Terrance (Knighton) has done a good job, a lot of it is the way that we practice and we do a one-on-one pass rush live. The team competes live, they get so many reps that skip out on going against each other. A lot of teams, probably more offensive teams, like their scout team, the defensive guys, read a card and try not to get beat. Our guys we compete, James (Williams) is hard to block in practice. A lot of the credit goes to Corey (Campbell) and Kristin (Coggin), he does an amazing job of just lifting these guys. They lift three days a week during season until they continue to get bigger and stronger. Kristin feeds them, so a guy like James that comes from Junior College he’s just getting better and better. Terrance is an excellent coach and I love the creativity of all the different packages. We had guys rotating in and out.”