Postgame Quotes - UCLA 45, Texas A&M 44

POSTGAME QUOTES
UCLA 45, Texas A&M 44
Pasadena, Calif. (Rose Bowl)
September 3, 2017

UCLA head coach Jim Mora
opening remarks
“Here’s what I thought and told our guys. We’re trying to build something special here. It all starts with the culture. And tonight, I saw us take a step in a positive direction. It started January 6 when they came back after a disappointing season last year. We went to work. Every day since, I’ve just seen an attitude and a camaraderie, a sense of purpose, a brotherhood that started to form. We knew that this would not be an easy game. We didn’t know we’d be down by 28 points at halftime. I was so impressed with how they managed their emotions at halftime and how they came back in the second half. They had confidence in each other. They had a ton of poise. I saw a coaching staff that made great adjustments. I saw players who embraced those adjustments. They owned that. When you do that, you’re capable of doing stuff that you did tonight. We have to be able to run the ball better than we did. I thought we could run it better. We didn’t run it well enough. I thought we could stop the run better. While we are excited about the win, there are a lot of things to improve on. We will celebrate here for a little bit, but then we’ll watch the film and critique it hard. We have a short week. We’ve got to get over this one. I’m really proud of these guys. I told them at halftime, ‘Let’s not look at the scoreboard. Let’s play football, one play at a time.’ They did that. It worked out, and we’ll take it.”

on quarterback Josh Rosen
“In the first half, as a team, we weren’t in an aggressive mindset. It was surprising to me. We have practiced and demonstrated an aggressive mindset. I just felt like we were a little bit hesitant on both sides of the ball. When you aren’t dropping back and just ripping it like Josh is capable of doing, it looks like it did in the first half. In the second half, we were on our toes more, leaning into it. Nowhere was it more evident than in Josh’s play. He found Caleb [Wilson], a sure-handed guy who made plays over the middle. And as he made plays, his confidence and our confidence grew.”

on the fake spike touchdown play
“That is something that we practice. We practiced it this week. We practice it every week during the season. Jedd [Fisch] called that – a tremendous call, and then great execution by [Jordan] Lasley and Josh [Rosen] and everybody. That’s something we practice.”

on having ever been involved in a comeback such as this
“Have I been involved in a game like this? I’m an old dude, and I’ve been involved in a lot of games. But [tonight], the outcome was a lot of fun. This team grew up throughout that game.”

on what changed for UCLA midway through the third quarter
“We haven’t practiced one snap of our base defense, which is four down and three linebackers. [Texas A&M] They are a three and four wide receiver team. And at halftime, we put out base defense back in. Lokeni [Toailoa] went in there and did a heck of a job. They made that adjustment on defense. Once we controlled it on defense and our protection improved, Josh [Rosen] started to just rip it in there. You felt like things were happening. There were no Debbie Downers on the sidelines. They believed in each other. I told them not to look at the scoreboard.”

on not looking at the scoreboard in the third quarter
“I never feel like we don’t have a chance to win. My internal scoreboard – I’m just not build that way. I won’t quit. Our guys don’t quit. But, no, it wasn’t until being within 13 points that we felt like we had a legitimate chance to win it. You just have to keep playing, and that’s what our guys did. It’s one game. It’s just one game. But, there are so many great lessons to be learned.”

on freshman defensive lineman Jaelan Phillips
“What was most impressive about Jaelen and Darnay [Holmes], two freshmen who started on defense, it was their demeanor during the game. It was their composure and their maturity. You don’t see freshmen react the way that they did very often in a big-game atmosphere when you are way down. That was the most impressive thing about those guys. We’ve seen it every day in practice. So, I was pleased with that.”

on quarterback Josh Rosen and UCLA’s pass protection
“Pass protection is a function of a lot of things. It’s not just the five guys up front. They were on us pretty tight, and we were having trouble getting separation. And it’s Josh getting rid of it. So, it’s just that we started to mesh. The line and the backs started to mesh. Caleb [Wilson] got open over the middle and then guys got open on the outside. When you get people a little bit on their heels, you can get things going. That first half was our first half of running this new offense against a team that’s pretty darn good. They’re big. They’re physical. They’re an SEC team that will compete for their division. But we found our legs and we got going.

