Colorado University Athletics
Colorado-USC Quotes
vs
Arizona State
Nov 22 (Sat)
TBA
Colorado Head Coach Karl Dorrell
Opening Statement-“A disappointing day. Unfortunately for us we felt we had a good plan going into it [the game] and we didn’t even come close to getting the level of execution that we were expecting. I would say that today was kind of a mixture of everything. I would say the only bright spot of the day was I thought our special teams played pretty solid. Josh Watts is doing his job and we didn’t have many kickoff returns or punt returns--they had a good kicker as well so that was kind of an even 50-50 deal. But the problem was we struggled--even on defense today. It was both though [offense and defense]. Obviously most of our issues have been offensively driven and it was unfortunate we couldn’t create the continuity and efficiency that we needed. We had a couple of scoring drives which was good but we had other opportunities to really do positive things and we didn’t do it. It wasn’t just Brendon [Lewis] - they had hardly pressured us and yet he was under pressure a lot. They had just a normal four-man rush and he [Lewis] was under pressure a lot. It wasn’t just about Brendon, there were some issues in protection and there were issues in our run system - it was a number of things. Brendon still has a lot to learn and he’ll continue to grow, but right now there are so many things that we need to fix right now on both sides of the ball. I thought defensively there were some positive things but there were some things that we did leave out there - we had some opportunities to get off the field and we didn’t. I have to give 15 [USC WR Drake London] a lot of credit - he's a really good player. They threw it up to him and he high balled a lot and came down with great coverage on him and corners right there with him. But guess what? He’s six-four or six-five with probably a 40-inch vertical and it showed. I think those are really kind of the differences in the game. He [London] broke the game open a little bit with what he was doing with great coverage on him, they had some good runs, and we didn’t capitalize what we needed to. We have to get back to work, there’s a lot of work to do and a lot of things to shore up in a lot of different areas and we’ll get back to work.”
On the offensive line struggles-“There are a number of things [contributing to the offensive line struggles] there really isn’t one thing I can pin it on. They’re not playing at a level that they should-given the experience. Frank Fillip is just getting back from his surgery and he’s a little rusty and I think he gave up the first two pressures of the game-and he was a really good player for us a year ago. We’re having some issues in a lot of areas but particularly up front. This is going to be a week for us to get back and really try to shore up as much as we can before we play Arizona in two weeks. There’s a lot of work for us to do and we’re definitely going to do that.”
On the offense having belief in being able to move the ball down field efficiently this season -“I do. I really do. We have to find what we do best and hang our hat with everything whether that’s asking, ‘What’s our best run?’ or ‘What’s our best pass or protection?’ or ‘What’s the best thing for Brendon Lewis?’ We’re already thinking that way but apparently we have to really assess all of that again this week and try to figure out what we can do best. There are definitely some issues that we need to address and fix as we move forward.”
On if leaving Brendon Lewis in is counterproductive to his future-“That’s a great question because it’s a fine line. Sometimes it’s a thing where if he doesn’t start to play well and we pull him, what’s that going to do to his confidence? It’s a fine line between trying to get him to get through this experience-which there is no other way to do it. You can look at the highest level of football right now at all those starting rookie quarterbacks that have I think a 1-14 record between six of them. They’re all going through this and part of it is there’s no shortcut for it. Part of it is you want him to go through it because that’s the best way. If I’m touching a stove and realize, ‘Oh it’s hot!’ I better not touch that again. Part of this is just going through the process with a quarterback-and with a lot of positions actually. We don’t want him to lose confidence that he can play. To his credit, he had his best week of work, and I mentioned that a number of times this past week leading into this game. Some of it may have shown-he hit a couple of passes early and it was good. But the thing that helps a quarterback is if he feels that he has protection. That’s part of having a young guy that’s not only learning but you don’t want him to be thinking about whether he’s going to be protected or not. We have a lot of stuff to work on right now. Like I said before, it’s not just Brendon-there are a lot of things we need to fix - because he has his own things. We have to address the offensive line and we have to address a number of things that we’re doing and we’re going to do that. We’re going to work at it and without a game this week we get a chance to really work on some things in practice.”
