Head Coach Doug Marrone Post-game Quotes
Syracuse Football
Syracuse vs. Rutgers
October 1, 2011
Carrier Dome, Syracuse, N.Y.
Syracuse Head Coach Doug Marrone
Opening Statement:
“Obviously we’re disappointed in the loss. I think it’s very difficult to win football games when you have five turnovers, and a field goal gets blocked and a PAT gets blocked. Those things happen, and we lost that game because of those errors, and we weren’t able to capitalize at times. We had our chance. With things that we worked on, we had chances to make plays, and I’m talking more offensively and special teams.
“I thought, defensively, they were able to get to the quarterback. They did some nice things out there. We had a mistake at the end of the game to let him open to run the touchdown, and they ended up scoring. We didn’t take advantage of our opportunities, and we’re not good enough not to do that. I think we all have something to take from this. I wish I had the call back where we went for the block (punt) and ended up with the rough. I could help them out a little bit more on that call. But other than that we just have to execute when we have to.
“We lost a football game, and they’re a good football team. I told our kids that they played hard, they didn’t execute well. We have to hold our head up even though we’re upset and disappointed in ourselves. When you lose football games, you have to come back and practice extremely hard and get ready to get back on the right path after we make the corrections.”
On the offense committing five turnovers:
“Turnovers are the number one way to lose a football game. When we are plus one, we win about 80 percent of the time, when we are plus two we are 100 percent. When we are even, we are 50 percent, and when we go below that we are 17 percent. But I think you can say that about most teams. We are not good enough to overcome those turnovers and we had five which is unacceptable. It is actually more than five because we had the blocked PAT and a blocked field goal. When you have the ability to score points and you don’t execute it is like a turnover.”
On the defense:
“I was proud of them. I had some concerns this week, which is why I closed practice. Last Sunday, the first thing I received from the training room was the news that three of our corners have casts on their hands. Everyone knows we are playing man-to-man and I was concerned that it would be reported that they had casts on their hands, and then all of a sudden Rutgers adds more go-routes.
“In the second half they did a nice job with the go-routes. We were in position to pick a couple of them off. (sophomore cornerback) Keon Lyn was in position to pick that ball off if he didn’t have a cast on his hand. He was in great position, but he just couldn’t make the interception because of the cast. I was trying to protect those players specifically.
“Obviously (sophomore running back) Prince Tyson Gulley has a collar bone injury that we found out about this week. It was a bad injury that he had to get operated on. (Senior quarterback) Ryan Nassib’s hand was bothering him. (Redshirt senior wide receiver) Nick Provo had a shoulder injury. We even got some players back this week that I was excited about and they re-injured themselves.
“(Senior strong safety) Olando Fisher came back this week. He is our starting nickel and I thought we were going to have him out there but he couldn’t go. Those were the things that we going on and I tried to keep that away from the players so they could concentrate. I would never block out the media, but now that the corners have been seen with casts it is known. But that is what was going on and I was more than happy to tell anyone that off the record.”
On if he had an opinion about the review of (senior running back) Antwon Bailey’s fumble on the last play of the game:
“I didn’t. Upstairs it is people looking at it with camera angles, so it is not the same. The thing that I have always been for, personally, is that the official on the field should handle it, because it is his game. Like in the NFL, the referee should handle everything on the field. I don’t have a feeling either way on that, but it is our fault for letting the game get that close.”
About the turnovers in Rutgers’ territory:
“We are human. We are not robots out there. When we get good field position and run a slant that gets tipped and intercepted, it is frustrating when the guys come over to the sideline and you show disappointment on your face but you have to tell the guys to keeping pushing through. Everyone knows what is going on. The two plays that are tough are the tip for an interception and the interception where they played man pressure on us and dropped the defensive end, which was a good call by Coach Greg Schiano. They played Okie defense and dropped the man which caused the interception, so those two plays are difficult to put on anyone, but the other ones, we have to do a better job.”
On (freshman linebacker) Dyshawn Davis and (senior linebacker) Dan Vaughn:
“I thought they did a real good job. They had a lot of pressure on the quarterback, they forced errant throws. We had a chance to get even more turnovers on our side but we missed a couple of those opportunities. But we are triggering a whole lot faster than we ever have before and that is a good sign and we have to continue to get better each week as the season goes on.
