Chattanooga Football Postgame Quotes
Chattanooga at Tennessee
Neyland Stadium - Knoxville, Tenn.
Saturday – Sept. 14, 2019
 
Head Coach Rusty Wright
 On the kicking game
"You can't let them return the opening kick off out past the 50. You can't let the first punt get blocked. It's nothing they did. Matter of fact, they lined up better than they should have for us to get it off. We didn't get it off. You can't do those things.
 
"We probably could have kicked the ball a couple of times late in the second half, but I wasn't kicking field goals at that point in time. What was the point? We were going to try to score and work on things we had to work on, but I wasn't going to kick any field goals there."
 
On turnovers
"Can't do it...doesn't matter who we're playing, we can't do that. We can't turn the ball over five times against anyone. The bad part about it is, there was one throw in the first half, Nick wasn't expecting the guy there. The rest of them, those are our errors. It's not what they did, those are our errors. Bad throws or not in the right spot; you can't turn the ball over five times, get a punt blocked, drop a punt snap. You can't do that. It doesn't matter who we're playing. We're nowhere near good enough to do that."
 
How deflating was the false start penalty on the one-yard line and then fumble right after?
"I don't know if it was deflating. I don't even know what the score was at that point in time. I wasn't even looking at the scoreboard at that point in time anymore. I don't know how deflating that was. Disappointing for sure. When we go back and watch this film, I'm not taking anything away from Tennessee. We got our butts whipped today, and they did it. There's no question about that. They lined up and whipped our butt all day long. We're gonna go back and watch this film. There's gonna be some guys that played well, but there's gonna be a lot of issues we brought upon ourselves."
 
Did Tyrell Price missing the game hurt?
"No. Other kids can run the football. We actually found Ibitokun-Hanks ran the ball good. We've got some guys back there that can do it. So, we're going to be fine there. Tough stretch of games. We're getting beat up a bit physically on both sides. We'll get through it."
 
On playing time
"I think everybody except for one guy played out there today. We played a bunch of folks, we played them early. That was important to me to make sure everybody got into the game. We knew it was going to be a little warm, I knew it was going to be hard. We played everybody I think except for one person. The back-up long snapper. He probably should have played when it was all said and done."
 
Biggest take away from today
"These kids will play. I don't think there's any doubt they'll play. All of them will. I know it's important to them. We've got to figure out a better way to prepare them. That's on us. They'll play hard and they'll compete. I told them at halftime we're not kicking any field goals. We get down there, we're going to go for it. If we get it great, if not defense you're going to go back out there and play."
 
Importance of games like this in the long run
"I don't know. You know what? I've never been sitting here and been this bad. I've been an assistant and it's been this bad. We're going to find out a lot about this group. I knew it was going to be a tough stretch. Hopefully we learn from it. It doesn't do any good to get your butt whipped this bad and not learn anything from it. That's the thing, you've got to learn from it or history will repeat itself."
 
On being 1-4 at Miami and turned it around
"Everything's not great when you win and not everything's not awful when you lose. There's some guys who played well out there today. They're continuing to play better. We can't do some of the things we did against anyone, much less in an atmosphere like this against SEC guys and have a chance. That's the frustrating part."

Jerrell Lawson - Jr.-DB
Positives to take out of this
"We just see that we've got a lot of guys that can play When things got a little blurry later on, we rotated guys in the secondary, linebackers and d-line. We just got a lot to work with."
 
What do you learn from a game like today
"A loss like this shows unity. It takes every side of the ball, offense, defense, special teams. It shows if we're down on one side how we got to be able to pick the other side up. We needed this. It humbled us. We'll get back to practice and getting the small things right and getting better."
 
Elijah Ibitokun-Hanks- Sr.-RB
On his big day
"It's bittersweet. My biggest mentality today was to show my worth. I think I did that a little bit. Me being hard on myself, I don't feel like it's good enough. That one run, maybe to me, I feel like they got the momentum first and we never really got it back. I feel as though with that run, that could have probably given us a fighting chance. So for me, good but not good enough."
 
How disappointing the end of that drive with false start
"It just shows that it takes everybody, they've got to do their 1/11th and one guy mess and it can mess up the whole play."
 
On turnovers and special teams
"We know that we're better than that, but it happens. It's football. You've got to move on, watch film and make sure it doesn't happen again."
 
Assessment of Tennessee
"I think they are a good team. They're where they belong. They are a top-notch team. They definitely came to play today. They showed that they were ready to play. It's football. Anything can happen. All-in-all they are a good team."
 
What do you learn from a game like today
"Rolling with the punches. We took our licks today. Now it's time to learn from them and give them back."
 
Jay Person - Fr.-LB
On speed of the game
"It was a little bit faster than what we went against the first two weeks, even against Jacksonville State, but it wasn't nothing we couldn't pick up on."

What do you learn from a game like today
"Just keep on going. It's something to learn from. Just keep on going the right direction."