What Head Coach Scott Satterfield & Louisville Players Said After 46-27 Loss vs. Georgia Tech
Louisville fell short in their efforts against Georgia Tech, falling 46-27 to the hands of the Yellow Jackets for their third straight conference loss.
Here's what Louisville head coach Scott Satterfield, quarterback Malik Cunningham, tight end Marshon Ford and safety Isaiah Hayes had to say following the loss:
Louisville Head Coach Scott Satterfield:
(On what went wrong defensively)
Just to sum it up in two words: missed tackles. Number 21 (Jahmyr Gibbs) is a good back. He's a really good back. He's ran the ball hard against everybody's play. But that's no excuse for us. We got to a much better job tackling. We're not a very good tackling football team. I think that's been that way for 3 - 4 years probably. We got to do something about it. We got to get better at it. I think for us, we'll work on it, but we got to continue to work on it. We got to work on angles, we got to get stronger, we got to get around the legs to get those guys down. It's all those things.
(On why Javian Hawkins & Hassan Hall are fumbling at a higher rate)
You know, I don't know. I feel like they have been putting the ball down a little bit more obviously this year. But we got to do a much better job of taking care of the football. I thought tonight Georgia Tech did a good job (forcing fumbles). When we were down or going down in the piles, they did a really good job of trying to flip the ball out - actually grabbing the ball and pulling it. They did a good job with that. We got to hold the ball higher and tighter, obviously. Hassan's tonight, he was laying on top of another defender. I guess he thought he probably was down, and then they stripped him on the kickoff return. Last year we did a much better job, this year we got we got to do better with it. We gotta do a better job of containing the ball.
(On fourth quarter)
Before they scored the last two touchdowns, we had a chance. So they score, we get the ball back. We're driving to go take the lead and we fumble. They go down, they're trying to milk the clock, taking time off the clock and they end up scoring. Then the last touchdown, we went for it on a minus 15 which you wouldn't do normally, and they end up scoring on that. But we were in it right there till the end. We don't turn the ball over, we got a chance and we go down. We felt like we're going down and scoring to take the lead. It's a completely different ballgame in the last four or five minutes.
(On message to team in locker room, expectation of season)
You got to take it one day at a time. You can't look at expectations. If we looked at expectations last year, we would have tanked it early. So you can't look at expectations, you take it one week at a time. You do the best you can. I told them we got to be committed. Some people in this world jump ship, and they quit and they give up. It's just like life is what I told them. When you're married with your wife and you guys have a sticky situation, what are you gonna do? You gonna run from it, or are you going to continue to fight for your marriage. It's the same thing. It's an analogy that we used, but we got to fight for our team. We got to continue to bring it every single day. You got to be fully committed in this deal. We play too many teams in this league (to not be committed). They're all good, they all can beat you. If you don't show up, you will get beat. If you turn the ball over, you will get beat. All of this all of it starts in practice, it all starts throughout the week and how committed are you. That's kind of what we talked about, so we'll see when we get back to work on Sunday.
(On why offensive was stagnant, especially in fourth quarter)
We rushed for 242 yards, threw for 230, we were moving to football. Like I said, if we don't fumble two drives before the last one, then we're gonna go down and take the lead. I think we moved the ball pretty good tonight. Obviously you want to score every drive, that's probably not going to happen. We obviously needed more points, but we got to get stops too. It goes both ways. You get stops, you get the ball back. You turn them over, you get the ball back. We gave them the ball three times. That's three extra possessions that they got the football, and they capitalized. There's a lot of things involved in a football game of how you win, and we didn't do the things necessary to make that happen.
(On if anything was surprising that he didn't see on film)
I don't think so. 21 is a good player, 10 (Jeff Sims) can run and throw - he's a good player as well. They were opportunistic on defense to force those turnovers, Again, we were able to move the football and score some points. Obviously we didn't score enough. I think the turnovers were more them doing a good job of stripping the ball. I wouldn't call that being physical, but it's smart and aggressive.
(On changing punters to Ryan Harwell)
I thought Ryan did well tonight. First half, he pinned them back - two punts inside the inside the five. I thought he did well, obviously that's a spot we got to get better - punting the football. So we wanted to give him a shot and see what he could do. We'll continue to look at that and evaluate that next week.
(On the offensive line play)
I thought we did well. Prior to the last you know drive where they all they know what we're doing, throughout the rest of the game I thought the guys played well. We ran the ball well with Hawkins, he had 155 yards rushing which is a good night for him. They protected Malik for the most part pretty good until right there to the end. They bounced back because I thought they played poorly in the game against Pitt. They bounced back in this game and played a lot better.
