Head Coach Doug Marrone Maine Postgame Quotes
Head Coach Doug Marrone
Syracuse 38, Maine 14
September 18, 2010
Syracuse, N.Y. – Carrier Dome
“We’re excited to open up with a victory. In the last 10 years, Syracuse has only been 2-1 twice, in 2003 and 2004, and we’ve only won one home opener in the last eight years, so our objective was to go out there and win. Are there things to clean up? Absolutely. Did the quarterback (Ryan Nassib) play extremely well? Absolutely, he threw five touchdown passes. I’m extremely proud of this team. We fought through some things early on. It isn’t the here we go again type attitude, we fought through it. Maine did a nice job, they made some plays.
“The one thing that bothers me in tonight’s game is the penalties. We were 84th in the country going into tonight’s game, I can’t give you an exact total, somewhere around 64 yards penalized per game going into this week, but that is something we addressed during the week. We had a couple of false starts, most of them occurring in the fourth quarter, but we had too many (penalties) today and we’re not that type of football team. We’re a disciplined football team that knows how to play this game. That is what I’d say I’m disappointed in with this game, but I’m happy for the players. We haven’t won a lot of football games here and you have to enjoy the win. We’ll get to work tomorrow, work on the mistakes and enjoy the good things.”
On what he was thinking when Maine had a 14-play drive in the first quarter:
“I am definitely not the here we go again type. I look at things differently. I thought it was a great opportunity to see what we were made of. That was honestly how I looked at it. For me I saw the situation as a great chance to see what we’re made of and see how our players respond because there are probably some people out there saying here we go again. I know I wasn’t one of them and I don’t think our players were.”
On what he attributes the slow start to:
“I don’t know. We don’t prepare them for a slow start. Offensively, (we had) dropped balls, right off the bat two dropped balls. I was disappointed the way we came out offensively, I didn’t think we looked like we were ready to take that field and that is not how we’ve been in the past two games. Again, hats off to Maine, they did a nice job and we didn’t make the plays we should have made in those situations.”
On why the passing game was able to click in the second half:
“Maine did a nice job against the run. They had a lot of people down there and were playing inverted weak safety which takes away your weak side running game. They were coming to the strong side and bringing down the strong safety so they had some three-deep coverage and a little two trap. Basically we were looking at the three set game to the flat to the field we were looking at. Then we were looking at Provo, our tight end, versus cover three, we hit a couple of big snaps and double moves on that side and the pump-and-go worked well. Again, Maine has a good defense, our quarterback read plays and we were at the right place at the right time.”
On quarterback Ryan Nassib setting a single-game record with five touchdowns:
“I’m happy for Ryan. I’m not one of those guys who tries to compare our players now to our former players. We’ve had so many great players here and people don’t realize Ryan has only played three football games here at Syracuse. But I said it from the beginning, I love this quarterback. I think he is someone special. I know he is to us as a football program and I think we’re seeing a guy who could do a lot of great things here within a school that has had a lot of good quarterbacks. He is only going to get better. You’ve seen that from week-to-week. He made some outstanding throws today and we look forward to him getting better as the season goes on.”
On how concerned he is about the penalties:
“I was concerned about that going into the game, we were 84th in the country. I was concerned about that and in the last two games we were averaging two turnovers a game, if you look at the statistical chart you have a 16 percent chance of winning, that isn’t good. Today we didn’t turn the ball over. We dropped the ball in the punt return. We put Steven Rene in there. We were able to play a lot of freshmen today and I was happy to get them in there. The penalties, what do I assess them to? Lack of focus.”
On where this game ranks in his coaching career as far as penalties:
“I don’t know. I’ve been in games where we’ve gotten our hands outside our body and we’ve made some poor decisions. Every coach has had it but I don’t expect that out of our football team. We haven’t had that problem here.”
On whether he considered kicking a field goal in the first half:
“No, not at all. I knew we were going to go for a touchdown. I didn’t think three points would be worth anything. If you go back and look at strategic planning for the game with the amount of time and opportunities they had, I could go on and on for why I didn’t do it but I had no thoughts of going for a field goal there. I thought about going for a touchdown the whole way.”
On whether there were coaching adjustments or just an attitude adjustment in the second half:
“I’m not the type of guy to sit here and think about whether we out-coached this or out-coached that. Maine did a nice job. They were inverting on the weak side, they were inverting the strong safety. We have good plays against that coverage, we call those plays and we happen to get them in that coverage and we win. We call some plays, didn’t get the coverage and those plays didn’t work well for us. I don’t want to get into it, we’re good coaches, they’re good coaches, it is a strategic game and players have to make plays. That is exactly what happened, our quarterback made plays.”
On what he said to the team at halftime:
“I told them we’re winning a football game, we have the momentum on our side and we need to take this first drive, go down the field and score. We need to play and not worry about what happens if they do this or that, let’s just go out and play. That is what I saw a little when the young kids came out at the end of the game. They just went out and played. I’m a firm believer in when you coach football players, and I’ve talked to the coaches about this, you give them tips here and there and you tell them where to line up on defense and you just let them go play. If they start thinking about what the other team is going to do you take a lot away from a player and that isn’t the way football is. The game of football is high performance and you react on defense.”
On tight end Nick Provo in the second half:
“We had a little plan for him. He hasn’t gotten off to the start we wanted or that he has wanted. We wanted to make sure we had stuff locked in for him to be able to get him the football and he did.”
On what he takes from back-to-back FCS opponents:
“The only difference with me is I don’t label our opponents. I don’t label them BCS, FCS, top-25, they’re a faceless opponent. We play good, well-coached football teams and we have to go out and perform well every week. My goal is to get this team better every week as we go.”