On Lewis having a delay when passing the ball- “It’s probably a little bit the pressure of the game-because in practice I thought he cut it loose this week and he was so much better. But to some young players the game is a different element and it’s a different stage than in practice and we have to continue to build that growth and treat the game like practice. He’s a little gun shy but we feel he’s going to break through this at some point. We got to bring Drew [Carter] along too. We have to bring both those guys along, they’re both freshmen anyway so we just have to keep progressing through the year.”
On Assessing the Quarterbacks – “We're going to that this week since we have some time. We’ll assess that for sure. Maybe this is a one-two machine now - give both these guys a chance to develop and go. That's something we will definitely discuss this week, now that we don’t have a game at the end of next week. we have some more time to really think through this.”
On Comparing USC’s Drake London to Michael Westbrook – “Michael Westbrook was a very talented player that can make a lot of plays just like Drake London did today. So yes, it was reminiscent of what we used to have here. He's a good player. He's very competitive. It doesn't matter if someone's hanging on him. He has great focus and concentration, he's strong, he's got great play strength and he's already getting length and size and a plus 40-inch vertical - that's almost impossible to cover. He came down with a couple catches today that were “wow” (plays). I've coached a lot of all pro receivers in the NFL that were pretty amazing. He's a very talented kid.”
On the Offense Scoring 14 Points – “It's never enough. We can't be talking about “baby stuff” like that anymore. We scored two touchdowns and that's not enough. They scored 37 points, we scored 14. We're at that point. There's an urgency about being more productive and more demanding about what we're doing. Not that we haven't done that already, but the pacifier is going to have to go - if you have kids, I've had kids - so but that's got to go. We’ve got to grow up fast. We’ve got to go. There's only so long you can take those incremental steps. We're at that point right now. This season is in the balance right now. We have to make a (vast) improvement this week as we go through this time of really getting a chance to shore up some issues. We’ve got to make sure we shore up a lot of those things this week.”
On Not Losing the Team – “The natural human condition is to start to point fingers or to start to fray. This team understands that I've been truthful to them every step of the way. I haven't sugar coated anything about whether we're good or bad, it's always the truth. They'll tell you that right behind you. They know that we got work to do. They'll come up here, talk to you, and say ‘Hey, we didn't do enough. We’ve got to do better.’ We all understand that. There's a level of truth that we definitely experienced that we’ve talked about with this football team. No, we don't sugarcoat it, but we're not going to tear people down for them to lose confidence that they can't do it. We're going to be hard on the details and hard on what we need to fix. They'll tell you when they come up here, we just we just got to get some things fixed and find out a little bit more about our identity on both sides of the ball because this wasn't just offense today. It was a lot of things even defensively. We struggled with a lot of things. Some of it was great coverage, and guys were still making plays. We have to be better, no question. We have to be better.”
On the Targeting Hits Brendon Lewis Took – “At the time, (Lewis) didn't want to come out. In a way, you want your quarterback to have some guts about him that he can take a hit, move forward, and recover from it. Those are positive things that he's growing in. I'm not happy with it because he's getting exposed. He's getting exposed unnecessarily when we could be better around him. Those are the things that frustrate me. But for him - showing his toughness and not wanting to come out and to continue to play forward - those are big growth steps that you want your quarterback to make. I don't want that to be a constant pattern. That's the thing I struggle with as a head coach is that we have to be better around him. We don't want him thinking about protection when his eyes should be downfield looking at receivers. That's the thing that's going to cloud his judgment. When you're a young guy trying to learn and grow through the college level experience of playing quarterback, we need his eyes downfield. We don't need him worried about whether the right guard’s is going to block his guy or the left tackle’s going to block his guy. We all have a level of ownership in this. Going forward, we're going to continue to try to bring Drew along as well. We have the time to really get some good reps for both of them this week. Maybe we'll formulate a plan going into the Arizona week as to what we should do for that game.”
