Oct. 22, 2011
Recap | Final Stats | Notes | Russell’s Photos 
| AP Photos
Vanderbilt vs Army
October 22, 2011
Vanderbilt Stadium
Vanderbilt Head Coach James Franklin
Opening Comments:
“Obviously. this was a good win for us and we’re happy about it. We have to appreciate the wins. It’s great for the university. We’re 4-1 at home, which we’re very proud of. We were able to rush for 341 yards, which is a fairly dramatic number. It helped our defense out and kept them off the field. It helped Jordan [Rodgers] out and it takes some pressure off of him.”
On Vanderbilt’s Rushing:
“We’re getting better. We’ve been able to move our offensive line around and getting Logan [Stewart] back helped us in the second half. We’re starting to get an identity.”
On Putting Up 40 Points:
“The most important thing is to get one more point than the team you’re playing. I hope we can build confidence off of it. I’m really proud of our 4-1 home record. It’s another selling point for us. We’re able to find ways to win and in our one [home] loss, it was one of the better football games this year.”
On Vanderbilt Rebounding After Three Straight Losses:
“A lot of teams, when you lose three straight, you’re going to have a hard time bouncing back. It shows the character of our team. We’re going to keep fighting and competing.”
“We want to get better each week and find ways to get wins. We don’t spend time focusing on losing the last three. We take it one game at a time. I think the guys are aware that we’re 4-3, but my message will be consistent.”
On Vanderbilt Out-Rushing the Top Rushing Team in College Football:
“None of this surprises me. I expect us to play well. We played well on defense. Offensively, we put our defense in tough spots and made some critical mistakes. Whenever you can take the team that’s the leading rushing team in the country and out-rush them, that’s important.”
Vanderbilt Players
Jr. RB Zac Stacy
On his historic day:
“It’s always good to help the team win from a stats standpoint, but whether I have 198 or 34, as long as we get the win that’s all that counts.
On the team’s running success:
“Most of it was the offensive line. Those guys did a great job of coming out and creating seams not only for me, but also for Jordan and Seymour to run through. Coming in we knew Army was a disciplined team. They were going to try to execute and make plays on defense, but we just did a good job of coming out and making our plays.”
On Jordan Rodgers’ abilities:
“He’s done a great job these last two weeks. He brings that versatility of throwing and running the ball. He’s going to keep on getting better and we’re just going to build on that.”
Jr. QB Jordan Rodgers
On his running performance:
“It was in the game plan to call quite a few runs for me. Towards the end of the half we don’t want to force any balls, so if I wasn’t comfortable with my first couple of reads, I was going to take off and try and get some yards to keep drives moving.”
On early deep passes:
“It was great. It helps the run game when we can attack deep like that. It’s a threat to them and they have to play off a little more. They’re a physical team. You have to give them a lot of credit. They played all four quarters. The deep ball definitely helped loosen things up.”
On how the team feels after the win:
“Every win, you can’t take it for granted. Coming off of three losses it was really good to get a win here at home, and give us some momentum going into next week. Our goal is to be 1-0 each week, and we achieved that goal so we’re going to start over again this next week.”
Jr. DT Rob Lohr
On playing against the option:
“They’re really good at what they do. They do it every day of the year. We only have a week to prepare for it so we knew we were going to have a challenge, but we executed well enough to win.”
On the forced fumbles:
“That was definitely a key. When they’re doing the option it’s easier to get in there and strip it. It’s huge, especially when you can get the turnover. In the last couple games that we haven’t won, we haven’t gotten many turnovers, so it was nice to come out, force a few turnovers, and get back on track.”
On snapping the losing streak:
“It definitely bugged us having three losses in a row. We came in knowing that we had to get back on track. We knew tonight was an opportunity. We needed to execute and I feel like we did that.”
So. S Karl Butler
On moving from safety to linebacker:
“I was just doing what the coaches asked me to do. They asked me to move to linebacker. I didn’t ask any questions about it. I appreciated the coaching. They gave me a vote of confidence and it worked out tonight. I was just glad to help out the team anyway I could.”
On the difference between the positions:
“From the beginning of the week the coaches told us as safeties, that we would basically mirror the steps of the linebackers, so the only real difference was being closer to the line.”
