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RUTGERS UNIVERSITY FOOTBALL MEDIA CONFERENCE

September 12, 2015

Kyle Flood

Piscataway, New Jersey

Washington State - 37
Rutgers - 34

COACH FLOOD: As you can imagine, we're disappointed as a program. Put ourselves in a place in the second half where we had opportunities to win the game, and weren't able to get it done.

I want to thank all the people that came to High Point Solutions Stadium today. I thought the crowd was tremendous. I thought they did a great job. I want to thank them for staying through that game. They helped us when we were in the midst of that comeback. Fell a little short.

Questions.

Q. You lost two touchdowns on penalties and committed 11 penalties; is that simply the game right there?
COACH FLOOD: It's disappointing. It's disappointing. The players who got called for those penalties are experienced guys. Justin Goodwin and Chris Muller, those are the core of our team. So we have to look at them on film and make sure we correct whatever there is to correct after we see them on film.

But I think the turnovers, to me, are an even bigger factor. Now, you get penalties that take away touchdowns and that's a huge, huge impact on the game but the turnovers to me are the first place I look.

Q. Watching the last drive, the breakdown --
COACH FLOOD: I thought they did a good job. They did a nice job of taking what we gave them and completing the ball. And all day really, we didn't do a -- we didn't really have an effective pass rush all day. We weren't really able to get that quarterback off the spot, and that's one of the things you have to do.

You understand when you play a team like this that they are going to move the ball. They are going to have passing yards. That's part of their system. But if you didn't disrupt the quarterback, it's really hard.

Q. What's your initial assessment of Chris Laviano?
COACH FLOOD: He got better as the game went on. I thought there was some shaky points in the first half for sure. Maybe first-game start jitters maybe, I don't know. You'll have to ask him that. You'll have a chance to do that. I thought he got better as the game went on. I'm pleased with the way he played in the second half.

Q. I know you said you didn't want him looking over his shoulder, but were there any thoughts of making a change when things were going a little rough in the first half?
COACH FLOOD: No. No.

Q. How unsettling does it feel to come out of it with that many questions, veteran mistakes, do you feel like there's an awful lot to address coming out of the game like that?
COACH FLOOD: It's not unsettling. I don't know that I would use the word "unsettling." Every game, whether you win or lose, there's a lot of things that you address on Sundays. It's a more enjoyable experience for everybody when you're 1-0. But when you're not, it stings. It hurts.

We are going to look at this game tape -- there's some great things about this game that you don't feel great about because you didn't win. I thought we did an excellent job of running the ball as the game went on. I thought our punter did a nice job. I thought Kyle Federico did a good job. Janarion's effort was spectacular.

But none of those things feel very good when you're not 1-0.

Q. Following up on Janarion's effort, the two kick returns and obviously he had a couple catches on fourth down, is this him taking the next step, his development into a really elite player?
COACH FLOOD: He's been a factor for us on special teams. He had a great training camp in terms of catching the football and I thought we saw the fruits of that today, five catches, 65 yards, had the one run on the sweep we handed him for 21 yards.

So he had a big impact on this game for sure, and that's what we expect. When we recruited him, that's what we expected.

Q. The time out you had to call before the field goal attempt, what happened there? Was it you had too many men on the field?
COACH FLOOD: Correct.

Q. Was it the 12th guy tried to run off and you didn't think he would make it off in time? Do you recall specifics?
COACH FLOOD: I don't recall specifically, but we had too many on the field and I did not want to give them an opportunity to get a first down. And then we did it and we at that point put a house block on to see if we could block it.

But yeah, we had some different personnel groupings today on defense to try to match up with this offense, and we didn't do a very good job starting with me first in terms of coaching those when we got to the special teams to make sure we had the right people out there, and it cost us a time-out.

Q. And not a stretch to say those time-outs would have been valuable?
COACH FLOOD: They are always valuable.

Q. On the last play of the game, did you draw any plays up for that return and did you execute the play you drew up? Was there any thought about maybe fair catching to save the 13 seconds that you had on the clock?
COACH FLOOD: No, we had a play that we had practiced. That was the play we ran.

Q. You guys were exceptionally good last year in close games. Obviously this was a close one that went the other way. Is it as simple as turnovers, penalties, mistakes you were not making last year that got made today?
COACH FLOOD: Turnovers is the first place I look for sure. Penalties, when you have scores taken off the board on penalties, it's hard to overcome that.

Q. When was the last time you felt that -- have you ever seen your defense give up over 500 yards of total offense?
COACH FLOOD: Oh, I don't know. I'd have to go back and look at the statistics.

I thought the defense at times during the game did a nice job of keeping the ball in front of them. They had an 11-play drive that we stopped on downs, a seven-play drive we stopped on downs, an eight-play drive we stopped on downs. I thought at times today, we played good defense. But at the end when we needed a stop, we couldn't get it.

Q. How do you fix the penalties?
COACH FLOOD: You get better as a football team. You go back to practice and you continue to focus on it. It's not something we don't focus on.

To me, the penalty issue is the scores coming off the board. When you look at penalties over the time, you're going to see a highly-penalized teams that win a lot of football games, but when those penalties come in critical areas on scoring plays, and explosive plays, those are not four- and five-yard plays. Both of those scoring plays were explosive plays. It really hurts.

Q. You mentioned turnovers a couple times. Chris was responsible for two of them with an interception and fumble. How concerned are you with his turnovers?
COACH FLOOD: I'm concerned with turnovers in general. The guys on the field have to value the ball. The turnover on the pass was a poor decision. The one on the fumble is one he was trying to throw away and the ball slipped out of his hands. So I think we'll be able to get that corrected. The guys on the field need to value the ball and need to protect the football.

Q. What was the injury of Chris when he was running for first down?
COACH FLOOD: We'll put out an injury report on Monday.

Q. What was it like, the emotion of that, you took the lead with a minute and 40 seconds to go and obviously everybody is really excited, but they had a job to do at the same time. What was it like down there?
COACH FLOOD: It was an emotional game. Both those teams really, really battled. I certainly should give a lot of credit to Mike Leach and his football team and the way they fought, and I'm proud of the way our team fought. Not proud of how we did it all the time but I'm really proud of how hard they fought in that game. I thought both teams really competed and it created a really exciting second half.

There's always going to be emotional swings in a close football game and you have to be able to refocus and do your job. It's one of the things as we coach players through their careers that we try to emphasize.

Q. Last week you used the word "galvanize" which obviously meant a lot to you. Is there any chance of getting through that first one when you guys were under a lot of questions from the outside, maybe a letdown after that, do you think? Did it have any kind of a carryover?
COACH FLOOD: I didn't feel that way. No, I didn't feel that way. I didn't feel like we played particularly good football on offense the first half. After that first drive on defense, I thought we settled down and did a pretty good job in the first half.

But I think a galvanized football team is able to perform -- compete in the second half the way we did. Now as we go forward, we have a lot of football left to play this year. We have to do it better. We have to do it with more precision. We have to do it with more details. We have to protect the football better. Those are the things we'll be working on this week.

Q. Have you had any contact with President Barchi or the Board of Governors after the meeting on Friday?
COACH FLOOD: I have not.

Thank you.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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