(On Marshon Ford)
He's a great target for us. We all know that he can catch, he's got good hands and he can run after the catch. He came up big tonight, had some big plays in the passing game. We expect that out of him, we expect him to do that. We'd like to get the ball to Dez Fitzpatrick more, and there were a couple of times we had opportunities there and just didn't capitalize on as many as we'd like. But I thought overall we made some plays down the field, obviously we didn't make enough.
Quarterback Malik Cunningham
(On the fumbles)
Oh it hurts the team obviously, but like coach said we can't just dwell on it. We know turnovers hurt us. we saw that last week in the last game that we had. I told the running backs 'I turned a bottle three times last game'. I was down on myself and I really shouldn't have been. Today when they were turning over, I was trying my best to just try to keep those guys positive because I know what they're capable of doing. Yeah it hurts us as a team, but we can't do it alone. We just have to bounce back and go back to work.
(On what GT was doing defensively to take away Dez Fitzpatrick & Tutu Atwell)
On the play design, those guys are sometimes the first read and tonight it was giving us a lot of looks. So I took a lot of those looks. They didn't do anything different from film that we've been watching. I feel like we executed well on offensive side besides the fumbles.
(On keeping morale up)
The team just has to lean on the leaders. Me and a couple of guys, we got to step up even more considering we just lost three back-to-back. That hurts bad. Nobody wants to lose. But like coach said, you can't just dwell on that. You got to pick back up, because in life a lot of stuff is not gonna go your way. The last two weeks haven't been going our way. It's all about how you approach the next day. So the next day is a workday, so you got to come ready to work.
(On the message when they get back to work)
Being down really doesn't help nothing in life. If you mess up, you got to deal with it as a man. You got to be a man about it, not just a kid. It's easy to say 'Oh, we lost two in a row, it's easy to opt out now', and just run away from your problems. Nobody wants to lose, and right now we're on a three-game losing streak which is not what we wanted and not what we pictured. We just got to bounce back from it. As a leader, I just got to be there for those guys. Stay positive and keep those guys up, because I know a couple of those guys are pretty down. That's just my job, and I'm gonna do the best I can do that.
Tight End Marshon Ford
(On what was working for him)
The passing game, we got great guys on the outside - Dez & Tutu. So when they double and do all of that stuff, it opens the way for me. I had a good night, but we didn't get the win so it doesn't matter.
(On the message to the younger guys)
As a man, you take, you take 'L's' in life. The easiest thing like Malik said is just to learn from it and get better at it. We're gonna watch this film tomorrow, and we're gonna see what kind of mistakes we did, and we're gonna try to practice and fix those mistakes that we are making. As a young captain, like I said, it's easy to run away from things. But we're all committed, and I'm pretty sure we all are. So tomorrow we're looking forward to practice.
(On if day-to-day mindset helps to deal with losing streak)
Winning or losing, it's all day-to-day. We worry about us and we worry about how to get better every day, each and every day.
(On late first half GT score to swing momentum)
Things happen. Offense, we fumbled the ball a couple of times. Things happen, it's just how you handle adversity. Going into halftime, everybody had their hands straight. There was no arguing back and forth and nothing like that. Everybody had their head straight, and we were looking forward to the second half to try to finish the game.
Safety Isaiah Hayes
(On defensive struggles)
We're just learning, and we're trying to grow week by week. It says in the Bible that perseverance must take its course so that we may become mature and complete and lack nothing. So we're just taking it a day at a time. Yeah, it was a rough one out there today in all phases of the ball. Special teams, offense, defense, we could have got better. But as a defense we're coming together as a whole, we're correcting the mistakes. It was a tough night and we could have executed a little better, communicated a little better. But we're moving on and we're looking towards next week now.
(On not forcing turnovers)
I feel like we could have executed better at the point of attack. A lot of opportunities came. Some game and some didn't. At the point of attack we had a couple opportunities that we could have made, but we could have just executed a little better as a whole. But we'll get better.
(On what needs to happen to turn things around)
What I think about how we are doing right now, I think there's that there's there's 11 games in a season, there's not four. So we have a lot of time to improve. We have a lot more games and opportunities to be great. I think we just keep doing what we're doing, show up to work and correct our mistakes.
(On sense of locker room after game)
Obviously after a loss there's going to be a lot of emotions, and a lot of people are going to be upset. In those times, we just got to come together as one and we got to practice our loyalty and our unity. We got to be able to communicate with each other in the right way and just lift each other up in those times. Moving forward we just got to keep clicking as one, coming together as one and not pointing fingers. Just be thankful that we got off the field healthy and we have some more opportunities to go be great and come together as a team.
(Photo of XXX: XXX)
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