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Coach Johnson’s Monday Press Conference
10/17/2005
Vanderbilt head football coach Bobby Johnson addressed the media Monday in advance of this weekend’s game against South Carolina. An excerpt of Coach Johnson’s press conference can be found below.
Head Coach Bobby Johnson
(Opening Statement)
“We had a pretty tough game against Georgia. That’s an awfully good football team we had to play. I thought we did some very good things, but in the end we did not make the plays we needed to make to have a chance to upset a team like that. We dropped some balls, missed some tackles and did some things that were counterproductive to being able to knock off somebody who’s got that much talent. They’ve just got that winning attitude. Those kind of games you’re not going to go in there and just kind of steal; you’ve got to earn them.”
(On putting an end to the losing streak)
“We try to go to the next one, no matter what. Whether you won the week before or not, you’ve got to deal with what’s at hand. We’ve got to go on the road, we’ve got some people banged up a little bit. We’ve got plenty to handle without looking past South Carolina.”
(On the importance of this game in order to go to a bowl game)
“This game is really important. You look at the four teams we have left to play and there are just not a lot of opportunities where you can say ‘Oh, we’ve got this one. We’re going to go.’ We’ve got to work for it. I think everybody involved with our program knows that. It was that way with the first four games that we won. They could have gone either way. Obviously at the MTSU game it could have gone either way. And at times, during the game, there was a possibility that the LSU or Georgia game could have gone either way. That’s the world we deal in right now. You’ve got to play every play, because the situations like that just demand it if you’re going to have a chance to go to a bowl, or have a chance to win.”
(On needing two wins to become bowl-eligible)
“I want to go to a bowl. They want to go to a bowl. They can do the math. But we’re not saying let’s hope that we just win two. We want to win all four of them and you start with our next game, which is the South Carolina game. So that’s the one we’ll try to win first and that’s the only one we’ll try to worry about this week.”
(On the improved ground attack against Georgia)
“I think the coaching staff did a good job of getting a better mindset of running the football. We just didn’t abandon it. In fact we made a point of being able to run the football. It was a concerted effort to do it, not because we just want to run the football, but because it helps your passing game. It helps some of our play-action passing. It was very rewarding to see our guys run the ball against a defense that’s only giving up, I think, around 70 yards a game. I’m very pleased with that effort.”
(On what South Carolina presents)
“I think their quarterback is really going to be a good player. He’s already done extremely well, he’s hurt, and he hasn’t played the entire season. He gets the ball to the open people. Any time somebody’s going to throw the ball as much as they do — sometimes they have five wideouts, sometimes it’s four wideouts and a tailback — it just gives you a lot of concern that they’ll be able to protect him and just throw the football down the field. That, and I think they have excellent athletes. You know they qualified to go to a bowl last year and you just don’t lose everyone off your team. They’ve got some good players. We’re going to have to make sure we know what the match-ups are and try to avoid the match-ups that they want and try to get the match-ups we want.”
(On rebuilding confidence after dropped passes)
“It’s called the practice field and fundamental work. It’s pretty obvious to me if guys can make great catches, if they can catch it one time, they can catch it all the time. It’s just a matter of concentration. Everybody who’s played the game has had lapses of concentration — it happens to everybody, I think our guys can get it back. I’m not going to worry about the drops. We’re going to work on fundamentals to prevent them, but we’re not going to beat them up about it and have them thinking more about and have them worrying about what they’re supposed to be doing and how they’re supposed to be doing it.”
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