Butch Davis Quotes
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Butch Davis quotes vs. Virginia, Sept. 15, 2007
It’s never easy to lose. Every single one of these football games, and I told the team this before the season, that there would be an awful lot of games that would come down to a very, very small margin of whether or not you had a chance to win or whether or not you were going to lose the football game. More often than not it’s not the number of great plays you make, it’s the number of poor plays you make. Certainly we cannot win football games (making so many poor plays). Unfortunately, we are not talented enough at this stage to win games when you lose the turnover margin. You can’t have three turnovers and not create any turnovers because it puts such an enormous burden on your offense to try and score with a limited number of possessions and it puts a tremendous burden on your defense to have to go out and play maybe more plays than you did.
For the first time this season we got off to a slow start offensively. We struggled. In part, you have Virginia a lot of credit. They are a good football team, especially defensively. They have some really physical guys that make it difficult to run the football. When they are fresh and rested, Chris Long is as good a pas rusher as probably is playing in college football today.
Our offense continue to improve in our protections, continues to find ways to get the guys we have who are play-makers involved in the game, to make plays for us. Hakeem Nicks’s one individual catch was probably the best, single individual play of great effort that maybe I’ve seen in 30, 33 years in the game. I would have bet a lot of money that ball was overthrown. I was shocked he caught it. Then I was even more amazed that the great individual run after the catch to get it into the end zone (on the 53-yard score).
Every single week the kids do the things our coaches are asking them to do. They are trying to play hard, trying to hustle, trying to get to the ball, trying to make plays, trying to have faith, trying to put themselves at the end of ballgames in a position to give ourselves a chance to win. Two of the turnovers unfortunately were inside the 50-yard line when we are moving the ball, making a little bit of progress. I thought it was an enormous shot of confidence for our football team to score at the end of the second quarter. Going in 16-7 was dramatically a shot in the arm instead of going in 16-0.
We did some good stuff trying to keep them out of the end zone after the first initial touchdown, forcing five field goals. But we’ve got to flip the time of possession, part of that is the turnovers. But two weeks in a row I think it’s double (the time of possession). That’s too much pressure on a football team that is trying to find different ways to try and win games.
(field goal)
It’s my understanding that every single play is potentially reviewable…I guess the field goal falls into the category of all plays are potentially challengeable and reviewable…I guess they looked at it and said it was good. It’s pretty much out of your hands once another team challenges it.
I love (this football team) and I’m proud of them. They’re young and they are going to make some mistakes. If they make mistakes and they’re giving the best effort they can, then we are going to have to live with it until they either grow up from more experience…
(Virginia’s #37 Peerman)
He’s pretty good. He’s big and he’s strong. He moves the pile. They have a good scheme that allows him to do that because they spread you out all over the field. They are getting multiple wide receivers and spread you out from sideline to sideline to create some natural running lanes. They’ve got a big, physical offensive line. That’s Virginia’s MO for several years.
If you don’t tackle well and I didn’t think we particularly tackled well again today. It was moderately better than at times a week ago.