Buffalo Head Coach Turner Gill Quotes
Syracuse vs. Buffalo
October 20, 2007
Carrier Dome- Syracuse, NY
Buffalo Head Coach Turner Gill
On his team overall:
“I’m proud of my guys. The guys competed throughout the football game, unfortunately we came up short. I give a lot of credit to Syracuse, they came and shut us down on offense. They made plays when they had to make them, but our kids will bounce back.
On not playing as well as his team has lately:
“It’s uncharacteristic of us. We didn’t play well enough to execute the plays that we would normally execute. We’ll correct the things we weren’t able to do this game and be able to do it next game, but yeah, a lot of it was self-inflicted as far as us being able to move the ball on offense.”
On the team having a shift of attitude towards this game:
“It was legit. As long as I’ve been a coach somewhere every football game we play we have a legitimate chance of winning the football game. That’s the way I coach our players, that’s the way I coach our coaching staff. Whether we’re playing Syracuse or Penn State or whoever it is, we go into a football game always thinking we have a chance to win that football game, so we’re teaching that to our players to go in there and compete. If they don’t want to compete, that’s going to make it very difficult for us, but I think a lot of our players have been competing in every football game, and things are going to happen for us in a positive way as long as they continue to compete, and we’ll get the execution things corrected as we go along.”
On whether he thought this would be a moral victory:
“No, no whatsoever. I’m a competitor…I play to win, coach to win, and it doesn’t feel very good right now. That’s the way it goes…I understand you’re not going to win every single football game, but we’ll get those things corrected.
On whether the team was more excited coming into this football game:
“We’ve been having a good attitude well throughout this football season. We just came back after two wins in a row at home which was really good. The guys showed that they can win football games, and we did win football games. They’re feeling more confident, and they should even feel more confident after this football game, so we’ll get back into our conference games and do our best.”
On not kicking an on-side kick:
“I felt with four minutes left in the football game I’d have a chance to stop them and get the ball back with possibly no time-outs and two minutes left in the game.”
On the number of penalties his team received:
“Today the guys just got a little bit aggressive. I talked to them about being aggressive, and they maybe took it to another length and didn’t get control of it. You got to play with aggression, but you have to have control of it. We’ll get those things corrected, but I like our guys playing aggressive, and I don’t want them to back down to anybody.”
On personal foul penalties:
“As far as guys maybe pushing somebody, protecting their quarterback, doing those kinds of things…I look at it from that standpoint. We’re talking about playing smart…be aggressive, but you got to play smart, and we will.”
On the rest of the season:
“It’s a four game season…that’s what it is for us. We’re going to play Akron, that’s what I told them…it’s a four game season, and we’ll get ready for it. We have to put this game behind us, learn from it, but learn from the mistakes and go from there.”
On Syracuse rushing the pass:
“I got to give them credit. They decided not to really rush the pass…dropped eight, rushed three. Pretty much when we got to the plus 25 yard line in the windows to throw were a little bit smaller…we got to make those kind of throws and run the football. They didn’t really come after us or blitz us at all.”
On whether this game is a measuring stick for his team:
“We still got our work cut out for us. We still have a lot of things that we got to get corrected and get better at…all those things. I think the thing we’ve improved the most at since I’ve been here from day one is really that our guys have learned how to compete. They understand how to compete in every single play…that’s what we talk about. We show them how and why you do that. They pay the price here and understand that we can get it done.”
