Everything Boston College Head Coach Bill O'Brien Said After Loss to Louisville

Boston College football suffered its seventh straight loss to No. 19 Louisville 38-24 on Saturday night.

After the game, Eagles head coach Bill O’Brien spoke about the team’s performance.

Below is a transcript of everything O’Brien said.

Q: Coach, just Grayson's fight tonight, just making responses to bad plays, turnovers, and lack of converting and just getting up after every play. What can you say about that?

O’BRIEN: Yeah, I mean just got all the respect in the world for that guy. Just need a lot of guys like him in the future. Tough guy. Great guy. Does everything we ask him to do. Great teammate. Even when he wasn't playing, he was encouraging and had great energy and just a tough guy.

Q: Coach, a wild college football game. I think there was 12 turnovers in the game, a lot of back and forth there. Obviously, the defense was able to create turnovers, but then the offense it seemed like gave the ball right back. Just talk a little bit about the turnover game and how much that influenced the ups and downs of that entire game.

O’BRIEN: Yeah, you're right. I mean, we got to take care of the ball better. We did a better job on defense, obviously, of getting the ball back. But the defense was brutal. When you talk about 300-and-some odd yards rushing. Was it 319? I believe so. Yeah, not good. We have to do a better job of taking care of the ball. We fumble, interception, and then we did a better job of taking the ball away.

Q: Like you said, some positives, some negatives defensively. Just can you assess more of the play overall? Just what you guys learned from this game you can carry forward to future games.

O’BRIEN: I mean, we got to stop the run. I don't think I've ever been in a game where I've seen that many long runs. So I got to coach it better. I have to coach a lot better than I'm doing. I have not done a good job this year coaching.

Q: Coach, just talked about the way Grayson managed the offense, a number of really long plays, points on your first three drives.

O’BRIEN: Yeah, he did a great job. He did a great job. He managed the game very well. I'm sure there's some plays he wishes he could have back. He was playing injured though, but he's a kid that understands the difference between pain and injury. Like he understands that. And there's a big difference there and he fought through it. And I got a lot of respect for that kid, man. He's not a kid, he's a grown man, and he did a hell of a job.

Q: Coach, you guys dominated time and possession in that first half. Different in the second half. What do you think was different?

O’BRIEN: Yeah, no doubt. Turnovers. I don't think the time of possession is that big of a deal, though. I've told you that before. I think it's turnovers, it's red area percentage, it's third down conversions, things like that. I don't read too much into time. We possess the ball in games that I've lost for, whatever. 32 minutes and didn't win the game. So I don't know. You got to score. Especially with our defense, you better score.

Q: Coach, just the fourth down at the end of the game in your own territory, and deciding to punt, obviously fourth and eight.

O’BRIEN: I mean, it was fourth and eight. Fourth and eight. The chances of us getting a fourth and eight with their pass rush, it wasn't gonna be good. I don't look back. I thought that was a good decision. Punt, we got timeouts. We got three timeouts. See if we can stop them. Couldn't stop them. Couldn't stop them.

Q: I thought you played awfully well for a long time. What can, and you alluded to it a little bit on the phone calls there, your turnovers kind of got you there.

O’BRIEN: Yeah, we fumbled. We had interceptions. Lewis Bond, he's not a fumbler. He was fighting for extra yardage. They did a good job of punching it out. Grayson's fighting to try to hit the open guy. And he’s playing with an injury. But, yeah, you have to take care of the ball. So they were a big factor in the game, especially in the second half.

Q: Jeff in his Monday press conference during the week said ‘You didn't see the game last year, trust me, it'll be a tough game this week,’ and I thought you came in and did everything you could to win the game.

O’BRIEN: Thank you. Yeah, our kids are tough. I just told them that in the locker room. They fight hard. They fight. They got to keep fighting. There's no choice. It's been a rough season, but there's a lot of football left and these kids have a lot of pride and they're good BC guys. We got to coach better. Haven't done a good job coaching this year. So it's on me to get it coached up better, but we have to do that. But I give our guys a lot of credit. They fight. They fight hard.

Q: On the Secondary…

O’BRIEN: Yeah, they have great length. They have really good ball skills. They're very well coached. They got a good football team. I mean, they've got a lot of good looking kids that play hard and they can run. They hit their physical. They got a hell of a football team. I mean, they beat Miami last week. Miami's a really good football team. So Louisville’s got a good program. Jeff's done a good job. He played here. He's been here for a while. Deion Branch, who I coached at the Patriots, awesome guy. Brandon Dunn, I saw Breno Giacomini today, who I coached in Houston. So they got a lot of good people in this program.

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