USC Interim Head Coach Donte Williams
On How USC Played- “That’s what we should do, that's what we expect to do. I’m not happy with all the penalties, not happy with some explosive plays and sometimes we'll restart a little bit, but I am glad with the way we controlled the line of scrimmage on defense and offense. And like I said we expect big time players to step up in big time games and our big-time players stepped up today.”
On What The Defense Improved On- “Number one, there’s questions, not on this team, but the outside world maybe, ‘can they stop the run?’ They proved they can. The Colorado Buffaloes have your reigning offensive player of the year so just go step up there and stop the run.”
On Drake London’s Performance- “I expect him to do that so the team expects him to do that. So, when the ball is in the air and if he's around with 10 other people we expect him to come down with the ball.”
On Parker Lewis- “Parker has a strong leg, he's built like an inside linebacker. So, you watch him in there lift weights, you see what I'm talking about. He just went out there and once again another guy that we expect to make those kinds of kicks and that's why his kickoffs are touchbacks and everything else. So, his leg is strong and strong enough with ease whether we’re here or we're back in the Coliseum.”
Colorado Players
TB Jarek Broussard
OVERALL FEELING ON GAME- “It sucks to lose a game but I mean it's not really much you could do, you just need to go back to the drawing board and just try to execute more plays and that's it. We just need guys that just want it.”ON FUTURE PREPAREDNESS- “I mean for the bye-week, the only thing we expect is to work. The only way you can turn stuff around is to work.”
ON CONFIDENCE- “When you come out and you’re consistently getting three and outs and barely draining any time off the clock it can be very frustrating. All you can do is stick to the script and play hard”
ILB Nate Landman
ON BYE WEEK-“This week's a huge opportunity for us. We get an extra week to prepare for the game in two weeks. We get to get healthy, get guys back, and we get to work on the small things. We're doing some good things out there, we're doing some bad things out there, so now's the time. We get two weeks to clean up the little stuff and get back to playing Colorado football.”ON TEAM’S FUTURE-“We’ve got to practice and we’ve got to play how we practice. We’ve got to go and attack each day differently and work harder each day. This is the only way to clean up stuff that's happened to us and there's things we can clean up so that's the positive about it.”
S Mark Perry
ON OVERALL OUTCOME- “You know I feel like we compete every week, but we have to put it all together and we have to put it all together at once. Defense has to go out and play our tails off and offense has to come out and do the same. We're not playing complimentary football right now and that's one of the biggest things. I've seen these past couple of weeks and we just, we need to find a way to find a way to play complimentary football from special teams, to offense, and to defense. We have to, because it rather be a turnover, and we have a change of possession situation and we're already down basically in the red zone, we can't do that.”ON OFFENSE- “I'm not going to bash any guy on offense because I see what they do during the week. They're fighting their tails off to get it right. It's just one of those things where we got to keep going. We are the only ones that can bring us out of this hole, so we have to just keep going.”
ON BYE WEEK-“We’ve got to fix a lot of little things like, communication, being able to do your job, being consistent, and all at the same time we’ve got to focus on freshening up our bodies. I think this week “rest” quote on quote will be big for us, and just fixing a lot of little details that we wouldn't be able to do during a regular game week. I think this will be beneficial for us.”
ON DEFENSE IN 2ND HALF- “As soon as we got the takeaway, they went down to score. We have to control the turnover margin, and we have to make more of those plays happen, rather it be getting the ball out, interceptions and I know they come a dime a dozen, but we just have to find a way to take the opportunities that are presented us.”
ON USC-“They have one of the number one top receivers in the nation. I grew up with a lot of those guys and played against them back in high school. This matchup was personal for me, and going out there and competing, they didn't do anything special. They beat us in football. We just have to find a way to get things right and get this thing rolling.”