on Josh Rosen taking hits
“Hits don’t bother Josh. I mean, ever since he’s been here. There is no fear in him. He’s not afraid. He doesn’t quit. He doesn’t blink when he is hit. He knows that as a quarterback, he’ll take some hits. He’s physical and big. He’s strong. He’s never a guy who will complain when he’s getting hit. We’ve seen this from him. He’s made a lot of his progress, both on and off the field. We’ve seen it, but it’s been overshadowed by those statements that he made a few months ago and then came to light a few weeks ago. What we have seen, what his teammates have seen, is a young man who has matured tremendously and become a great leader. He’s a great player in this offense, on this team, for this program. And he has done everything that has been asked of him and more. He has really stepped up everything about him. That’s fun to see. People focus too often on some of the things that he’s said in the past. He’s starting to act like a man, and that’s good to see.”

on running back Soso Jamabo
“I thought he made some key runs. When Soso can get on the edge, he gets some speed as he goes. I think that we have a good group of backs who can give us different styles when we need them. Bolu is a hammer, and we had some trouble getting him going. Nate Starks is a bulldog, and then Soso is a glider out in space and a good pass catcher. But each week, we’ll have to find the guy who can be our spark man. No one has even asked a question about Darren Andrews, and look what he did tonight. It was good to see Soso step up when we needed him.”

UCLA offensive coordinator Jedd Fisch

on the fake spike touchdown play
“We had an opportunity to take advantage of it. We were going up and down into two-minute drives for a while. Every now and then, you’ll pull that out. We had practiced that from the first week of spring on. There was nothing new there for Josh or for our receiver. We’d installed that when we installed two minute. He put the ball in the right place.”

on UCLA’s offense overcome a major deficit
“What we told them at halftime, we said that when you have that ball, you’ve got to score. Our job is to dive down and score. Early on, we [went up against] a big defense, a very fast defense that was just giving us press man coverage. They were up there in us. We had some discussions at halftime. And then we just told the guys, ‘We don’t care what the scoreboard says. Your job is to score.’ Our job is to score. We worked together in the second half to get that done. That’s what we subscribed to, and that’s what we were able to do.”

on UCLA’s running game
“I believe in our running game. I believe in our running game, and we had some runs. But we were pretty poor on third down. [Early in the game] when you’re two for nine on third downs, you don’t have enough chances to get first downs. I wanted us to run the ball a little more than the score had dictated, but I had total belief in Soso [Jamabo], in Bolu [Olorunfunmi], in all of our backs.”

on overcoming the 34-point deficit
“We just ran our plays. He did a great job of executing them. He was relaxed and poised. I don’t want to say he wasn’t concerned, but he just said ‘Hey, we’ll keep going. You call it, I’ll execute it,’ and that is what we did. He executed well. Our receivers executed really well. There was some good fortune, and today it was just one of those nights.”

Texas A&M head coach Kevin Sumlin

on how to explain a game such as this
“You don’t explain it. It’s like [I said] before the season, we’re not going to make excuses. We didn’t get it done as coaches. There’s different personnel and different people playing. We got a young team, and we have to put them in position to make plays, and we did in the first half because of our pass rush and defensive ability to stop the run. Josh Rosen threw up some balls that we should have had and didn’t get that resulted in touchdowns. Those plays that are at the end of drive that really affected the outcome of the game. The plays that ended in the end zone are a result of the plays in between that don’t seem like a big deal, but end up in something big. We’ve got two players that are going to be evaluated tomorrow. Two guys that change the game dramatically on both sides. At the end, they made more plays than we did in the second half.”

on play calling and time management in the fourth quarter
“No. We were conservative early in the third quarter. We’ve gotta’ give [Kellen] the chance to make the decisions and hand it off. Obviously, they changed their defense and they really dared us to throw it. They got to us with their pass rush. In a game like that, it’s not just him. It’s me. When you start to get the feeling that a team is going up and down the field you need to do some things to score, and we had some people that were nicked up as well. The personnel plays into it, too, [with] what’s going on down the stretch. The other side, too, we felt that we needed to score. Controlling the clock is one thing which is something I thought we did a good job of the whole game, but that fourth quarter, the way the game was being played, it’s a decision that you have to make to try to stay ahead. If we make the throws, catch some balls, I don’t think we made one competitive play on the perimeter today, and with that it isn’t necessarily all on the QB. Those 50-50 balls, we need to make a play. So that happens, and the defense changes when you run it and punt it, which we did in the third quarter. We have to make those decisions.”

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Postgame Quotes - UCLA 45, Texas A&M 44

University of California, Los Angeles, Athletics

Postgame Quotes - UCLA 45, Texas A&M 44