Nov. 5, 2016
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Georgia Tech Coach Paul Johnson
Opening Statement:
“I’m really disappointed with the way we played. We didn’t do a good job, evidently, getting them ready to play, as coaches. Give them some credit. I think they have a good football team, and we certainly helped them. We played about as poorly as you can on defense and not much better on offense or special teams. A deadly combination.”
On hiccups in the red zone:
“We were down there five times and scored 10 points. We get a penalty on the 2-yard line on a toss going the other way. I mean, come on. Now it will be interesting to see. The kids said the guy dove on the ground, so we’ll see. We get a field goal. We kick the field goal low. They didn’t get any real penetration on the jumper’s block, but we kick it low and that was a huge play right before half, and it cuts it to one score. Then we turn the ball over twice. Unexplainable.”
On his perspective of defense coming from an offensive background:
“I guess I’m ultimately responsible for all of it, so we have to go back, and clearly that’s two weeks in a row where we’ve given up almost, or I guess we did give up, 600 yards. Fortunately, we held the ball some in the second half, and we had some long, time-consuming drives or it would have been worse. It’s disappointing.”
On defensive changes:
“I think you have to go back and look at the tape and evaluate. There’s a ton of missed tackles and a ton of missed whatever. If you can’t cover them, you can’t cover them. Not getting much of a pass rush and not being able to cover is a deadly combination.”
On Dedrick Mills:
“[Dedrick Mills] did okay. There were some plays we missed, but he’s a freshman. He’s going to make some mistakes. There’s no margin for error, and we’re not good enough offensively to have no margin for error. It’s just the way it is. When Kenny [Cooper] went in there, we’re playing three freshman offensive linemen and a true freshman running back. Four guys.”
On the defensive philosophy:
“We’re trying to get a stop. That’s our philosophy. We got them in some third and longs. In the first half it was third-and-9, third-and-7, third-and-7, third-and-9, third-and-12. They tried to blitz, they tried to play zone, they found ways to get first downs on all of them.”
UNC Head Coach Larry Fedora
Opening statement:
“Really a complete game for us. I thought our special teams played well. I thought our defense played really well. They gave us four extra possessions with a blocked field goal, two turnovers, and stuffing them on a fourth down. That was huge. That was the thing we talked about all week. Offensively, we ran the ball really efficiently, and Mitch (Trubisky) threw the ball as well as always.”
On the run game:
“Somebody asked me this week, how was (Elijah) Hood. I said he’s as close to 100 percent as he’s been all year, and that means going all the way back to camp. He’s really feeling good now. He’s feeling like he’s 100 percent, so he’s breaking tackles. Offensive line did a heck of a job today. I thought they all did. I thought we blocked on the perimeter well. It was just an overall team effort.”
On how an improved run helps the offense:
“Your tendencies aren’t all passing when we go to third and medium, which helps us. To be able to be over 50 percent on third downs, we’re going to have to be able to run the ball some and be effective that way. It also enables you to be in less third and longs because you’re more effective running the football on first and second down.”
On the wide receivers:
“In this game, they rolled a lot of things to (Ryan) Switzer’s side no matter if we put him in the boundary or to the field. We were looking for ways to get him into some situations, and they kept rolling that way. That enables Bug (Howard) to be in a lot of one-on-one situations, and he’s going to win a lot of those.”
On Mikey Bart:
“What Mikey does is play the same way every single play. That guy has a motor. He never slows down when he’s on the field. He goes as hard as he can every single play. I know to you guys, you think, ‘Doesn’t everybody do that?’ Well, no, everybody does not do that. If we could get everybody to do that, we would be incredible. You would think, ‘Well heck, that’s got to be easy to do, isn’t it?’ No, it’s not. To go out there and play as hard as you can each and every single snap, lot of people can’t do it. But Mikey just has that motor about him and he does it every single time.”
