UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT SAN ANTONIO FOOTBALL MEDIA CONFERENCE

October 19, 2024

Brandon Brown

Press Conference

UTSA 38, Florida Atlantic 24

Q. Brandon, what was the mood like in the locker room after this one as compared to the previous two games?

BRANDON BROWN: Just guys being pretty juiced up in the locker room. Everybody excited. We had a rough past couple weeks. Just it's hard to win in college football, so we are just excited for that.

Q. What can you say about the play of the defense? Looked like you guys were pretty dominant out there for most of the game.

BRANDON BROWN: Yeah, this game I feel like we played it as a whole more than anything. I feel like we played more buttoned up as we needed to, cleaning up flags and pre- and post-snap penalties. Then the guys covering the back end for us, we were able to get penetration up front.

Q. Jeff and Owen were telling us that the word "penalty" was banned from the facility this week.

BRANDON BROWN: Yeah. He liked to spell it out.

Q. Yeah. What's that mental part of just trying to get over that hump?

BRANDON BROWN: Just guys locking in. I feel like the flag and all that stuff, it's really a mental thing, so just getting guys -- getting in guy's heads that, don't panic in certain situations to where you are going to get a flag and stuff like that. Or a mental error. Like post-snap penalties and getting like unnecessaries and stuff like that. You know, we could be better cleaning up that.

Q. What does it say about this team to have the ability to battle through the amount of injuries and turnovers and things like that that popped up today?

BRANDON BROWN: Oh, you know, healthy teams don't win championships, tough ones do. I feel like everybody know we have a lot of people going down. We are pretty light on both sides of the ball.

Doesn't matter. We still have to stack days and get better.

Q. How do you compare this defensive effort to previous games this season? Feel like this was one of your best shows?

BRANDON BROWN: Definitely one of our best shows, but still can be better. There were still errors and MAs we can fix with guys doing their job even more and guys doing their 1/11th so we can dominate more.

Q. Seems like you guys would have a lot of really successful plays and then they might break one or two big ones here or there. Is there some frustration that comes with that or how do you react in a game like that?

BRANDON BROWN: Just next-play mentality. You know, you don't want to turn the one bad play into two. We are just on to the next play. Short-term memory.

Q. What can you say about the play of the front seven, the defensive line specifically? Looked like you guys were getting after it.

BRANDON BROWN: We got a great back end. This is one of our best back ends. I've been here for four years. This is one of our best classes in the back end.

You know, like I said before, it was the flags that were killing us with that, so with them being cleaner back there it was just the penetration up front was just -- we were ready to eat. Us playing more buttoned up and not having as many flags, we're going to show up.

Q. Was there something specifically with this matchup? That was a super athletic quarterback you guys went up against and still got home against them.

BRANDON BROWN: It was emphasized that he liked to use his legs, so we tried to do our best of putting him in situations to get him to scramble and stuff like that to what we wanted to. Then when we got him to a spot we wanted to get him, make the play.

Q. With so many offensive injuries, was there any sort of pressure on you guys this week from the defense to hold up their end of the bargain?

BRANDON BROWN: No pressure. We just got to do our job. We know those guys are needing us anyway. Those guys are tough. Like I said before, tough teams win championships. We have guys that's ready to step up any time.