Head Coach Doug Marrone Press Conference Transcript
October 31, 2009
Carrier Dome – Syracuse, N.Y.
Opening Statement:
“Obviously, another disappointing loss. Starting the game, I thought we did a nice job defensively. We had them stopped and came off our man coverage and they wound up making a play, a credit to them and their athletes on the field in making a play go 80 yards. We held them to a field goal attempt. They had a botched snap and made a play in the end zone for a touchdown. We drove the ball down the field and did a nice play action in the red zone and scored.
“(We had) A lot of opportunities during the game. We went down in the red zone and turned the ball over twice. At the end of the day, we’re not a good enough football team to not execute at a very high level and stay in a game or be able to win a game against the No. 5 team in the country. We still have a lot of work to do as far as our procedures and not giving up turnovers, whether it’s on the ground or an interception, or whether it’s procedures as far as holding or jumping offside. Those are the things we need to correct. The only way to correct those things is repetitions, keeping the players focused, and putting a lot of pressure on the players during practice. When we start correcting those things, that’s when you’ll see a better product on the field and that’s when you’ll see the wins start coming. Until then, it’s going to be very hard for our football team to win.”
On how much of the loss is a coaching issue:
“I’m a big stat guy and I keep a lot of track of the plays we run during practice and the amount of penalties we have. I keep stats on everything. It’s a good question of how much of that is on coaching, I’ll take it. It’s on me. I have to do a better job. Maybe in the five or 10 minutes that we spend on ball security, or the 40 minutes a day we spend talking about ball security isn’t enough. I’ll re-evaluate it tomorrow. I have to do a better job of putting our players in a better position where they can hold onto the ball.”
On what it means to have ball security in the red zone:
“You have to keep hammering it home and coaching it. I would say that without a doubt, we never take that for granted, but those are things we have to do. You could sit here and say we told them to hold onto the ball, but what are we doing to try to do that? We’re telling them to make this decision. What are we doing to make him do that? You just practice repetitions. It’s something I said earlier that if we keep things very simple, I don’t feel comfortable going into a game by backing off of our plan. I believe in my heart that we have enough stuff in our plan to win. We scaled back quite a bit from the first game of the year of what we were doing offensively in our package, so that’s been looked at. That’s another option we can do. We can say, ‘Hey, here we go, this is it. We’re going to run these six plays in this situation, and these four plays in that situation.’ Then that’s it. If something happens or changes on us, then we’re in trouble. I feel it’s my responsibility as a coach to make sure the players always have a chance to win. To answer that question, we’ll just keep talking about elbow in, where the ball is, catching it with your hands away from your body, and just keep hammering it home.”
On how frustrating it is to see the missed opportunities on offense with how well the defense plays:
“Frustrating is a good word. It’s not just me; I think the players get frustrated also. I think we all do, I think our fans do. When we look at the scheme and we stop a play and all of the sudden, someone makes a play. We’ll talk to our football team about finishing the play. I give the other team credit. It’s hard to run around and get someone open to make a big play. You have to have great vision. You have to keep the play going. They extended the play well, we didn’t finish the play. On offense, it’s the same situation; we have to make those plays. We made a play – we had a nice play action for the touchdown being wide open in the end zone. We had a couple plays with guys open down the field, but we had pressure so we had to dump it down to one of our backs our in the flat, immediate routes rather than take the shot down the field. We just have to keep working with the players and getting them to a point where we start executing those plays. Once we start executing, that’s when we’ll start winning. That’s what I told the players.
On Cincinnati’s broken field goal play:
“I was trying to get a call. I umpired when I was a little kid with balls and strikes in Little League and that’s a job I would never want. The officials have the hardest job. I think the BIG EAST has the best officials. They do a great job. They communicate well; they’re great on the sideline. I tip my hats off to them because that’s a hard job.”
On whether he thought Cincinnati had a lineman down the field on the broken field goal play:
“I don’t know. (smiling) I don’t get paid to think, I just get paid to make great decisions.”
On the crowd’s reaction to graduate student quarterback Greg Paulus:
“I didn’t even hear it.”
On Paulus’ interception in the end zone:
“There are two things. I’m sure that when a player makes the decision to throw the football, he makes the decision to throw the ball for a touchdown. It’s very easy that if that player makes that throw for a touchdown, I’d be the first one on the field hugging him. Everyone in the stands would be excited. When a player makes the decision to throw the ball into a tight coverage and it gets intercepted, right away we say, ‘Throw the ball away.’ You’re talking about things that happen in a split second (snapping his finger), so I support the player and his decision.”
On Cincinnati’s quarterback Ryan Collaros:
“It was a nice job by him. He’s a young quarterback. I think he did a very nice job. I think he’s a very strong runner. We all saw the play when he ran for 70 yards against South Florida. He’s elusive and a powerful runner. He can make good throws. At times I thought we did a nice job from a coverage standpoint. We switched up the coverage quite a bit today. He did a nice job with that.”
On whether Paulus is still the starting quarterback:
“Yes.”
On why he decided to punt the ball away on multiple fourth-downs:
“I’m big on percentage in the field position. The initial one I didn’t go with and we punted and put it down to the nine. We stopped them in three plays, had good field position, and I believe we fumbled the ball after that. On the second one, we were on the 34-yard line and it was fourth-down and I felt good about the play call (to go for it). I thought they were going to pressure us. I had a better feel of what they did to us before on the third-downs. Again, at the end of the day, if we punt it in the end zone, it’s 14-yard net by us. The calculations in my mind make it a good opportunity for us to go for it on fourth-down and we got it.”
On whether the fans reaction affects the players:
“I really don’t know. Even when I was a player, I had no idea what’s going on outside the game on the field. I know this, I do appreciate all our fans. I know there are times during this game where our fans made a big impact. They (Cincinnati) jumped offsides, I was having a hard time hearing our defensive coaches on the phone when our defense was on the field. I love the fans and what they do. I know that we as a football program need these fans. We’re not going to be a successful program unless they feel they are a part of this team because they are. It’s important when people watch games like this on T.V. that they know we have the support of our community and our school. I think it’s important when we get to the last game, when we play Rutgers at home. I think it’s important because these seniors have been through a lot and they’ll be successful in life.”
