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UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA FOOTBALL MEDIA CONFERENCESeptember 28, 2019Bronco MendenhallSouth Bend, Indiana Virginia - 20 - Notre Dame - 35 BRONCO MENDENHALL: Four turnovers in the second half offensively, when you're playing a strong team on the road that's in most every case. I was disappointed in the one rush touchdown gave up the second half, so that's -- going into the -- inaudible -- improved part of it and that's what we'll do. Q. Inaudible. BRONCO MENDENHALL: Not more than usual and most four-man rush and their base defense -- technically needing offensive tackle, there's nothing schematically, won't take anything way from any players, they rushed hard and made the plays they needed to make. Turnovers changes games. Certainly with five on the day, I think we would say, go Notre Dame, you turn it over five times, you'll win. That would be uncommon if that happens. Our ball security is tied directly to pass rush in four-man rush situations, which is what the defense would love. If you can pressure the quarterback and still play coverage, there's relatively no risk. Q. Inaudible. BRONCO MENDENHALL: Well, I think I did my best to scan in realtime -- scan protection on the routes and where it could have gone or where it could have been delivered to. I would say most of them, there was no separation, there was someone else. It's always better to get rid of the ball than have a sack. That's what you hope for but there's nothing I can say now where he's missing all the targets or there was clearly -- maybe he didn't see. To me it looked like the routes were covered -- for routes to separate is what I think happened. Q. Made some mistakes that took you out of the game -- positive experience coming here and being competitive for a half or is it just frustrating? BRONCO MENDENHALL: I think it's -- I just talked to my team like I'm talking right now. There's no needing to change tones. We have some weaknesses to expose, if we had executed better in those areas, we would have had a chance to win the game. I still think that. However, eight sacks, five turnovers, those numbers are substantial, and let's say -- four turnovers in the second half, too much to overcome. If we can sustain the play, the way we played the first half, against a really good team on the road -- at the top of our league and have national prominence. Q. Inaudible. BRONCO MENDENHALL: If you're on, we have to generate a run game, and not only quarterback driven, but when we have the ball off, we champion the ball effectively -- which then puts -- inability to run the ball currently. I would say the backstory to the point I'm making about protection. BRONCO MENDENHALL: Not sure about number of times. Q. Without an effective running game? BRONCO MENDENHALL: To take over our league to compete at a higher level, which is where we want to go from last year. The run game development is, again, the best way I can say it, salvation of our back story -- pass protection which is becoming frequent, and obvious leading to turnovers. It's sequential. I will say that when we are throwing it, our receivers are catching it well, and they are doing a nice job. We all saw that and they were effective when the ball got to them. We are encouraged by that and just proportionately right now, if you want to get the ball to someone, to our receivers, so we have to find the run game to start -- inaudible -- and how to do it, that's a work-in-progress obviously. Q. What was it in the second half? BRONCO MENDENHALL: It was the exact same -- it was just simply some clean shots on our quarterback, and getting in so hard -- to stop them twice, so there were more turnovers, but the first two, in reality, were the difference, when they picked one up and scored and the other one down three or four yards. There was no difference. Q. Inaudible. BRONCO MENDENHALL: We like our receivers, and they played at the position -- at a level that we had expected they would. So they were consistent. They made critical catches. They made contested catches, productive, and really did a nice job. So I was impressed and pleased with how they played. Q. The backstory of the on side kick -- BRONCO MENDENHALL: Exactly. We thought during the week, or leading in preparation, I was just trying to find the right -- inaudible -- so close to doing it the first half but we had the lead and didn't quite seem like we needed to steal the possession yet. With us kicking off the second half, I wanted to get the ball to score -- to start the second half, the first part worked out well. We didn't score, but we executed the kick how we hoped and I was encouraged by that. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
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