Post-Game Quotes
Oct 4, 2008 | Football
Oct. 4, 2008
Recap | Final Stats | Notes
Head Coach Bob Toledo
Opening Remarks: I first want to apologize for our performance. We had a great crowd and we didn't play well enough to earn anything today. I'm really disappointed in our performance. We had way too many penalties, we had three interceptions, one run back for a touchdown, we had a fumble on the 6 run back for a touchdown, we had a blocked punt run back for a touchdown, we had a blocked field goal. It was like a comedy of errors and for that I apologize. That was a terrible performance on our part and I take the blame for that. Give credit to Army, I thought they did a great job. They didn't make a lot of mistakes themselves and they played extremely hard.
On if he thought his team could lose this bad? No, not at all. I felt we were ready to play. We had great practices and great preparation, we had a great attitude. But it was like a snowball. Once it got going we couldn't get it to stop.
On if there was a point during the game that he thought Tulane could come back: We thought at that point that if we could kick the field goal it was within reach. And we had the field goal blocked. Then I came out the second half and tried to do a little nudge onside kick and get it to see if we could get another possession, we didn't get it but at least we got them back a little bit, but if we would have got it and went downfield and scored it would've given us a lot of momentum.
On Tulane's execution: We did not execute very well today. We didn't throw the ball very well, we didn't have a very good performance from our fullbacks and we just made too many mistakes and had too many penalties and too many turnovers.
On if this result will negatively impact the rest of the Tulane football team's season: Well, I hope not. I just told them that we're going to find out that we can go either one of two directions right now. We just need to keep working and try to eliminate beating ourselves first and foremost. I don't want to take credit away from Army because they did a great job, but we just beat ourselves today.
On which play he thought set the tone for the game and gave Army momentum: I thought we did, but honestly we had the punt block and that kind of set the tone right there. It gave them a lot of momentum and it took a little air out of our balloon, you know. The one thing I told our offense is we have to give these fans something to get excited about and get them behind us. And right there we let the air out of the balloon on that play.
On if he felt Tulane gave the game away to Army: Well I don't know if we gave it away. They are still a pretty good football team and should've beat A&M. If they don't fumble the ball and A&M doesn't run it back for a touchdown, they've beat A&M too, but we just didn't play very well. There are no excuses. We made way too many mistakes to beat anybody today.
On Tulane's defensive breakdowns: Well, again, it gets back to discipline. Obviously, whoever was supposed to take the fullback a couple times didn't and when they came on the perimeter and pitched the ball and they shut our defensive backs down we didn't do a good job of getting rid of the blocker or making the tackle. And the quarterback ran a couple of times and hurt us too but they just played better than we did, period.
On what disappointed him most about his team's performance: Well, I think the thing that probably disappointed me was the physicality of it. I think they knocked us around pretty good defensively. And short-length yardage-wise, they knocked our offensive line back too. We didn't make first downs. We had one fourth and one and they grabbed Jeremy and we got by them, but we didn't throw a good ball. We ended up dropping the ball and then they ended up going down and kicking the field goal.
On if he's going to forget about this game quickly or dwell on it for a few days: We're going to get rid of it pretty quickly. We're not going to face this offense again. We're going to go back to work and there's nothing we can do about it. So, we just have to go back to work and try to improve all of our mistakes and not beat ourselves next week.
Tulane Quarterback Kevin Moore
I was terrible. I was awful. I played terribly and their defense played extremely well and made a bunch of plays. I left a lot of stuff out on the field; give them credit, they played well and they beat us.
Anytime you lose as convincingly as we did it feels like everything went wrong. We'll look at the tape and stuff, but it appears like they a lot of times they won the line of scrimmage. But I put us in a bad spot. I fumbled down there early and they took that and almost ran it all the way back and then I just threw one right to them on a crossing route, I just tried to aim it, and just...bad things.
We had an incredible crowd today; they were excellent. They were out here early tailgating and that means a lot to us. I and I'm sure everybody on our team wishes we could have put on a better performance and given them a little bit more of a reason to come back, but we didn't do that and Army outplayed us today. They won the game; they deserved to win. We have another one next Saturday against UTEP that we need to win.
