Sept. 17, 2016
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Vanderbilt – Georgia Tech Postgame Quotes
Sept. 17, 2016
Bobby Dodd Stadium
Head Coach Derek Mason
Opening Statement:
“I’ve got to give credit to Georgia Tech. I thought they played well in all phases. Their quarterback, Justin Thomas, did a great job of just running Georgia Tech’s offense. At one time, Georgia Tech was 6 out of 10 on third downs (8-of-15 for the game), and that’s not where we want to be. We didn’t do a good enough job of getting them off the field. We struggled actually to sustain drives after our first drive.
“We wanted to score, and needed to score, coming out of the half. We went for it on fourth down and didn’t get it. From a momentum standpoint, there was still a lot of time left in the game, but that was a shift in momentum in this ballgame. We couldn’t get them off the field, and they go down and score.
“There were just too many missed tackles, defensively. We got schemed early (referring to Tech’s first offensive play). We’ve just got to get back to work. This team is capable of playing much better. That was not our best football, and I believe this team will learn from this one. We didn’t play great ball today; Georgia Tech did a great job of doing what they do. We weren’t good enough stopping what they do, and I thought we were beaten in all three phases. We’ve got to come back and make sure we’re ready to go when we play Western Kentucky.”
On ‘getting schemed early,’ was it being off-balance from Tech’s opening offensive play?
“Yeah. That particular play had only come to the boundary, with motion; great job by them. We still had a guy in position who was responsible for that. But we had only seen it coming to the boundary, not to the field. So when you see something, and you’re ready for something, and it goes against … they self-scouted themselves. That’s what you do. When you self-scout yourself, you look at your tendencies. That was a great play-call, but we should have gotten that on the ground. We had missed tackles, and that was really the beginning of what you saw all day.
“I thought we were prepared. They executed like we thought they would. We need to execute better. It was a tough day at the office.”
On not challenging spot the after the third-down play of the second-half opening drive:
“I thought we did (make the first down), too. I thought about challenging it, but I didn’t get a replay. In not getting a replay, I didn’t want to use a timeout, knowing that we were behind and we may need those timeouts later in this ballgame. I thought we had gotten it, I thought it was far enough. But not being on the line myself, I thought he had it, but didn’t want to challenge it.
“You look at the video board, and then you go to your guys and ask, `Did you get it? Did you see it?’ They didn’t see it. They thought it was a bad spot. But they thought, they didn’t know.”
What happened to your offense after the first drive?
“Just the inability to sustain drives. I thought at times we had rhythm, and we were moving the ball. But we didn’t end any of those drives with points. One series after another, you start to lose a little confidence. That’s what has to happen with this group; look at every opportunity as a chance to score. As the game went on, we just didn’t do enough.”
Georgia Tech Head Coach Paul Johnson
Opening Statement:
“I was proud of the way our kids played. I thought we played pretty good other than the penalties. Offensively until the end, at the end it got kind of sloppy, I was frustrated with some of our down the line guys not knowing assignments and how to line up and that kind of thing, but it was good to get a lot of people out there. We played pretty much everybody that we could play. Good win, we had some big plays, we didn’t stop ourselves. We were pretty efficient offensively, and we wanted to gear up to stop the run and, I was just looking at it, we held them under 100 yards rushing, so that’s pretty good. Happy with the win, now we’ve got a quick turnaround, get ready for a really talented team coming in here on Thursday night.”
On Justin Thomas’s performance:
“I thought he played well. I had challenged him a little earlier, I told him we needed some more out of him rushing, and he had a couple of nice runs. I think he would have had a couple others if he had stayed outside he could have really (broken) when he sees on the film he’s going to be disappointed, but I thought we got contributions out of pretty much all the guys. Dedrick [Mills] got some tough yards, they were kind of committed to stopping the B-back inside, which is fine, it opens up the pitches, and we had some huge plays on the perimeter when we got the thing executed right.”
On Clinton Lynch’s performance:
“He was in the right spot at the right time a couple of times and made some plays. The one play action he caught, I told Justin [Thomas] that the guy was going to be open I thought whenever we ran, and he just wasn’t in there. Matthew threw a good ball and Clinton took it to the house. First play I thought was huge too, nice play by Marcus Marshall.”
On having a short week:“A short week is always hard; I think it’s probably easier coming off a win. We got some guys out in the fourth quarter, which helps, but anytime that you’re playing a short week; it’s hard for the kids. I don’t know if it’s fair to them if you want to know the truth.”
On building momentum for playing Clemson on Thursday:
“It’s hard to win, I think anytime you win you have to be happy, but we’ve got to come back tomorrow, and it starts all over again. You don’t carry anything over. Clemson is by far the most talented team we’ve played to this point so they’re going to come in here with a bunch of cats. We’ve got to see if we can line up and play with them. We didn’t a year ago, two years ago we did, I don’t think we’ll be afraid but we’ve got to play.”
