ARMY BLACK KNIGHTS FOOTBALL

December 14, 2024

Bryson Daily

Cody Winokur

Max DiDomenico

Press Conference

Navy 31, Army 13

Q. Do you think the grind got to Army? Starting with the Notre Dame game you had one tough game after another and you now have week off to prepare for this game or didn't get a week off and you guys played in the championship game last week?

BRYSON DAILY: We talked about that all week. Those were just excuses that we could have used, but we didn't, and that's not the reason for the loss today. We just didn't execute. We got out-played by the team we played.

Q. Bryson, what did Navy do to slow down the offense today?

BRYSON DAILY: They played really hard. They had a really good plan coming in, and we just didn't hit the plays we needed to. They hit the big plays and we didn't, and we turned the ball over. I turned the ball over too much. That's how you lose games, not executing, giving the other team the ball and not hitting big plays when you need them.

It was really a bunch of self-inflicted wounds, and you can't win big games like that, playing like that.

Q. Bryson, the second possession you had the interception but then you came back and you had a touchdown pass to Hayden Reed. How did it feel today trying to throw the ball?

BRYSON DAILY: You know, we weren't effective enough throwing the ball. I made too many mistakes, too many bad decisions. Especially late in the game I felt myself pressing. That led to bad decisions. We just can't put ourselves in a hole early to where we have to rely on the pass like that. Just a lot of bad decisions on my parts, and I take full responsibility for that.

Q. Cody or Max, why was it tough to contain Navy quarterback Blake Horvath?

MAX DiDOMENICO: He's pretty dynamic, is able to make plays when plays aren't there to be made. That's what he did tonight. They blocked better than us. They tackled better than us.

You know, when the hole is pretty big, he was able to hit it. We're not playing hard enough, he's dynamic enough to kind of expose us.

He's a good player, but yeah, we just didn't fit where we needed to fit.

Q. Bryson, what are some positives you can take from the season?

BRYSON DAILY: Obviously it's been a great season. We've played a lot of good games, fought through some things. Still very positive season overall. We're happy to have the first 12-game wins. Extremely disappointed tonight. Hard to see those positives right now. But still been a very positive season.

Q. What are some lessons that you guys can learn from tonight's game moving yourselves forward?

BRYSON DAILY: One thing we're focusing on is getting the little things right. Messed up a lot of little things today and maybe throughout the week in practice. That shows up on the field.

Just for those younger guys, feeling this loss, feeling this pain, and just never letting it happen again.

Q. Cody, just your emotions as a senior? It's always disappointing, but when you look at the season, what do you feel about what the team accomplished?

CODY WINOKUR: Yeah, first and foremost, I'll just say how proud I am of these guys. I have two tremendous human beings sitting next to me, extremely good football players. Kyle Louis, who's also one of our captains, got injured in a game earlier this season. Everybody pours their heart and soul into everything we're doing. I have full trust in our coaching staff, and we've got the right guys for the job.

One thing that I just told our team in the locker room was that we can't forget how we win here, and that's been masked a little bit by the amount of success that we've had in terms of maybe complacency creeping in. There's no detail too small in a successful organization, and some of that stuff gets overlooked when you have success.

I mean, we're talented. We have a talented group of guys, but we're not so talented that we can just roll the ball out and beat anybody we play, as we saw tonight. We got out-coached, we got out-played.

From an emotion standpoint, just to that point of being out-coached and out-played, we didn't give ourselves a chance to even put ourselves in a position to use that emotion, if that makes sense. We just continuously didn't play to our standard.

That wasn't the product that we have played with all year, put out on the field, and not necessarily a representation of our program. But perception is reality, so that's what we put out on the field.

Thankfully we have one more game to close it out and send these seniors out the right way. But again, I just can't express how proud I am of these dudes and how we carried our team this season and keeping everybody together going through West Point.

To your point of the short turnaround time, sometimes that's what it takes, and that's what the U.S. Army calls for you to do. Some people will have multiple days, weeks, months to prepare for you, and then you only have four short days to get it done. That's our job and we're accountable for that.

Tonight we didn't get it done so that's frustrating, but thankfully we play them every year and we'll get another shot at them next year and they're going to get our best shot.