“We are a 3-2 football team right now and we are getting ready to go on the road for a difficult football game because it is a long distance away. We will make the corrections and we want to be 4-2 before our break, and that is the best we can be. We will then take the bye week and take a good look at ourselves and where we are and where we need to go, and then get ready to play the second half of the season.”
On how much (senior quarterback) Ryan Nassib’s interception at the goal line and (junior cornerback) Phillip Thomas’ near interception change the momentum:
“I don’t know if I can say that that was the point. I think everyone else might have a better feel for that because you’re in every call and it’s going back and forth. I think all those things come into play with momentum.
“Phillip makes a good play, breaks well on a ball. That’s something that we did better in this game than we have done before. We broke on a couple of balls, and Coach (Scott) Shafer’s always telling us the players that have to do a better job on that.
“When we went down there on the five-yard line, there are so many things that go through your mind. On third-and-short we wanted to take a shot. We had (senior wide receiver) Van Chew early in the game, and we missed that shot; we overthrew it. Then we ran the wheel with Antwon (Bailey) and we didn’t take advantage of that. Then we hit one in Foster’s body to body him up on the slant, and we didn’t take advantage of that. At the end of the day, we just didn’t take advantage of the situations that we had that we worked on during the week, and we have to execute better.”
On what adjustments need to be made on special teams after a blocked field goal and PAT today:
“I think we have to look at that wing area at the right tight end. One of the things we’ll do is get bigger out there. We had to go overload on that last one, which secured it for us. In the other circumstances, it’s not acceptable. I coach those kids, and obviously I didn’t do a very good job and I need to do a better job and maybe take a look at the personnel.”
On (sophomore running back) Jerome Smith’s filling in for (sophomore running back) Prince-Tyson Gulley:
“It’s tough because we were running Antwon (Bailey), but we have all the confidence in Jerome. He was forced into the situation a little bit quicker, but he had a good week of practice. Obviously (freshman running back) Adonis Ameen-Moore moves up. This week they did get a lot of reps because we wanted to make sure that they were prepared. Those three backs, as well as Steve Rene, have to be ready to finish the season for us.
“Once a kid is in the lineup, and how the game progresses determine when you have to put him in there. I thought he ran hard, I thought he had a real nice first down early in the game. He hit the pile, and got bounced a little bit, and then he found a crease and ended up gaining extra yards. I thought it was a great effort trying to get the first down.
“There, I just wanted to make sure I got the points knowing that they’re going to take the field and a lot of things could happen. They could fumble the snap. They could fumble the football, which we ended up doing in overtime. So I wanted to make sure I took the points and moved on and got to the next overtime period.”
On the play of (redshirt-senior wide receiver) Nick Provo during the past three weeks:
“I don’t know if he’s developing more as a pass catcher because he’s always had that ability and he’s been a good blocker. He’s doing a lot of things well. He’s playing hard. He’s playing banged up. He’s a banged up player for us. He’s done a very good job and he’s been very productive. I’m very happy with him.”
On (senior quarterback) Ryan Nassib’s play against Rutgers:
“I think at times he did a nice job managing the game. They came with some four-wide pressure. We knew they were going to pressure us, though. Then they played cover-two, and it was a chess game going back and forth. I thought Ryan did a good job.
“The interception that got tipped up in the air on the goal line, that one is tough. The one when they missed a field goal to win the game in regulation as we were going down trying to win the game: what happened was he was going across his progression, and the back side guy ran right underneath the route and made a really nice play coming out of nowhere.
“The interception with the defensive line, they came with pressure and that was the Okie front. They dropped the end, and what Ryan did was pump left, and then his eyes are off what’s going on. Then he turned around, and it was very difficult for us to get an offensive lineman on him, which we normally do when they drop someone to cover the backs. Again, those are tough situations. We tried to take some shots early, and we just missed them, and that’s on everybody. At times, it was a good job of protection, and at least we’re being aggressive throwing the ball down the field.”
On his decision to kick the field goal in the first overtime instead of going for it on fourth-and-one:
“We had the ball first. I kick myself for the roughing (the kicker) play. The reason why is because I want to be a team that blocks kicks, and I thought we had a very good block going on. But I shouldn’t have taken that chance on third-and-19.
“My philosophy as a football coach is to never take the game away from the players. What I didn’t want to do is get stopped, and we’ve been stopped before. Rutgers is very good on defense for tackles for loss, so why not kick the three points, which I felt comfortable about because we were going overload left, and then put it back on them to execute. That’s exactly what had just happened to us, even though we couldn’t push them back far enough. We didn’t execute and ended up putting the ball on the ground without a chance to tie it or win it.”