On if he felt that if the blocked field goal was actually made Tulane would have had a better chance: Maybe if we stick it in there things maybe are a little bit different. If we go all the way down there and score. I think I missed a couple and I tried to hold the snap count up a little because I thought I felt pressure on the one that we jumped. And Kasey just got off the ball a little bit early in the backfield and it's a 5-yard penalty and that hurt us. And we weren't able to make it back and then I think they blocked the field goal on that possession and now its still a 2-posession game and that's tough. The score didn't indicate it, but the defense gave us a lot of opportunities and played really well at times. And if we get the ball right there and go the length of the field and put it in then maybe it's a different outcome, but we didn't and Army won. They outplayed us.
Tulane Defensive Tackle Julian Shives Sams
The big thing with that type of offense is everyone has their own responsibility in the defense. And a big thing for us is that you can scrimmage it, you can go over it with the scout team guys, but you really don't get a good picture of it until you actually see it. So, a combination of everybody having their responsibilities and fine-tuning it over halftime. I think that's what really changed for us. Coaches did a great job of changing up a lot of things for us coming into the second half. A lot of things that we saw in the first half and I think we really simplified that in the second half.
On film and by scout team you really don't see how quick everything is and the combination of the intensity for us picked up because our defense has been playing well this season and we knew that first half was not our defense and how we normally play. And we tried to come out the second half and show them our defense and how we play.
The big thing for me and a lot of the team that have been there is that we've been in this same scenario before. We've definitely gone south before. And that is something that we absolutely will not take. We're going to go back in this week, get back into film on UTEP and there isn't going to be a downfall. We're going into next week trying to win, play a good UTEP team. I won't take it. The seniors and the leaders will absolutely not take any letdown. We need to go uphill from this point and I'm going to do everything in my power to make sure we do that.
Tulane Wide Receiver Jeremy Williams
Well, maybe it seemed like it by the outcome of the game, but I don't think we just got unsure of ourselves, I don't know. We had too many penalties, a blocked punt, fumbles, we just didn't finish. That's our motto and we didn't go by it. I don't know what happened today.
It was 23-0, but we knew that most of those points were put on the board because of mistakes. It's not like we were getting shut down, we were driving the ball, but we just couldn't finish it, we were just making so many mistakes. We came in at half and knew that we could throw the ball but we just have to finish though, so that's what was going through our mind. 23-0 nothing looks bad, but we weren't giving up.
Tulane Running Back Andre Anderson
They were a physical defense, but I think we did what we wanted to do offensively. We just kind of got away from the running game because we got down so early and we had to throw the ball a little bit more. Their defense was physical, they hit us; I'm pretty beat up right now, but their defense was tough; their Army, they play hard, they play physical and I was expecting that coming into the game but we couldn't run the ball as well as we wanted to because we had to throw the ball downfield and make plays. We just made too many mistakes and we got away from what we wanted to do.
I was telling the guys on the sideline and in the huddle at halftime, you know, we've got to keep our heads up; keep fighting. The two early scores, you know, were just bad mental errors, but I told them, keep fighting, keep battling. We have to finish the game, we have plenty of time to make things happen. They did this against us last year and we cant let them do it this year, but we came up short.
Offense, Defense, I think they were hitting us a little bit harder than we were hitting them. As the game moved on I think we picked it up on offense and became more physical with running the ball doing what we wanted to do. But, early on I don't know what happened. We just started off a little slow and we didn't finish like we should have. I told the guys, you know, our offensive style is run the ball slash throw the ball deep, and we were running the ball, but we got down behind early and that kind of dictated the game for us. We had to get away from our game plan and then do some things we didn't want to do early on. We ran the ball well when we did run it, I don't think we had many negative plays, but we just have to get better all around.
We're going to try to keep our heads up and just finish. We know that it was simple mistakes. Little stuff that shouldn't have happened and things you shouldn't do; the blocked punt, the fumble on the 6th yard-line or whatever it was. Those are things we can correct. Like Jeremy said, they didn't stop us; we stopped ourselves numerous times over and over again. With penalties, we had 10 penalties for 8 or 9 yards. You can't have that and win the game. Not against these guys, not in front of this crowd.
