Chattanooga Football Postgame Quotes
No. 15 Chattanooga vs. UT Martin
Finley Stadium – Chattanooga, Tenn.
Saturday - Sept. 16, 2017

Chattanooga Head Coach Tom Arth

Head Coach Tom Arth
Overall thoughts on offense
"We were 1-for-12 on third down. We put ourselves in some really tough third down situations. When we were in third and manageable situations, we failed to convert short yardage. We have to do a better job…players and coaches alike.
 
"In general, I don't think we did a good enough job anywhere, any position. Our coaching staff wasn't up to our standards. It wasn't good enough. We have to go back, keep working, we have to look at the film, make the corrections and get better. It's a simple as that."
 
Did UT Martin surprise you
"Not at all. That was pretty much what we saw on film. They're a great team, well coached and have good players. We knew it was going to be tough."
 
On defense
"Everybody's has a job to do. They control what they can control. That's how they play and how our defense performs. Obviously, we need to do a better job playing together as a team, capitalizing on the momentum, getting a big stop and coming back out there on offense putting a drive together. That's where we struggled. We get a stop and then we'd go three-and-out and put the defense right back out there."


Tae Davis, Sr., LB
On doing the job you're supposed to do:
"We don't want to drop our heads or point fingers. We need to keep working hard and do our jobs. We know we are a very talented team. We definitely have the chance to do something special, but we need to stop talking about it and just do it."
 
On starting league play next week at VMI:
"Starting tomorrow, we prepare for VMI. It's expecting and holding everyone (accountable) to the expectations we set for ourselves."
 

Nick Tiano, So., QB
First-half offense:
"I think we needed to come out with more confidence. We came out and kind of felt our way around instead of let's go pound this ball down the field. That's a lot of what it is. We need to get some success and build that confidence as a unit."
 
Second half success offensively through 3 games (what changes):
"After we scored, everybody kind of said hey, we can do this, we can put points on the board. Then we started to move the ball down the field. We just have to do that from the start. Whether we go three-and-out or score on the first play, we need to have that confidence (in what we can do as a unit)."


Bingo Morton, Jr., WR
On his touchdown score
"I wanted to make a play for my team. I felt like we needed a spark, and I just so happened to be that guy to make that spark. Unfortunately, it didn't turn out the way we wanted it to be, but we're making strides to get better for next week."
 
On things to correct
"Things are getting better. We're still not clicking as an offense. The good thing is those games are behind us. We still have conference play coming up, so we still have a chance. Everything we want is still ahead of us."
 

Isaiah Mack, Jr., DL
What are the conversations like in the conference room right now?
"We try to keep each other up knowing that we start over come next week. All that matters is conference."
 
On defense
"I feel like we played hard. We competed, but there's still room to improve. We all know that. We could improve in takeaways, and if you want to be a great defense you have to get the ball back. So I feel like that's something we could improve on."


UT Martin Head Coach Jason Simpson
Opening statement:
'It was a good football game. We knew coming in here – we had talked all week long that we needed to get it to the fourth quarter because Chattanooga has a good team. They were as good as I thought they were on defense. We didn't have a whole lot of yards, we just made a couple plays. Our defense kept giving us good field position. I probably got a little conservative, but that's the good thing about having a senior quarterback – he's not worried about his stats. He just plays to win the game, and I appreciate Troy for that. Overall, it was a great team win."
 
On winning on the road against an in-state ranked opponent:
"It does feel nice especially because I think we should be ranked. That's my personal opinion coming off a year like we had last year. These guys woke up this morning, they look at the newspaper and we are picked to get beat 31-21. Everybody picked us to get beat but that's alright – that's the fun part of it. It makes my job easier on the motivation – our guys were ready to play and we performed really well."
 
On the team's defensive performance down the stretch:
"When your defense is playing like that, eventually we figured they were going to throw it to us and we were going to get that big turnover. I'm proud of our defensive staff. Chattanooga will get better – that quarterback is going to be a good player but we got after him tonight with a three-man rush. Our defense was good in the first game and in the third game. In the second game, it was 17-16 against Ole Miss in the first half last week. We take a lot of pride in our defense. Last year, we were second in our league in total defense and we scored seven touchdowns on defense. We have a lot of those same guys back."