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ARIZONA STATE UNIVERSITY MEDIA CONFERENCEOctober 5, 2013Todd GrahamARIZONA STATE – 34 COACH GRAHAM: First of all, congratulations to Coach Kelly. They do a great job. Their defensive coordinator and defensive staff did a tremendous job. I thought that was the difference in the game. I'm really proud of our players, how hard they played. It's unfortunate. I told our guys after the game that we had a great opportunity. We had great fans out, and I could hear them the whole time. Did a great job. Really disappointed we didn't deliver for them. This was an opportunity for us to win on a national stage and to come in, and to turn the ball over three times was the difference in the game. That's about how simple it was. Coach Kelly and them do a great job. It was an interesting game, back and forth. I thought they made great adjustments. It was, you know, a very well‑coached game on their part. Just want to congratulate them. We didn't get it done. It was difficult to swallow turning the football over that many times, that was the difference in the game. I do like our guys. Our guys came down the stretch there and we said we're going to score and get the on‑side kick. We almost got it, but just made too many mistakes. Can't turn the football over three times against a good football team and win. I thought that their defense really did a great job tonight. Really proud of our guys how they fought. Damarious Randall played more than he's played all year. First‑year guy, and I thought he did a really good job. Thought that Irabor did a great job. Made a big interception for a touchdown. Our guys battled their tails off. Went about like I thought it would, their offense against our defense. They caught some fade throws and things like that. Special teams, you know, we didn't punt the ball very well. We gave them some field position. But our guys battled their tails off, played very hard. I'm very proud of them. Basically, the simple deal is we turned the ball over twice and that was the difference in the game. Q. This is the third week your defense has given up 30 or more points. What can be done to correct that going forward the rest of the season? COACH GRAHAM: Well, if you watch the game, we had three interceptions for touchdowns. I thought our defense played good enough to win tonight. That's about what I have to say about that. Q. You talked all week about having these guys prepared to get rid of the distractions and just focus on playing football. Did you feel they were ready to do that? COACH GRAHAM: Yeah, our guys did a great job preparing. No excuses. We're carrying the ball. We're going to have a first down, we carry the ball away from our body. We don't do that. That turnover was critical in the game. They wind up getting a field goal out of that? It was a touchdown? Yeah, so that was big. I thought that was the play of the game. You know, we moved ball and did some nice things, but those turnovers were critical. Obviously, the interception for touchdown at the end didn't help any. So there are 14 points off two plays. Guess what? Those count. That's the way it is. We just did a poor job taking care of the football. Q. Osahon just said that the defense was surprised by a lot of things that Notre Dame did, also, could you talk a little bit about TJ Jones? He had a great game, such as stats‑wise and what type of player he is? COACH GRAHAM: They made some good adjustments and did some things. But, you know, we pretty much until the end of the‑‑ I don't know if it was the end of the third quarter or somewhere in there, but at halftime we made an adjustment. But we felt pretty good about how we played the run in the first half. They caught a fade throw here and there on us. We felt pretty good about where we were. We came back in the second half and played our odd front and did some popping and really bringing four and five. We had some alignment issues and gave up a field goal on one drive we were missing the line by three or four plays. But they did some things formation and stuff like that, but they didn't run many things we didn't practice. It was just getting beat on fade. We're a bump team, and they put him out there and threw the ball up and they hit him. Standing here before the game, Coach Kelly knows me and I know him. He's going to post about ten fade balls down the sideline in the game. You've got to win those, and we lost too many of them, and we were out of position. Had our back to the ball. You're always going to lose. Get a pass interference or you have something like that. Then I thought they did a great job protecting. They do some things that are tough with their tight end and getting an empty package and still protecting with six. We didn't get a lot of pressure. We had to go five and six man stunt to get pressure to the quarterback. We had it. We had what we wanted several times. He threw the ball, and we dropped it. We had two dropped interceptions that I thought were huge. One the drive right before the half. If he had picked it, it probably would have been a pick six. Hit him right in the hands. You've got to make those plays. So lot of what‑ifs in games. Today they were the better team, and I thought they won the battle up front, especially their defensive line. We were just very inconsistent. Again, they're a good team. We've got a good team. You put two teams like that out there playing in that kind of environment, it's the team that makes the least amount of mistakes that wins. And clearly that was the difference. We could have gotten a couple more turnovers we didn't get. They did a good job making some adjustments, going back to the broad buck and service the wing into the boundary with the 12 personnel and their tight end. But we were just misaligned. We can't have four plays that take us from the box to get things fixed. So some of those things, it was a cat and mouse, some things like that with them. But that wasn't the difference in the game. The difference in the game was simply those turnovers. Q. Could you talk about you guys had no sacks, Notre Dame had six. Just the battle in the trenches on both sides of the ball? Could you talk about the importance of that? COACH GRAHAM: They won that. They protect our quarterback. Last week we did a good job getting the ball out on time. Utilizing our tight end, utilizing our running backs. We didn't do that. You've got to give them a lot of credit, you know. We haven't been sacked like that all year, so they did a great job. I think Stanford wen into this game, I thought they were very similar teams, similar defenses, and they did some of the similar things Stanford did. You can't take negative yardage plays and you can't turn the ball over. You can't get sacked six times and give up three turnovers and win a game like that. It's not going to happen. So what causes that is their team playing at a really high level. I thought their defense played at a really high level. I thought that was the difference in the game too. Q. So much talk went into this four‑game stretch. Now that you guys are through it, where do you think you stand? COACH GRAHAM: I tell you what, I really wanted to be 4‑1. But we're 3‑2. We're 1‑1 in conference play. We're 1‑0 in the South. So obviously disappointed. I really felt we'd be 4‑1, and we didn't get it done as a coaching staff. But you move on. I'm proud of our guys. We played our tails off for the first five games, and now it's all conference play. We go to work. This team is capable of winning a championship. We've got to get things corrected. Can't score 62 one week and 20 the next. So that was not‑‑ they're a good football team, but we didn't play very well. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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