Quotes of Note: Alex Golesh reviews Florida loss, looks ahead to Vanderbilt
The Auburn Tigers are now entering Week 4 of the regular season after falling to the Florida Gators 44-39 on Saturday, dropping to 2-1 on the year and 0-1 in SEC play.
Now, the Tigers and Head Coach Alex Golesh are turning their attention towards taking on the Vanderbilt Commodores in their final game of the month of September, which will also be their final home game for the next month before LSU in the middle of October.
Golesh spoke to the media on Monday, as well as his coordinators Joel Gordon and DJ Durkin, reflecting on the loss and detailing what went wrong on Saturday night.
Here are some of his most notable quotes from the session on Monday.
On the overall synopsis of the game:
“Synopsis would be—not good enough in any way from our end, from a coaching side, not good enough for me. And then our players executing at a high level, which, again, goes back to me, and us not doing a good enough job there. So that's the synopsis there. Cleaned it up. Obviously had tough conversations yesterday as a staff. Had tough conversations this morning with our kids. Coached the living crap out of it, turned the page, moved on.”
On how surprised he was by the defensive miscues:
“I think, what really was frustrating is we've dictated the flow defensively. We take a lot of pride in dictating the flow offensively. It felt like we were on our heels at least through those first couple of drives, and then after halftime, it felt the same way. Where we could never get truly—I want to give you the truth of what it is—we never got settled. We never felt like we were able to get our cleats to the ground, communicate, adjust, and then be perfect in our fits.”
On where the team is in terms of a clear starting offensive line group:
“We just gave up seven sacks, so no, we're continuing to plug there. You want to be settled and you want to feel like you've got it, but we're continuing to work through it. We've got to be able to run it better. We've got to be able to protect better. We've got to play more in sync. So we're going to continue to—you saw we changed it up at guard. We're going to continue to work to get the best five in there.”
On slow starts for Byrum Brown:
“It's all about getting him in a rhythm. Any quarterback, but it's getting him in a rhythm, and that's been different in terms of what that is. There's times he feels better running it early and getting himself in a rhythm. There's times (where it) feels good getting quick game stuff going for him. There's times where it's been movement pass. There's times where it's been let's shoot it down the field. It truly is a comfort deal for him, and it's really honestly, it's not much different for anybody else.”
On what he was surprised by from his players in the first SEC game:
“I think what I was most surprised with, and I said this Saturday night, and you look at it, the film shows it: how emotional we were. And I'm not like crazy rah-rah higher at one point than the other. I try to stay really even keel. We were so amped. You look at, there's a handful of guys that are vet guys. You've got a ton of young guys however you want to shake it, and it's not an excuse. It's our job to get the young guys ready to rock. So amped, playing like heart-rate-going-crazy amped.”
On if Vanderbilt is a must-win game:
“I would say that they all feel like it, the next game. I don't know if I feel like that. Again, if you go back to the emotional piece that you talk about. If you look at it as a must-win, what changes? Do we prepare harder? Do we practice longer? Do we practice differently? We're in a foundational part of our program, where the process piece of it is so critical to how we do every single little thing. Saturday is the next game. This team is 2-1. The struggles prior have nothing to do with these guys. The schedule past Vanderbilt on Saturday has nothing to do with Vanderbilt on Saturday afternoon.”
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