Postgame Quotes - Ole Miss

Oct. 14, 2017

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Vanderbilt – Ole Miss Postgame Quotes
Oct. 14, 2017
Vaught-Hemingway Stadium

Vanderbilt Head Coach Derek Mason

Opening statement:
“Credit to Ole Miss and Coach Luke for winning this ball game. We gave them mistakes, just way too many mistakes and that starts with me. As a head coach, I’m responsible for the football. I believe that in football right now, we are not up to par. Again, I don’t throw it out there for anybody else but myself. I always start with me and I’ve always been that guy and I’m going to continue to be that guy. I looked at our first drive and that missed field goal was something that I think, for us, getting off the field defensively, you know we miss a field goal and it’s just lost momentum. We sort of regained momentum with two touchdowns and then we lose it again in the second quarter. You look at the first downs given up in that second quarter and 28 points. Just playing football in spurts and not consistently and that’s tough. It’s tough to watch and it’s tough to sit through. You see us score before half and the get to the third quarter and say to yourselves ‘Ok, we’ve got a chance, all we have to do is get ourselves back into this. It’s a two-score game, let’s figure this thing out.’ We go out and we wind up giving them a safety, and then right afterwards giving them a touchdown. Again, it’s disappointing. I’ll always, again, step out in front of this and say when it’s bad it’s on me; when it’s good it’s on them. And right now it’s not good enough.

I will say Ralph Webb soldiered up today and I thought he played a heck of a ballgame. I thought Kyle Shurmur played hard. Granted, I thought he was a little sluggish in the pocket early, but once he got started I thought he was good. We couldn’t keep him upright. All the way around I just think it needs to be better. I saw some signs of life in the run game, but defensively we’re not stopping the run now and a lot of it has to do with the linemen. We have some linemen issues, but I looked at the linemen and the tackling has to better all the way around. Again, it comes back to me as a defensive play caller.

It’s been a tough stretch, and what we’re going to do is we are going to get back to campus. We will get our guys rested and we will make sure we take the bye week and do exactly what needs to be done to fix this slide. Right now we’re 3-4 with five games left. Right now this football team is capable of doing exactly what it needs to do and exactly what it wants to do. We have to set our mind to it, because right now we’re just not straining, playing hard or consistently enough. There’s just too many guys that are hit and miss at times. Again, I take full responsibility for that. We’ll just keep it moving.

I think the team’s confidence right now has definitely taken a shot. Anytime your confidence takes a shot, that’s what the football looks like. We just have got to be better. I’m not unconfident about where we are at. There’s just too much football left to be played. Things have to be fixed. I think I got the right guys in the locker room, and I got the right coaches. We just have to fix the alternative.”

On the busted coverage and a touchdown early:
“It was busted coverage. He saw the wrong signal, he comes out of coverage, you don’t want to come down and you know, a young guy mistake. When guys don’t play a ton they’re not used to seeing those signals from the sideline. He thought it was one signal, but it was another. That’s what happened. That leads to six points.”

On if he felt like the team was in the right place going into this game:
“I thought our guys had a great week of practice. Again, it’s about how you respond. When tough things happen early. I felt like this happened to us early, and our guys responded early. And then another wave came. Where we needed to respond and we didn’t. Again, that’s where games can get away from you. I just think right now it’s always a fragile thing. Confidence is fragile. And I think you got to do what you got to do now to get these guys back to understanding that there is no magic call, no magic play, no magic pass, no magic throw. It’s just about us playing good fundamental football. It’s not looking on Saturdays what it’s looking like during the week. I’ll tell you, it was a good week of practice. Everything we did in the first half I thought for the most part led to that. We did some good things early, but again, the psyche is a fragile thing.”

On cutting practices short this past week:
“I don’t think it was a mistake at all. That had nothing to do with it. It had nothing to do with what was going on here. I thought our guys started out fresh. Our guys went at it, our guys played hard. We saw some good things. The offense until the end really kept competing. We just didn’t stay on the field enough. Besides the fatigue I think we were more mental than physical. I’m not going to excuse it to getting these guys off their feet and getting them ready for this ballgame. I thought these guys were healthy and ready to go.”

Vanderbilt S LaDarius Wiley
On having the lead at 14-7:
“You know just a team that became too relaxed. We have to keep going, just letting fundamentals carry us throughout the game. I felt like we let the little things go like leverage, eye control or tackling. We just have to do better overall with those little things.”

On if busted coverages are a concern:
“It is a concern, but we know what we have to do, we know that it’s all on us as a defense. Calls are going be made, but you know the players make the calls come alive and I think as a group we just have to work on those little things as far as staying on top as DBs or as far as leverage when we’re tackling or eye control things of that nature.”

On the statement that this team is better than last year’s team:
“Yes, yes most definitely. I feel like we are a very talented team and I feel like we need to do some self-checking and I feel like this bye week will help us out. Practice habits need to be better and that’ll carry us through game day.”

Vanderbilt RB Ralph Webb

On his best game of the year:
“It wasn’t good enough. We have to be better on all levelsâ€â€offense, defense, special teams. We have to score more points and we have to get a win.”

On if the loss surprised him:
“No, I thought we had a great week of practice. We just didn’t execute enough today. We kept the defense out there too much. As an offense we have to score more points, defense has to get us more stops. So as a collective unit we weren’t good today.”

On how to keep the confidence after four losses:
“That falls on us leaders on the team we have to instill that in the guys. We have to make sure we keep them up and keep that focus on this bye week. We have to make sure we bounce back.”

On why he found more success personally in this game:
“I just really want to win. Just going out there doing my job, doing what I’m supposed to do. I’m supposed to run the ball well. I’m the running back, so just make sure we go out there and get the win at the end of the day.”

On what practices might look like moving forward:
“Competition only makes us better. It starts at practice were not going to be able to compete on Saturdays if we can’t compete with each other Monday through Friday. We just have to go out there and be better and need to have better execution and score more points.”