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SAN DIEGO STATE UNIVERSITY FOOTBALL MEDIA CONFERENCESeptember 21, 2019Rocky LongSan Diego, California Utah State - 23, San Diego State - 17 Q. You guys have been so disciplined the first two games, but the first half, special teams -- did you think you eclipsed your average penalties in the first half, what did you see in that first half -- ROCKY LONG: Well, obviously the special teams penalties always started us in bad field position, so you have to eliminate those. Then I haven't seen them on the fill tomorrow see if they were legit or not, but we'll find out. I think the only real bad penalties was we got a personal foul penalties which is ridiculous. That's a lock of control by one of our players. The rest of them, sometimes in special teams when you're blocking and those kind of things, sometimes that stuff happens. Sometimes they call it. Sometimes they don't. Q. Can you talk about the resiliency the team showed? ROCKY LONG: I was happy that we didn't give up at halftime. I was happy we didn't give up. We tried to get back in the game. We just got back in the game too late. I thought the offense, all day long, we didn't get in scoring position and didn't score enough points. If you had told me before the game we're going to hold them to 16 points on defense, I'd tell you we were going to win. Q. Your thoughts on how the defense played tonight all together? ROCKY LONG: Not good enough. It's never good enough. We gave up some yards, but somehow kept them to the field goals -- than if they scored more touchdowns. Scored more field goals. So we gave up some yardage, and when they got here the red zone, we were able to make them kick field goals and that allows you to stay in the game. If those were touchdowns, the game would get out of hand by the first half. I don't know what exactly it would have been, 40-3 or something, I'm just guessing. But for the defense to hold them to field goals kept us in the game. When you play a quarterback as skilled as he is, if he holds you to 16 points, that's not bad. Q. Did you change anything offensively in the fourth quarter? ROCKY LONG: Well, one of them was we threw a nice pass and caught it, and out ran -- then the other one, the quarterback scrambled around forever, no one could tackle him and then he finally finds a guy wide open in the end zone and throw it is to him and we get a touchdown. Nothing designed. The one where we throw a catch, that's designed and the receiver made a good play by scoring the touchdown when he caught it. That's one of those freak plays that every once in a while you get lucky and they work. Q. What's your assessment -- ROCKY LONG: Like most of our team, very inconsistent. At times we're good, and at times not good at all. Q. Do you think he moved in the pocket too much? ROCKY LONG: I'll have to watch the film and tell you if he broke it too much. When you have a quarterback that's an athlete like he is, you can't tell him not to, and the times he scrambled around, they got us -- one of those touchdowns got us back in the game. Q. The long drive -- ROCKY LONG: I don't think in particular. We started the game like we wanted to. Wanted to keep the ball away from them and we wanted to gain yardage and get first downs and score some points. Too bad it was a field goal and not a touchdown. Everything was going fine until we threw an interception that was run back for a touchdown. Our offense had a loss of confidence or something. Game started the way we wanted to play and all of a sudden we're playing from behind and it changed. Q. What are some positives you can take into the next game after the bye? ROCKY LONG: Well, there's no real positives. I still believe that you are team can be a good football team. Maybe we were okay tonight, too, because Utah State is pretty good. I don't know how good they are but they are pretty good. They have got an NFL quarterback, so that's a hard thing to contend with, so we lost to a good football team. But we can be a good football team. We have to get better in a lot of areas, but we can be a good football team. Q. The first half -- returning kick, do you know -- ROCKY LONG: Yeah, he's got turf toe. So when they tape it exactly right, he can handle it. And if the tape breaks or stretches or something, all of a sudden he can feel his toe. They take him back in there and retain his toe and he's okay. I thought it was an ankle when I saw him. He had turf toe before tonight's game. He got it last week. Q. What's the focus next week during the bye week? ROCKY LONG: Try to get better at fundamental things and give some of the young guys a chance to play football. We'll go out there in full pads a couple times and guys that aren't playing for us right now, they will get a feel for actually playing football. That's what they are here for, instead of being a scout team. They will have fun and everybody will have fun watching them play. Sloppy -- really sloppy, but obviously we've got to get better at our kicking game. We've got to do some things there so we don't get penalized. We have to be more consistent on offense and score some more points and on defense we've got to cause turnovers. We cause turnovers, we win. We don't, we lose. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
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