Tulane vs. FIU: Postgame Quotes
Aug 29, 2019 | Football
TULANE FOOTBALL POSTGAME QUOTES
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Head Coach Willie Fritz
On the team's play in general…
"It was a good front. We had a pretty good defensive line, and we made sure to crowd the box. We got the ball out there in the front area. We are improving, and we are going to improve our blocking and a couple times they blew the stuff out there. I thought there was a really good job calling the plays on the offensive coaches' part. We are in sync, and that is good for all of us to get this game built and see where we really are in the game."
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On the win…
"As I said before, I think we have a good squad. I think about our guys that went down there to play a couple of years ago, and we have some different guys playing for us now. We have some good football players. We are bigger on the offensive and defensive lines. And they [FIU] probably did not know exactly what we were going to do either. We were not exactly sure what they were going to do, but they did do what we anticipated for the most part. I am sure there was a little indecisive on their part about what we were going to do offensively."
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On Justin McMillan's offense…
"It worked out great. Justin fought through a lot of his adversity. His grandfather passed away last night getting ready to come to the game. He handled that as well as he could. The guys rallied around him, and we played an excellent football game. I want to extend our well wishes to the McMillan family going through this tough time right now."
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On the fumble and turnover in the first half…
"That was big. Â We were on our way to score, and they do have a tight offense. They felt like they could cut it and get another touchdown, but we were able to get that takeaway with keeping the stable on the quarterback and going to score right before half. I think that was a pretty big letdown for them."
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Senior WR Darnell Mooney
On the win…
"We had the confidence through fall camp and knowing what we were capable of. It was good to go against somebody else other than our own team."
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Redshirt Senior QB Justin McMillan
On the win…
"Coach (Will) Hall and Coach Cody (Kennedy) have spent endless hours in the film room getting us prepared. The whole offensive staff and coaching staff came together to make the best game plan that we can use. We feel comfortable with it."
On his grandfather passing…
"I would say this game is probably with ease one of the most important games of my life. A bad situation happened. He was on his way to the game. My family and I talked about it, and you can't take it back. It's the way of life. God bless his soul. I played this game for him."
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Junior DE Patrick Johnson
On being a confident preseason team…
"I honestly feel like it showed tonight. We got the offense out there scoring a bunch of points and started switching up the offense for them to have to throw a lot more. I feel like that's where we really get after the quarterback and our defense really strives. I really have to give props to the offense. They did an amazing job tonight."
FIU FOOTBALL POSTGAME QUOTESÂ
Head Coach Butch Davis
On the game…Â
"Attribute it obviously to Tulane, they played really well. We played poorly in all three phases. It starts with me as head coach. I thought we had a really good camp, but tonight we didn't perform in all three phases. We got beat really bad in the special teams. That part didn't come out very good. We gave up bad field position. We struggled on third down conversions. They put on a lot of pressure and had some good defensive linemen that can put pressure on a quarterback. If you can't convert on third downs, it's hard to sustain a drive. We did a terrible job stopping the run. We got beat, as I mentioned, in all three phases."Â
On what is fixable from tonight…Â
"There better be a lot of it. Western Kentucky is right around the corner. We've got to learn from what went on tonight. I'm very anxious to see exactly where the breakdowns were, where the things went wrong. The protection part of it, how we didn't keep the quarterback a little bit cleaner. James (Morgan) was scrambling, extending plays, forced into trying to throw some throws that we really don't like from him. But he was trying to make some plays to score the game."Â
On not having a preseason…Â
"I mean it's the same every year. We try to have two really, really good scrimmages with our ones against our ones. We treat those as if they were preseason games and get good competition, but still its totally different. We're always worried about how much tackling should you do in preseason because you look in the NFL and everyday there is somebody who is out for the rest of the year because they blew an ACL, or they blew out a shoulder. It's difficult. You don't have enough depth and enough players that we can afford to have four, five, six guys get hurt during training camp and then you're playing with backups and third-team players tonight.Â
On the message to the team tomorrow…Â
"I tell them you've got to go to work tomorrow and look over the film. We've got to learn from the mistakes that we made tonight. We've got to minimize those. All that stuff was self-inflicted. The penalties were bad. The turnovers were bad. If you lose in certain areas of the game, you're statistically going to lose the game and we did tonight."
