HEAD COACH Lane Kiffin
On the possibility of pulling Jonathan Crompton at quarterback:
"No. I thought I didn't do a very good job today of taking care of Jonathan. I tried to stay with the run game a lot of times as you can see with the lopsided ratio of run-to-pass. I think we ran the ball 44 times or something. We've got to do better. I think that showed today, which is my fault for playing some players who haven't practiced enough because of injuries and hoping they would go out there and make plays. That really makes Jonathan suffer. So we didn't do very many good things around him.
On why UT ran the ball each play inside the 5 trying to score late in the game:
"I would like to think that any time you have two plays that we should be able to run it with the mentality that we have, and score. That was very discouraging to see. I should have called a different t ype of run, but you'd like to think when we have one yard to run to win the game that we could do it."
On lacking confidence in the passing game:
"I figured the game would go one of two ways. It was either going to be really easy because things were working and we were hitting it and we would keep throwing the ball around. But I told myself that if it got tough and we were turning the ball over and getting pressured, then we would turn to our defense.
On the defense's performance:
"I think they played really well, considering they had 150 or 160 yards or so. Even after that, we still killed ourselves. I thought Coach [Monte] Kiffin made a number of great calls. We screwed some things up by not doing things right.
On why freshmen receivers didn't get many looks:
Unfortunately, we made some critical drops. We didn't make any drops in the first game; we caught everything. We come out today and have a deep cross with Quintin [Hancock] and we dropped that. We had about a third-and-5 or a third-and-6 going in to score, and Jonathan changes the route out there and throws the ball to Denarius [Moore] - a first down to keep the drive alive and hopefully a touchdown - and we drop it.
"I think in general on offense, it was a lack of execution. We talk about guys playing a little bit because of injuries, we have them going in there and not being as great as they need to because they're not practicing as much, just trying to go out with adrenaline."
UCLA vs. Tennessee Postgame Quotes - TENNESSEE OFFICIAL ATHLETIC SITE
On the possibility of pulling Jonathan Crompton at quarterback:
"No. I thought I didn't do a very good job today of taking care of Jonathan. I tried to stay with the run game a lot of times as you can see with the lopsided ratio of run-to-pass. I think we ran the ball 44 times or something. We've got to do better. I think that showed today, which is my fault for playing some players who haven't practiced enough because of injuries and hoping they would go out there and make plays. That really makes Jonathan suffer. So we didn't do very many good things around him.
On why UT ran the ball each play inside the 5 trying to score late in the game:
"I would like to think that any time you have two plays that we should be able to run it with the mentality that we have, and score. That was very discouraging to see. I should have called a different t ype of run, but you'd like to think when we have one yard to run to win the game that we could do it."
On lacking confidence in the passing game:
"I figured the game would go one of two ways. It was either going to be really easy because things were working and we were hitting it and we would keep throwing the ball around. But I told myself that if it got tough and we were turning the ball over and getting pressured, then we would turn to our defense.
On the defense's performance:
"I think they played really well, considering they had 150 or 160 yards or so. Even after that, we still killed ourselves. I thought Coach [Monte] Kiffin made a number of great calls. We screwed some things up by not doing things right.
On why freshmen receivers didn't get many looks:
Unfortunately, we made some critical drops. We didn't make any drops in the first game; we caught everything. We come out today and have a deep cross with Quintin [Hancock] and we dropped that. We had about a third-and-5 or a third-and-6 going in to score, and Jonathan changes the route out there and throws the ball to Denarius [Moore] - a first down to keep the drive alive and hopefully a touchdown - and we drop it.
"I think in general on offense, it was a lack of execution. We talk about guys playing a little bit because of injuries, we have them going in there and not being as great as they need to because they're not practicing as much, just trying to go out with adrenaline."
UCLA vs. Tennessee Postgame Quotes - TENNESSEE OFFICIAL ATHLETIC SITE
