Sept. 16, 2007
Postgame Quotes –
Georgia Tech Head Coach Chan Gailey
“I’ll tell you what, he (Matt Ryan) impressed me. He impressed me on film and he impressed in person. He was as good as advertised; I can’t imagine anyone playing much better than he did. I was extremely impressed. They have a good football team. And they played well tonight. We didn’t play as well and they deserved to win.”
There seemed to be a lot of mental mistakes:
“We seemed to not get any of the breaks, so to speak. Those are excuses. You’re right; we didn’t execute properly. When we made a play we had a crucial penalty and you can’t win with crucial penalties. If you don’t play smart, you’ll usually not win.”
On BC’s defense:
“They did a good job of putting extra people at the point of attack at times. They did a good job of bringing their safeties out of the secondary at times. They were physical. We said that all week. We didn’t execute the way we had in previous games. We didn’t get the movement we had been getting at the point of attack.”
On Tashard Choice’s injury:
“I don’t know yet; they just told me he was out the rest of the game and did not give me any long-term prognosis on that. So I’ll just have to wait till we evaluate it tomorrow.”
Evaluate Taylor Bennett’s performance:
“I thought he got better. He’s not arrived, but I thought he did a lot of things, throwing the ball than he did in previous games. We will gain something from this game in that respect. But we’ve got a lot of work to do in some other areas to get where we’d like to be at the end.”
Are there positives to take from this game into the rest of the season?
“We hope as we watch the film that we’ll find some things. Right now, it doesn’t feel like it. One thing I mentioned earlier, I feel like we can take some improvement in some areas of the passing game with us. I think that’s something that will help us.”
“We had every opportunity to get ready to play this week. I don’t think it had anything to do with the previous two games. I just don’t think we played as well as we are capable. If you want to have a chance to play at the end of the year, you’ve got to go play every week, week in and week out.”
Georgia Tech Player Quotes
Wide Receiver Demaryius Thomas
At what point in the game do you say `we can’t run on these guys, we’ve got to try something else?
“Well, it wasn’t that we couldn’t run on them, I’m just not sure we were calling the right plays. But, in the second half, we saw that the only thing that was working for us was the screen pass.”
Were you surprised at how good they were?
“We watched film on them and we knew they were good, but it kind of surprised me.”
Did they do anything different than you expected?
“We expected them to play a lot of cover-three, but it seemed like they played more cover-four. We just needed to make adjustments.”
Quarterback Taylor Bennett
How were they so physical against the run?
“They were a physical team on defense. Like Demaryius said, we thought they were going to come out and play cover-three and put a safety out there to stop the run, but they didn’t and we kind of had to resort to going to the air. The passing game on my part didn’t go very well in the first half, but we came out in the second half and kind of made some switches and put some things together and got a little bit going.”
“They are a good team and we’ll be seeing them again in Jacksonville.”
A lot of big plays called back tonight:
“Yes. Penalties killed us. That’s one thing that will take out of a game, that’s for sure. We had six or seven penalties and those will take you out of a drive, they will take you out of a game. We had a couple of instant replay calls that didn’t go our way, which could have helped us out a lot, but we got to touch up our mistakes and come out next weekend and win a division game.”
Did you feel like nothing was going your way tonight?
“Absolutely. There was not a doubt in my mind that nothing was going our way. That’s not us in the rushing game. We just could not run the ball very well, didn’t pass it very well, things were not going our way.”
Did you think anybody could shut down Tashard and your running game?
“No and I still don’t think they can. I think we’ll be able to improve ourselves and hopefully get another shot against them in Jacksonville. We have the best running back in the ACC in my opinion. They got to him one night, and we played probably our worst game tonight and we just need to touch some things up and come out again and win.”
Boston College Head Coach Jeff Jagodzinski,
Was this a statement game for you?
“I don’t know if this was a statement game or not, but I told the kids that to come on the road, at night, to play a top-ranked football team, they played hard. I told them from the beginning that this is a special group. I’m breaking this thing (season) up into four quarters, and that’s just three of 12, so that’s the first quarter. I told them we played pretty well the first quarter. We’ve got a lot of football to go.”
Can Matt Ryan play any better?
“Jon Tenuta is a very aggressive defensive coordinator. We took advantage of some of the things he tried to do. We took shots down the field at some of their corners. Matt was pretty accurate, and the kids went and made some plays. We dropped some, too. But the kids played hard, and that’s a trademark of this football team.”
Tonight it seemed every phase of your game was working.
“That’s when you can take turns in your units and continue to be productive, that’s what we did tonight. It was a great team win tonight. Being around a lot of football teams, sometimes you have to pull each other out. Tonight it was a pretty balance deal.”
In the fourth quarter you threw the ball upfield four or five times when you were up two scores. Did that take them by surprise a little?
“They’ve got a good run defense. Jon just kept on blitzing. We just kept hitting the intermediate routes, and as long as he kept blitzing, we kept throwing it. If you can throw the ball on first down and get four yards or more, that’s a very favorable position to be in.”
About Tech punter Durant Brooks
“I tell you this. That punter they have is outstanding. If he’s not the best punter in the country. I like our guy, but that son-of-a-gun, he put those guys in some pretty good field position.”
About Matt Ryan
“Matt’s maturity level is as good as any quarterback I’ve been around. The game slows down for him. He doesn’t get rattled about anything that he does. I’m sure glad I’ve got him.”
The pressure didn’t seem to affect him, he read the defense and got the ball out quickly.
“We got it out pretty quick. But that was something that we practiced. We saw the zone blitz against Wake Forest, and we really worked hard at it this past week. Jon does some different things with the zone blitz, and he usually gets home, but I don’t think he got home much tonight.”