Army head coach Stan Brock What are the differences in emotion between playing and coaching? What is different from your playing days to your coaching days? You don't get to play. It's different. As a player I felt like I could lead by doing it, by being in the middle of it. By how I practiced and how I worked. It's hard to be a leader when you can't get in there and physically do things and you have to start mentally doing it. It's just more difficult. As I start over as a coach, I have to learn how to motivate these guys.
Talk about this season. What has been difficult? The losses. To keep working hard, keep working hard, and then to lose again it just tears my heart out to see how hard these kids work not only on the football field. Really, the football field is only two hours of their probably sixteen-hour day. They work hard in the military aspect, academics, and then when to get to football, I expect them to be a division one football player. Then after that hard work, and hard work to never have a smile on after a game, just tears my heart out.
You are 27 points better than Alabama right now. How does it feel? Well. I will take a win by one, I don't care.
Talk about Collin Mooney, and how he had never scored a touchdown. We saw through the Spring that Collin was one of our faster guys on the team. And so it was just really a matter of time. He just kept pounding it, pounding it, pounding it. To this point he is probably averaging 3.5-4 yards per carry. So finally he just popped loose a couple of times. And that's the nice thing about this offense, is that if there ever is a break down and you can expose it on any given play, but you can pop it and make a big play.
They scored thirteen straight points, how did you feel when they brought the 23 point lead down to ten? You just keep playing. That's life. That's part of all the growth. They can say, you had a lead and then you kind of allowed some big plays. The growing process is learning how to win in these situations.
Army Fullback Collin Mooney What was it like going through the game? Touchdowns kept coming one after another. I just felt like I was getting stronger with every play. I felt like I was running the ball better. The O-line really was piling in there and making their blocks.
On the excitement scale, where are you? I am way up there.
In the first half, the dive up the middle was really working for you, but they made some adjustments at halftime and sort of stopped you in the second half. What did you all do to counteract that? Earlier in the game, they were running different things and we were trying to pick up on it. In the second half, what there were doing is stopping the draws and stopping the outside. We just had to adjust.
Have you ever dreamed of four touchdowns? Not really as a fullback. We just sort of pound it away, three of four yards a carry. Getting four touchdowns and 187 yards, that's crazy.
Is this the beginning of a trend for you? I hope so. I definitely hope so. I would love to do this every game.
How did it feel after you scored the first one? It felt good, I just wanted to run the ball more.
How long has it been since you had a touchdown? I haven't had a touchdown since sophomore year, in a game against VMI. It felt good. It felt good to get in the end zone again.
How did you feel as they brought you lead from twenty-three down to ten? They are a great defense, and we just knew that we had to finish. That has been the theme the last couple of weeks, finishing. It all came together and we finished a game. Even though we were getting stopped in the third quarter, we found a way to get in the end zone. Coach Brock was talking about how you got to fight, get in that ring and fight, get back in there, fight, finish, and get in the end zone to score some points.
Do you usually celebrate like that after the game? We sing the fight song after a victory. It has been ten games since we were able to do that, so it felt good to do it again.
What do you like about Stan Brock? Everything. His intensity. He is definitely a player's coach. He is just fired up, and I love that.
Army Linebacker Frank Scappaticci They were able to score twice in a row to bring it within 10. Talk a little bit about your feelings at that time. When they got back within ten, I feel like they gained the momentum back a little bit. The defense got on the field. We were playing with a lot of intensity. I feel like the linebackers moved around, caused a lot of turnovers.
They had two quick scores to bring it within ten, having not won a game this season, how did that affect you mentally? Even though our record doesn't show it, we take a lot of pride in being a mentally tough team, especially on defense. We talk about that a lot. Like if they get a turnover, you have to play your best. Today, I feel like we really stepped up and gained momentum when we could.
There were a lot of big plays, one after another. Talk about some of those. Especially for us this season, it has been a game of turnovers. Today, we won the turnover battle. We got a win. In the past it has been the other way. Football is about making big plays. If you pick up a lot of yards and you're making all of the big plays, you come away with a win.
