What Neal Brown Said Following the Bowl Loss to Minnesota

Opening statement

"I thought our guys competed. I'm not disappointed with our effort. Thought we finished the year hard to have an opportunity to play in the postseason. We just weren't good enough today. It's disappointing because we've got a really small group of guys that played their last game and it hurts. It's really the first time in my head coaching career really experiencing losing your last game. It's a sad locker room, especially to those guys who have given a lot to this program. I thought defensively, we hung in there. We really did. Only gave up 18 points, forced two takeaways. They got some yards rushing the football but we hung in there. We really gave ourselves a chance to win. Special teams, I thought we were okay. We had some chances to flip the field earlier in the game on punt but didn't. Kickoffs...that's been a struggle all year. Offensively, it was just a struggle."

Battle in the trenches

"We knew coming in that this was a tough matchup for us. They're really big up front on the offensive line and at tight end. Credit to them, they won the line of scrimmage and they won the football game."

Having no tight ends available

"Banks made his decision which is fine, then [Charles] Finley was out health protocols, so we played Nick Malone at tight end. If you look back at what we did in the second half of the season, we played a lot of 11 personnel but we just didn't have that capability [tonight]. We felt like this wasn't going to be a high-scoring game but we felt like that we could get enough. But you score six points, you're not going to win. If you look at our schedule, we've played some elite defenses and Minnesota is an elite defense. We've got to be better. It starts with me, we've got to be better."

Jarret Doege's play

"Yeah, a lot of pressure. I thought our running backs did some good things breaking tackles, Tony [Mathis] made some plays but other than that, I don't know if we played good enough anywhere offensively."

"We've got most of our football team coming back and I think that's a big deal. I would say we have as much coming back on our football team as anybody in the country. So, we're not all doom and gloom. Are we disappointed we didn't win? You bet your ass we are. Is Minnesota a good football team? Yes, they're a really, really good football team. Did our guys compete? Yes, it's not an effort issue. There's certain aspects of the program that we've got to get better. This is what I told our team in the locker room, we are close in a lot of ways. We are really, really close but we've got to do things to get better to get back to where we want to be.

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