Three turnovers and a number of other factors were present in the first true road test for the Auburn Tigers, as Alex Golesh’s squad fell 24-14 to the Tennessee Volunteers in Neyland Stadium on Saturday night.
After the game, Auburn Head Coach Alex Golesh spoke to the media to detail some of the things that happened in the game. Here are some of his most notable quotes from the session on the loss.
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On the lack of offensive rhythm:
“Obviously, offensively, we had a bunch of false starts. We didn't handle the crowd noise well enough in the first half. I felt like we had a good plan; we obviously didn't execute it, therefore it was a bad plan. And that's my fault. With the false starts, hard to get in rhythm. We picked up some first downs but couldn't get in a real rhythm to be able to efficiently move it. And then kind of flipped the script in the second half—we gave up the drive for a touchdown. And then we played possession football, then we punted down, they're backed up. We had two penalties for 30 yards that got the drive started. We just couldn't ever dig out of it.”
On the decision to toss the ball out on fourth-and-1:
“We've got a couple years of running it inside, running it off tackle the other way. The thought is, the pictures they had shown, they would chase it off the backside edge. We thought we could go hat for hat with Sig and then put Cobb in space. It sucked being on the left hash and being tucked up against the sideline. That was the thought process there.”
On what George McIntyre did different than Faizon Brandon:
“He was as efficient as you can imagine. I think at one point he was 6-6. I thought he operated well. We forced a ton of pressure in the first half. In the second half I felt like when they got big and started running it, even on the passing situations. It started with the 2-minute drive and then he took a couple of shots. We just didn’t get any pressure. They max protected and did a really good job of protecting him. We certainly didn’t affect him in any way. That was a big piece of them being efficient.”
On what was different in the second half offensively:
“It felt like there was a rhythm. It felt like we got tempo going were able to efficiently run it. Stayed ahead of the chains, at least off the top of my head, two third-and-six pluses in that whole second half if I remember right, maybe three. Where in the first half there was quite a few, and all of that was because you were first-and-15, literally six times.”
On the missed tackles, especially in the second half:
In the first half I thought the defense very much was in the right spot. There was six negatives or eight negatives. Eight negatives in the first half, affected the quarterback, had the turnovers. I certainly thought it was a strength. I thought when MacIntyre came in and they got big, between the missed tackles and lack of push up front, it just felt like, man, it was the run game. Like we couldn't get ahead of it. And then there was a couple third-and-shorts. There was a fourth-and-short.
Auburn Undercover is an independent Auburn sports media company covering Auburn athletics, recruiting and insider news.