On whether he said anything to (senior running back) Antwon Bailey about his game today:
“He made some good cuts. He had some good front side plays where he almost scored. Antwon Bailey is a good football player. We just keep talking about ball security, and on the cut backs going to the back side to make sure he has two hands on the football securing it.
“We talked about it all week. It’s not like we didn’t say ‘Hey this team doesn’t do a good job stripping the football’. They’ve always done a good job. We talked about it, we worked on it. Coach (Tyrone) Wheatley will tell you. The players will tell you. We put the ball on the ground.”
On where there ever any doubt that (senior quarterback Ryan) Nassib would be able to play today:
“No, but when you’re a coach, you get overwhelmed on that Sunday. That’s what happened. You get overwhelmed because your corners are all banged up. We only had three safeties going into the game, and (sophomore cornerback) Joe Nassib was our backup fourth safety. We had (junior cornerback) Phillip Thomas and (sophomore free safety) Jeremi Wilkes playing safety for us, so we really lacked the depth there.
“We thought (senior strong safety) Olando Fisher would have been able to come back, and that would’ve helped us in a big way because he would’ve been able to start the game at safety and maybe play some nickel. Then we thought that we would’ve been able to get him back to just playing nickel for us, and he wasn’t able to do that.
“Then we have Jeremi (Wilkes) who’s on special teams, then we have to start taking people off of special teams. We had a couple sprained ankles, and you don’t know if it’s high or low during the week. (Junior cornerback) Ri’Shard Anderson had the cast and he had a bad knee because he came out of the game. (sophomore cornerback) Keon Lyn came out of the game last week.
“I understand what the media has to do, but as a coach I was trying to protect the corners from running go-routes. I’ve been on teams before in the NFL when we saw someone with a cast on their hand, and not that we strategically went after him more than we would have, but we put in extra plays to say, ‘Hey. I’m going to run this go route because they play man-to-man and he has no deep help, and if we throw it, when he goes up for it, it’s going to be difficult to catch.’ I didn’t want, from a strategic standpoint, to go in there and defend a lot of go-routes today, and you saw them go after us in the second half. It’s my responsibility, and I just have to protect the players.”
Syracuse vs. Rutgers
October 1, 2011
Carrier Dome, Syracuse, N.Y.
Syracuse Head Coach Doug Marrone
Opening Statement:
“Obviously we’re disappointed in the loss. I think it’s very difficult to win football games when you have five turnovers, and a field goal gets blocked and a PAT gets blocked. Those things happen, and we lost that game because of those errors, and we weren’t able to capitalize at times. We had our chance. With things that we worked on, we had chances to make plays, and I’m talking more offensively and special teams.
“I thought, defensively, they were able to get to the quarterback. They did some nice things out there. We had a mistake at the end of the game to let him open to run the touchdown, and they ended up scoring. We didn’t take advantage of our opportunities, and we’re not good enough not to do that. I think we all have something to take from this. I wish I had the call back where we went for the block (punt) and ended up with the rough. I could help them out a little bit more on that call. But other than that we just have to execute when we have to.
“We lost a football game, and they’re a good football team. I told our kids that they played hard, they didn’t execute well. We have to hold our head up even though we’re upset and disappointed in ourselves. When you lose football games, you have to come back and practice extremely hard and get ready to get back on the right path after we make the corrections.”
On the offense committing five turnovers:
“Turnovers are the number one way to lose a football game. When we are plus one, we win about 80 percent of the time, when we are plus two we are 100 percent. When we are even, we are 50 percent, and when we go below that we are 17 percent. But I think you can say that about most teams. We are not good enough to overcome those turnovers and we had five which is unacceptable. It is actually more than five because we had the blocked PAT and a blocked field goal. When you have the ability to score points and you don’t execute it is like a turnover.”
On the defense:
“I was proud of them. I had some concerns this week, which is why I closed practice. Last Sunday, the first thing I received from the training room was the news that three of our corners have casts on their hands. Everyone knows we are playing man-to-man and I was concerned that it would be reported that they had casts on their hands, and then all of a sudden Rutgers adds more go-routes.
“In the second half they did a nice job with the go-routes. We were in position to pick a couple of them off. (sophomore cornerback) Keon Lyn was in position to pick that ball off if he didn’t have a cast on his hand. He was in great position, but he just couldn’t make the interception because of the cast. I was trying to protect those players specifically.