Army Head Coach Rich Ellerson
Opening statement:
“Well, the thing that I thought Vandy did by utilizing the quarterback’s legs, his ability to run the football was a real challenge for us defensively. We start running out of guys, instances when we have too many guys down low because you think he’s going to run it and he threw it over our head. A couple times he got loose and we couldn’t, he’s a better runner than we are tacklers. He did a nice job. Offensively, we turned the ball over. That’s something in our style of play and what we are as a football team right now, that’s going to be hard to overcome.”
About Army’s play:
“I think our guys continue to play hard, we just don’t play well enough. We knew we had some physical challenges there, but we gave as good as we got there for a bit. We play hard enough, but we don’t play well enough. The things that correlate with our games are turnovers and our kicking game and the mental game in critical situations, and we make mental errors in critical situations. That’s got to be atypical for an academy team. That’s not who we are. Offensively, in this style of play, people think well, it’s a risky offense, and well, it is. But you have to have such great fundamental competence that that’s not the case. And right now it’s not happening. Some of that, give Vandy some credit, those weren’t give-aways, they were take-aways. They went and got the ball. Sometimes we left it on the ground and they were good enough to get on it. They got it out. We’re not a complete enough football team to spot some of the turnovers.”
On Geoff Bacon’s play-making:
“Geoff’s going to play a bigger and bigger role. That’s really his second game where he’s played a significant number of turns, and we think he’s going to be exciting for a long time.”
Second half adjustments:
“You rob Peter to pay Paul. You invite some, you have to take some of the deep help, the safety help, and bring it down to try to defend the quarterback’s legs and of course that leaves some of those corners a little lonelier and lonelier. You try to stunt yourself into some things, you try to give them a bad play along the way, but inevitably you’re going to have to bring your safeties down and start to cancel the quarterback’s legs that way. We had our chances. On some of those big plays, we have a good chance, if we’re right, if we can get a guy on the ground, end of the day, somebody’s got to tackle somebody.”
On effort:
“There’s no quit in them. I told them after the game, `guys, you’re playing hard enough, you’re competing hard enough. You’ve got to play well. We’ve got to coach better, we’ve got to play better, and good things will come. But first thing you’ve got to do is take that into the practice environment and practice those things that win. Kicking game wins, turnovers win, take-aways win.'”
Army Linebacker Geoffrey Bacon
On his thoughts on the game:
“There were too many mental mistakes, you know, we just made too many mistakes. We were in it for basically the whole game, but then we let the mistakes predict things. We didn’t win the turnover battle, which was one of our keys to victory. Coach E was talking to us about effort, he thought we put forth the effort tonight, but our turnovers, kicking game, and mental game, those are things we lost today. So that is where we came up short.”
On Army’s effort and the feeling on the sideline:
“That is one of those things, I am a young guy, and so it is kind of hard for me. Sometimes I just want to get down, but people like Erzinger, Combs, Shaw, they don’t let it happen. That’s a good thing. One of our chants is `stay together’ and that’s the one thing we always think about.”
On playing on the road in an SEC environment:
“We just look at it as an experience to play ball. The SEC environment is a fun environment to play in so we were looking forward to it. We were excited, and it was everything we thought it would be. We knew they were going to play hard and we knew we were going to play hard to get the W. It was what we expected. We weren’t overestimating or underestimating anything, we knew they (Vanderbilt) played football.”
On playing a passing team with a QB who can run:
“That’s just one thing we do on defense, we have to be prepared for anybody, whether they run or pass. That was one of the mental mistakes we made, letting him (Rodgers) run. We wanted to contain him and we did a bad job on that tonight.”
On half-time adjustments:
“We just focused on regrouping, saying we have to account for his (Rodgers) legs. We thought his legs were a little more dangerous than his arm, so that’s one of the things we were thinking about and talking about.”
On the 70-yard interception return:
“Personally, I don’t even know what to tell you. All the coaches were coaching me up, telling me to `be patient’ and just do my reads, that’s what I did. He just threw it up and I saw it in his eyes. It was a good feeling though, but it would have been better if we got the W, but it was a good feeling.”
