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TEXAS TECH UNIVERSITY MEDIA CONFERENCESeptember 18, 2010Taylor PottsScott SmithTommy TubervilleCOACH TUBERVILLE: All right. Well, as I just told the team, effort was great. We just, number one, you've got to be able to run the ball, and we weren't able to run it at all. We couldn't slow their front down. They just turned loose on us in the second half. We just weren't able to make any plays offense. Defensively we held our own most of the time. I thought if we got that many turnovers and played that well defensively that we'd be right in their ahead. But the kicking game was pretty solid most of the time. It's just I did a poor job of getting the offense ready to play. We were overemotional to begin with. The bad snap put us in a big bind, big bind. And that's just our guys were just too psyched up. You know, we never had a bad snap in practice. But, you've got to learn from it. But as I told them, you know, they played in spurts, no consistency. That's reading your practice. We'll come back tomorrow, look at the film and try to get better. But I don't have to tell all of you that that just wasn't a very good football game on our side as a team, and again, there are some part of it were good, some parts of it wasn't very good. Even coaching, again, I'm going to take as much credit as anything on that one. We just couldn't seem to pull out the right plays at the right time. They blitzed most of the first half. Second half they didn't do much blitzing, they just defended, and we weren't able to get the running game going against a four-man front. And when you can't do that, you can't throw it down the field against seven guys with speed like they have. Questions? Q. How disappointed were you in the high amount of personal foul penalties on your team tonight? COACH TUBERVILLE: Yeah, that was -- I mean, we just killed ourselves. We gave them that last seven points and just took ourselves right out of the game with two penalties back-to-back. Then we get the ball back, and we make a drive, and they call a -- I don't know -- blocking down field or something. I don't know. Just you can't play a good football team and make that many mistakes. What did we have? We had eight penalties. Most of them were 15-yarders. We seemed to not get a break. That wasn't the difference in the game. I mean we could have made that many mistakes, if we had done anything in terms of running the football. But we just couldn't keep our defense off the field. Q. What can you do differently in the future to generate a running game? So far this year it hadn't materialized that much? COACH TUBERVILLE: No, you're exactly right. Against teams we should have. We knew that. We work on it half our practice. And it just, the point of attack, people do a good job of getting off blocks and making plays. And, again, when we do get in the secondary, we never get to the second level because we haven't had enough practice on it. But as I've told all of you, we're not going to be a good football team, and you can't win championships unless you can run it. And that's -- we ran a little screen pass the first half ask made some plays on that, and that's kind of like a running play. But we've got to lineup and be able to run it downhill. We're not going to give up on it. We're not going to turn into a team that's going to keep throwing it 70, 80 times. You can't do that. If our defense continues to get better and we get in the running game, we'll be a much better team. Q. You said you didn't see them blitzing as much in the second half. But it seemed they were still penetrating a little bit. What did you see happening there? COACH TUBERVILLE: What that was, we knew we got into a situation where they couldn't run the ball. They just speed rushed our tackles on the other side and we couldn't block them. Couple times Taylor stepped up and got around it and got the ball off, but it all starts with being able to slow the front down. As I talked to Muschamp after the game, he did a good job. He saw we couldn't run the ball, so there's no reason to blitz when you can get a rush from the outside and don't have to, you know, worry about the run. Bottom line, that's what it goes back to. You've got to be able to run the football. You know, we're dedicated to it. We're working on it in practice. We've got the running backs to get it done, we're just not making the plays at the right time. Q. Can you talk about the decision to put Sheffield in? COACH TUBERVILLE: Well, we were going to put him in all along. Taylor got knocked around there pretty good on the interception, which was, I thought, the turning play of the game. We're driving down 14-14. We get to the 30-yard line, and their nickel back just read him all the way. He looked at the receiver, and you can't do that against experienced defensive backs. He stared him down through it, picked it off, and he got hit pretty good on that play. He didn't hardly get up. So we felt like we'd give Steven a chance, and let him get -- because we held him. Got the ball back, and gave Steven a chance to try to make a play while Taylor got his breath back, and, obviously, we didn't do very much in that situation either. Q. Can you talk about the play of Scott Smith a little bit? COACH TUBERVILLE: Yeah, Scott's, as we all have seen, and those of you that have been at every game, he's getting better and better. He gives us a pass-rush when we don't get penetration because he's so tall. You know, our pass-rush was probably the area of pretty average tonight. We just we got sacks, but there were times when you've got to get a little bit more pressure on somebody on the third down. We gave them a few third-down conversions where we didn't get any penetration. But Scott does a good job of getting his hands up because of his height. But we usually put him in a situation where he's in the passing lane. You know, he's going to be a heck of a player for us. Again, I'm proud of the entire team because of their effort. We just didn't execute well enough to have a chance to win there at the end. I thought we'd score in the 30's. But, you know, it's just one of those things where we just never could get the tempo or get anything going on first down. Q. Taylor, you guys kind of struggled to move the ball tonight, and a lot of that started not getting any running game going. Can you talk about that? TAYLOR POTTS: We just didn't execute like we needed to. That's what it came down to in the end. If we would have been able to execute every play call, we would have been all right. Q. Taylor, when you've been part of an offense like you've been for the past four years, how frustrating is a night like this? TAYLOR POTTS: You know, it is frustrating, but it's one of those things we need to overcome, and we need to overcome quick, because conference starts quick. We've got a lot of games left. We've got nine games left. I think we'll take this week to prepare very well. Iron out anything that is going wrong. Definitely not take this week off by any means. We'll have really good practices this whole week, and we'll be all right. But we've got a long season left, and we'll be good. Q. What did you see them doing in the fourth quarter? Coach said they weren't blitzing, but they were defending really well. What kind of coverages were they giving you? TAYLOR POTTS: You know, they were playing hard and they were playing good. But it came down to us and us being able to execute every play called and staying on the field when it was third down, and we didn't do that. Playing in a scene like this and the situation like this and the defense giving us the opportunity to stay in the game like they did, it is our responsibility to be able to move the ball, and we didn't do that. We'll go back and look at the tape, correct whatever we messed up and the mistakes we made, and we'll come out and fix it. Q. Scott, can you talk about the defense's performance tonight and the way you guys were able to generate so many turnovers? SCOTT SMITH: Well, I thought we had a great week of preparation. We were pretty fired up before the game. Coach told us we were going to get five turnovers before the game, we were all pretty hyped. Like I said, the week of preparation was great and that played a big part in that. Q. Can you talk about what you saw from the offensive line on the two sacks that you had a in a row there? SCOTT SMITH: The offensive line, they were tough. Getting a sack is about having a motor. You've just got to keep going, keep going, keep going. But I really think it was great coverage because we were only rushing three guys. So it was really coverage sacks. I've got to give it up to the secondary on that one. Q. When you see the defense doing their work out there, do you almost feel like as an offense you guys just want to pick them up, you're almost letting them down? TAYLOR POTTS: No, you know, they got, what is it? Four turnovers? Four or five? There were four or five opportunities that we had to score, and we didn't get it done. So, you know, it was a night that we needed to get things done and we weren't able to. We needed to stay on the field, and we weren't able to. End of FastScripts |
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