“Obviously (sophomore running back) Prince Tyson Gulley has a collar bone injury that we found out about this week. It was a bad injury that he had to get operated on. (Senior quarterback) Ryan Nassib’s hand was bothering him. (Redshirt senior wide receiver) Nick Provo had a shoulder injury. We even got some players back this week that I was excited about and they re-injured themselves.
“(Senior strong safety) Olando Fisher came back this week. He is our starting nickel and I thought we were going to have him out there but he couldn’t go. Those were the things that we going on and I tried to keep that away from the players so they could concentrate. I would never block out the media, but now that the corners have been seen with casts it is known. But that is what was going on and I was more than happy to tell anyone that off the record.”
On if he had an opinion about the review of (senior running back) Antwon Bailey’s fumble on the last play of the game:
“I didn’t. Upstairs it is people looking at it with camera angles, so it is not the same. The thing that I have always been for, personally, is that the official on the field should handle it, because it is his game. Like in the NFL, the referee should handle everything on the field. I don’t have a feeling either way on that, but it is our fault for letting the game get that close.”
About the turnovers in Rutgers’ territory:
“We are human. We are not robots out there. When we get good field position and run a slant that gets tipped and intercepted, it is frustrating when the guys come over to the sideline and you show disappointment on your face but you have to tell the guys to keeping pushing through. Everyone knows what is going on. The two plays that are tough are the tip for an interception and the interception where they played man pressure on us and dropped the defensive end, which was a good call by Coach Greg Schiano. They played Okie defense and dropped the man which caused the interception, so those two plays are difficult to put on anyone, but the other ones, we have to do a better job.”
On (freshman linebacker) Dyshawn Davis and (senior linebacker) Dan Vaughn:
“I thought they did a real good job. They had a lot of pressure on the quarterback, they forced errant throws. We had a chance to get even more turnovers on our side but we missed a couple of those opportunities. But we are triggering a whole lot faster than we ever have before and that is a good sign and we have to continue to get better each week as the season goes on.
“We are a 3-2 football team right now and we are getting ready to go on the road for a difficult football game because it is a long distance away. We will make the corrections and we want to be 4-2 before our break, and that is the best we can be. We will then take the bye week and take a good look at ourselves and where we are and where we need to go, and then get ready to play the second half of the season.”
On how much (senior quarterback) Ryan Nassib’s interception at the goal line and (junior cornerback) Phillip Thomas’ near interception change the momentum:
“I don’t know if I can say that that was the point. I think everyone else might have a better feel for that because you’re in every call and it’s going back and forth. I think all those things come into play with momentum.
“Phillip makes a good play, breaks well on a ball. That’s something that we did better in this game than we have done before. We broke on a couple of balls, and Coach (Scott) Shafer’s always telling us the players that have to do a better job on that.
“When we went down there on the five-yard line, there are so many things that go through your mind. On third-and-short we wanted to take a shot. We had (senior wide receiver) Van Chew early in the game, and we missed that shot; we overthrew it. Then we ran the wheel with Antwon (Bailey) and we didn’t take advantage of that. Then we hit one in Foster’s body to body him up on the slant, and we didn’t take advantage of that. At the end of the day, we just didn’t take advantage of the situations that we had that we worked on during the week, and we have to execute better.”
On what adjustments need to be made on special teams after a blocked field goal and PAT today:
“I think we have to look at that wing area at the right tight end. One of the things we’ll do is get bigger out there. We had to go overload on that last one, which secured it for us. In the other circumstances, it’s not acceptable. I coach those kids, and obviously I didn’t do a very good job and I need to do a better job and maybe take a look at the personnel.”
On (sophomore running back) Jerome Smith’s filling in for (sophomore running back) Prince-Tyson Gulley:
“It’s tough because we were running Antwon (Bailey), but we have all the confidence in Jerome. He was forced into the situation a little bit quicker, but he had a good week of practice. Obviously (freshman running back) Adonis Ameen-Moore moves up. This week they did get a lot of reps because we wanted to make sure that they were prepared. Those three backs, as well as Steve Rene, have to be ready to finish the season for us.
“Once a kid is in the lineup, and how the game progresses determine when you have to put him in there. I thought he ran hard, I thought he had a real nice first down early in the game. He hit the pile, and got bounced a little bit, and then he found a crease and ended up gaining extra yards. I thought it was a great effort trying to get the first down.
