Ole Miss vs. Tennessee Postgame Quotes

Oct. 16, 2004

Final Stats | Notes

OLE MISS HEAD COACH David Cutcliffe

Opening Comments
"First of all, I would like to commend our players. I thought they played with great effort and great energy and fought hard in every phase and I think we grew as a team. We weren't perfect by any means. I also want to commend Tennessee players and team. They are a fine football team, and they did what they had to do. I think we played better defensively than we have all year. We had a hard time blocking them. This is a tough loss. We have to put it behind us. We have an open date, which comes at a good time. We need to get some healing done and we need to get better at a few things."

Do you feel like this is one that could have got away?
"I think our whole team feels that way. These are games that at recent times we have been able to win. Down the stretch we didn't make the plays that we needed to and they did. You can't make mistakes against good teams like Tennessee."

Is there a sense of feeling like a moral victory?
"If you saw the locker room, I don't think there was any sense of a moral victory. They know they played hard. They know they played a good football team. But we are trying to win football games."

On third downs conversions
"It's frustrating. At times in the first half it looked like we were going to do better on third down conversions. We weren't real good on first or second downs, but when you leave yourself in third down and long situations against a defense like that, you have trouble protecting. We had trouble executing. One situation was when we just threw the ball off a little and missed Taye (Biddle). It is always just little things. We just have to keep working. That is all I know to do."

On how Tennessee handled the three-quarterback system
"I don't think it has been used to confuse the defense as much has it has been used to boost us. Again, we are evaluating quarterbacks on a week to week basis as to how they handle practice."

On holding Tennessee's offense to a low number in the second half
"I thought we did a great job of stopping the run and putting pressure on the quarterback. Mixing things up a bit was a good plan, and I thought it was executed well by our defense."

On how Ole Miss compares to teams like Tennessee
"I think we are gaining ground physically when we are healthy. Obviously that is our goal. We are not there yet. That is our goal, is to physically be able to compete with the best of the best in the Southeastern Conference."

Ole Miss Offensive Players

Quarterback Ethan Flatt

On the Tennessee defense
"They are no doubt the best defense we've seen this year. Their front-seven is NFL-caliber. It's hard to get passes off and run the ball against that type of front-seven. We've got another good defense coming in the next game in Auburn."

On Tennessee's game-winning drive
"You have to give them credit. That was a big drive, driving down the field and scoring. They took some momentum from us and took the crowd out of it. We just weren't able to answer."

On the bye-week
"It will be good to have a week to heal up and maybe take the workload off some of these people that are banged up, and be ready to come back against Auburn.

Quarterback Robert Lane
"They were a great defense. They are the best defense we've seen. They had speed and size. You have to give them a lot of credit."

On his 21-yard run
"It involved the "Mike" linebacker. It was actually a designed quarterback draw. I followed my block. I am not sure who made the key blocks. I'll have to go back and look at the film. Our offensive line did a great job all night. I don't if I stepped out of bounds or not, it was close. We got the ball in anyway, so it didn't matter."

On playing in his second game
"I feel comfortable out there. I've been out there my whole life. I am feeling more comfortable in the offense."

Ole Miss Defensive Players

Defensive Back Bryan Brown
"The play of our defense in the second half was unbelievable. We stuck in there even though we knew we were down at halftime. The coaches told us that they knew were going to come and fight hard and as for the defense we just played hard in the second half."

On play of defensive backs
"Coach Hopson got us ready for this game. He knew we had been giving up deep balls and the told us to knock it down and be in good position. If they threw 42 deep balls, we were going to knock down at least 40."

On his interception
"Coach Driesbach put me in a great situation. I had just checked in. We came in in dime Coach Driesbach had sent me on a blitz. I saw him rolling out to the right, and he usually throws it back to the split end. I just read it, picked it off and took it to the house."

On Tennessee's last touchdown
"We were in cover three and we just misread our keys. Somebody was supposed to be in the middle of the field, but that's how things go."

Defensive Lineman McKinley Boykin
On their offensive line "I'll give them credit. They had a good offensive line. They had size, but they weren't the best that we've faced. We did pretty good against them."

On the two different quarterbacks
"Really they presented no problems. We practiced all week to prepare for them. When we faced them we were ready."

On playing Auburn next
"We are going to practice hard and get ready for Auburn. We can't wait to play them."

Tennessee Head Coach Phillip Fulmer

Opening comments
"We are very happy to get this win. Ole Miss really played hard tonight. It's important to be able to win games when you don't always play your best. Our offense was sporadic at times, but, sometimes that happens. I thought Ole Miss did a good job of mixing the punt coverages and getting off blocks. They kept us off balance all night."

On the fourth quarter
"I thought our last two drives built the character of this football team. I stepped in the huddle on the very last drive and said `we are going to run the ball.' I thought we used the clock to our favor down the stretch. We wanted to put Ole Miss in a situation where it was tough for them to win."

On QB Erik Ainge
"Erik is a tough quarterback. He's not going to let too much get him down. Ole Miss' defense made some good plays tonight. Some of the plays that went against him tonight were not his fault."

On sustaining drives
"We had a few big first downs on third-and-long tonight. That really helped us sustain some drives. We've been able to do that this year and that will continue to be important. We like to shorten the field with takeaways, but that didn't happen too often tonight."

On Ole Miss rushing the punter
"We knew Ole Miss would come after our punter with a lot of pressure, but I think they backed off a little bit once we called for the fake."

Tennessee Quarterback Eric Ainge
On the game
"We do a good job of playing 60 minutes. We really take that to heart. Sometimes it takes all 60 minutes to win the game. (Gerald) Riggs had some 3-yard runs in the first quarter that became 4-yard runs in the second quarter and 5-yard runs in the third quarter, and by the end of the game we were making good plays."

On his response to the interception return for a touchdown
"As soon as I threw the pick, Coach told me to forget about it. We do a good job of looking past the last play. We don't dwell on a good or a bad play. We just keep fighting. That has a lot to do with good coaching."

On the lack of offense after the first quarter
"It wasn't so much Ole Miss doing anything as it was us hurting ourselves. We had a couple of guys open on play action and I just missed them."

On the interception
"The coaches just told me to shake it off. We had 10 minutes or so left in the game. We had a lot of time. (On the play) it was a screen, and sometimes a player gets screened off by the line. I didn't see him (Bryan Brown) until the ball had left my hands."

Tennessee Running Back Gerald Riggs
"That was a hard fought game. We jumped out early and then we sputtered on offense. Our defense kept us in the game and we made plays at the end to take it away."

On the last drive
"Our offensive linemen were ready to go. We said we were going to dominate the game and take it over. Our offensive line did that and it was very easy to find the holes."

On Ole Miss' defense
"They weren't really doing a whole lot. They changed a few things up. They noticed what we were doing and made some changes to stop things. We found other places to make plays. That happens sometimes. Our maturity kicked in and we kept fighting then took over."

Tennessee Defensive End Parys Haralson
"Our defense came and played hard. We knew Ole Miss had a great offensive line and had skill players that could make plays for them. We knew we had to come out and try to stop them."

On playing back home in Mississippi "It was nice. I played with a lot of those guys out there in high school or played against some of them. There was a lot of emotion. It was great as a whole."

Tennessee Defensive Back Brandon Johnson
On the interception to seal the game
"Coach Chavis told me when we played a cover-two, not to get so wide. I didn't go out as wide and broke on the ball. The defensive line got a good pass rush and he just threw that thing up there."

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OLE MISS HEAD COACH David Cutcliffe

Ole Miss Offensive Players

Tennessee Head Coach Phillip Fulmer

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