Tom O'Brien Audio
"He's a natural tackle which is where he'll go back I think next year but we needed help at guard and he stepped in there and accepted the challenge and kept getting better every game so it's another one of those tough losses for us."
"You can't work around it. You have to understand what's going on. The kids are fine. They are excited about the opportunity to come back home and play a football game. That's who you worry about the most and I think they've kind of accepted the fact they've been dealt a bad hand. There's nothing you can do but fight. We're going to continue to fight. We thought it was bad last year and it's three times as bad this year. It's got to end sometime before I die here. I don't know, one or the other. I'll take a hit for the team if it keeps somebody else healthy."
"I think the two kids at the boundary corner, both CJ and Jarvis, as the game went on looked like they were much more comfortable doing what they were asked to do. So I think that was huge for us. Hopefully we'll keep the same group back there and get better this week."
"Dwayne Maddox had a little tough time going to middle linebacker which I think is understandable because all the reads are so different. He gave us great effort and I think hopefully he'll be much better this week getting everybody lined up and going in the right direction."
"You talk about the problems we're having on defense and consistency and continuity, we've had that on the offensive line. They've been getting better and better as time goes on. The more they work in concert with each other the better they get."
"They will blitz more than any team we've played this year. That's their calling card. They try to confuse you and get you in third down situations. They lead the conference in sacks. They have actually gotten better the last two weeks on defense and now that they've had an open week to prepare it might look like 50 guys are coming at us come Saturday. That's one of the reasons you would rather have your continuity on the offensive line right now."
"We wanted to control the ball a little more which means we were going to have to run it a little more and keep the clock going. Toney Baker did a great job. Florida State couldn't tackle him. I don't know how many tackles he ran through but he had a lot of yards after contact. That was really big for us. He was the major reason why we had success in the running game."
"We're about a step away all the time right now. He's been close but he's doing a lot of other things for us. He'll get some sacks, they'll come."
"They've been fine. As I said before we all keep waiting for a break. Something good has got to happen sometime. We can't keep going south forever. We have to circle the wagons, believe in each other and come out firing in all directions. There isn't anything else to do. No sense feeling sorry for ourselves."
"Maybe we'll get some home field advantage and get some home cooking and maybe we'll be better off for it. We need something good to happen for us."
"We got four games left and we have been pretty good in November so let's see what we can get done."
"I don't think there is any question David is a great coach. I've known him for a long time, from the time we were both coordinators. He went to Ole Miss, God only knows why they let him go. He's a good football coach and he's got some good football players too, so he's done a really fabulous job."