“There, I just wanted to make sure I got the points knowing that they’re going to take the field and a lot of things could happen. They could fumble the snap. They could fumble the football, which we ended up doing in overtime. So I wanted to make sure I took the points and moved on and got to the next overtime period.”
On the play of (redshirt-senior wide receiver) Nick Provo during the past three weeks:
“I don’t know if he’s developing more as a pass catcher because he’s always had that ability and he’s been a good blocker. He’s doing a lot of things well. He’s playing hard. He’s playing banged up. He’s a banged up player for us. He’s done a very good job and he’s been very productive. I’m very happy with him.”
On (senior quarterback) Ryan Nassib’s play against Rutgers:
“I think at times he did a nice job managing the game. They came with some four-wide pressure. We knew they were going to pressure us, though. Then they played cover-two, and it was a chess game going back and forth. I thought Ryan did a good job.
“The interception that got tipped up in the air on the goal line, that one is tough. The one when they missed a field goal to win the game in regulation as we were going down trying to win the game: what happened was he was going across his progression, and the back side guy ran right underneath the route and made a really nice play coming out of nowhere.
“The interception with the defensive line, they came with pressure and that was the Okie front. They dropped the end, and what Ryan did was pump left, and then his eyes are off what’s going on. Then he turned around, and it was very difficult for us to get an offensive lineman on him, which we normally do when they drop someone to cover the backs. Again, those are tough situations. We tried to take some shots early, and we just missed them, and that’s on everybody. At times, it was a good job of protection, and at least we’re being aggressive throwing the ball down the field.”
On his decision to kick the field goal in the first overtime instead of going for it on fourth-and-one:
“We had the ball first. I kick myself for the roughing (the kicker) play. The reason why is because I want to be a team that blocks kicks, and I thought we had a very good block going on. But I shouldn’t have taken that chance on third-and-19.
“My philosophy as a football coach is to never take the game away from the players. What I didn’t want to do is get stopped, and we’ve been stopped before. Rutgers is very good on defense for tackles for loss, so why not kick the three points, which I felt comfortable about because we were going overload left, and then put it back on them to execute. That’s exactly what had just happened to us, even though we couldn’t push them back far enough. We didn’t execute and ended up putting the ball on the ground without a chance to tie it or win it.”
On whether he said anything to (senior running back) Antwon Bailey about his game today:
“He made some good cuts. He had some good front side plays where he almost scored. Antwon Bailey is a good football player. We just keep talking about ball security, and on the cut backs going to the back side to make sure he has two hands on the football securing it.
“We talked about it all week. It’s not like we didn’t say ‘Hey this team doesn’t do a good job stripping the football’. They’ve always done a good job. We talked about it, we worked on it. Coach (Tyrone) Wheatley will tell you. The players will tell you. We put the ball on the ground.”
On where there ever any doubt that (senior quarterback Ryan) Nassib would be able to play today:
“No, but when you’re a coach, you get overwhelmed on that Sunday. That’s what happened. You get overwhelmed because your corners are all banged up. We only had three safeties going into the game, and (sophomore cornerback) Joe Nassib was our backup fourth safety. We had (junior cornerback) Phillip Thomas and (sophomore free safety) Jeremi Wilkes playing safety for us, so we really lacked the depth there.
“We thought (senior strong safety) Olando Fisher would have been able to come back, and that would’ve helped us in a big way because he would’ve been able to start the game at safety and maybe play some nickel. Then we thought that we would’ve been able to get him back to just playing nickel for us, and he wasn’t able to do that.
“Then we have Jeremi (Wilkes) who’s on special teams, then we have to start taking people off of special teams. We had a couple sprained ankles, and you don’t know if it’s high or low during the week. (Junior cornerback) Ri’Shard Anderson had the cast and he had a bad knee because he came out of the game. (sophomore cornerback) Keon Lyn came out of the game last week.
“I understand what the media has to do, but as a coach I was trying to protect the corners from running go-routes. I’ve been on teams before in the NFL when we saw someone with a cast on their hand, and not that we strategically went after him more than we would have, but we put in extra plays to say, ‘Hey. I’m going to run this go route because they play man-to-man and he has no deep help, and if we throw it, when he goes up for it, it’s going to be difficult to catch.’ I didn’t want, from a strategic standpoint, to go in there and defend a lot of go-routes today, and you saw them go after us in the second half. It’s my responsibility, and I just have to protect the players.”
