Head Coach Greg Robinson Post Game Transcript
Syracuse vs. Penn State
September 13, 2008
Carrier Dome - Syracuse, N.Y.
On fumble on opening drive and how affected the game:
“Well it’s a lateral. The ball is behind the line and behind Cameron (Dantley). I hate to go into great detail because I have to look at the film, and see what it looks like. I might say it was a pass that turned into a lateral. I don’t think it had much effect on the team. It happens. It was a turnover. You have to respond and get another turnover. We could have gone out there and scored and responded. But we didn’t. There were 57 minutes left in the game and it was 0-0 when the fumble occurred. Now you have to see if you can stop them.”
On (running back) Delone Carter’s injury:
“He pulled a hamstring and to what degree I do not know. But obviously he did not go back into the game. We’ll have to take that day-by-day. He popped it right as he was turning the corner.”
On Penn State’s offensive strategy:
“They came out in no back, which they’ve done before. The way that they were set up was totally different and we have some players who really were not recognizing what was going on. They did a number of things, motion, and other things. We had to get the group off the field and kind of coach them up. Once we got that settled, we had a little better feel for things.”
On if Penn State was picking on sophomore cornerback Mike Holmes:
“I think that Mike (Holmes) is a good player. He was in blitz coverage where he was inside leverage on the touchdown pass in the far corner. It looks like you’re blitzing, and you have nobody in the middle, you have to decide how you want to take the player. Do you want to play inside and try to play for the fade or try to give him the whole field? So he played the inside leverage, which I think is the right thing to do. You just have to play your best to get him into the fade, but the person has got to get there, and in that case he didn’t. It was a good quick throw. Mike is a good football player and I thought he defended a couple of other things. A couple of other time he was in zone coverage, in the fade that they threw early up the sidelines. He just lost the ball. He has to get his head back and find the football. I think that was Pat Devlin that zipped it in there quickly and the timing caught him.”
On the play of the secondary:
“Nico (Scott) couldn’t go. He went out there and tried. It was obvious in the first few plays that he wasn’t going to be right. We had Dorian (Graham) and Da’Mon (Merkerson). We were going to play both those guys, and they both played at times. The silver lining is those two young players get some work and then we get Nico back and all of a sudden, you are a deeper team.”
You don’t seem as upset about this loss as you did after the loss to Akron last week:
“I don’t know about that. This loss was more about continuing to play and seeing what we could get going. It was going to be hard to get back and catch them. It was more about seeing if we could get better, work on some things and develop some of these guys. It was just about playing the game and gaining something from it. But it was a loss and I cannot tell you I feel any better.”
On receivers play and dropped passes:
“I get frustrated. You know that those guys are trying to catch the ball, like any other receiver. They caught some balls, too. They had a couple of real nice catches. But all-in-all you want those balls caught. Sometimes when Cam (Dantley) is under duress, he’ll throw the heater. He has a great arm. He’s a 95 mile an hour guy.”
On Penn State’s timeouts at the end of the first half:
“They have to do what they have to do. We have to operate the way we operate.”
On quarterback situation:
“Yeah I’ll look at it. We’ll go from what I see.”