WR Dimitri Stanley
ON WHAT TO BUILD ON OFFENSIVELY- “Yeah, I mean I think as an offense all we can focus on is getting better, week-by-week and I feel like that's what we have been doing. But at the end of the day, we still have to put more points on the board to help our defense out. They're doing all they can, and it's just unfair to them that we're not scoring enough points.”ON THE TEAMS CONFIDENCE AND MORALE-“I mean I think the morale is still pretty high. We kind of know what we got in the locker room, and we have a whole bunch of talent on this team. It's kind of just breaking the film down and seeing what we're doing wrong in order to fix it for next week. Going into this by week, we have a lot to focus on and a lot to work on to get ready to play Arizona.”
ON IF USC CONFUSED THEM SCHEMATICALLY-“A little bit. We had planned a little bit more for man and they didn't really run man at all that game so just kind of get back to the drawing board and make adjustments as quick as we can, in those type of situations.”
ON IMPORTANCE OF WINNING ARIZONA GAME-“Yeah, I mean, I think we have to come out and win every week so, we kind of just see them as another opponent that's in our way of what we want to accomplish and we're going to come back and make those adjustments like I said and get ready for Arizona.”
ON BRENDON LEWIS’ PLAY-“Yeah, I mean like I said we have a whole bunch of talent on my team and he's just one of those talented players that we have. In practice he's a great player, he practices his hard makes plays, and I feel like a lot of people on our team do that. It's just kind of bringing it to the game and finding a way. And that's pretty much all it is.”
OLB Guy Thomas
ON MOVING FORWARD- “Well, I feel like we're wanting to mourn this loss, but going into next week we’re gonna get back to work. You know, we got guys on our team that don't quit, you know, things are not really going good right now but I don’t see the guys quitting, I see the guys buckling up and getting back to work Monday.”ON RESETTING THINGS DURING BYE WEEK- “It would have been good with a win. But I guess it is a good time to you know get back to the drawing board and just correct all the mistakes.”
ON WHAT USC THREW AT THE DEFENSE- “I feel like the defense could have played a whole lot better. But USC, they have a good offense, a good quarterback, good receivers. So, we went out there, we played.”
ON THE SKILL PLAYERS OF USC- “I would say the receiving core is pretty good. I think the tight end is pretty good. And I think quarterback is pretty good too, but as far as skill, yeah, there's skillful but, you know, they’re not anything crazy.”
ON MORALE IN THE LOCKER ROOM- “The guys, we love each other so I don't see any of us like, you know, giving up on each other. You know I feel like going into next week, if there are guys who that is not a part of the program that you don't want to be here, and they'll leave but the guys that want to be here will come back Monday, getting ready to go to work.”
TE Brady Russell
OVERALL QB BRENDON LEWIS’ GROWTH-“Yeah, there's a lot of growth. I mean both the first play of the game and then the real long one both of those I was the check down I was the last person for him to look at so he's progressing through and he's finding people and he's keeping his eyes downfield and when he's moving around in the pocket. So that was a big plus to see from him and I think he played really well when he had time.”ON BEING CAUGHT FROM BEHIND ON HIS LONG RECEPTION-“Man, I can't believe I got caught from behind. I thought I was running but I wasn't thinking too much. I was just until I got tripped up.”
ON VIBE IN THE LOCKER ROOM-“I'd say the vibe in the locker room it's still good, it's just there, it's kind of the older guys are trying to bring the young guys along with us. We've been through some of these kind of things, so me, Mekhi, Carson, those kind of guys. They're just trying to keep people's heads up and because, I mean, we still got a lot of great players, and we still got a lot of capability. We just need people to understand that they are a lot more capable than they think they are.”
ON IF THERE’S A LACK OF BELIEF-“I don't think there's a lack of belief at all I think we got a lot of guys that want to fight and they want to be great, it's just mistakes here and there that are holding us back so I don't think there's any sort of once we get down we think we'll lose. I mean, after that, well after the first touchdown after the second touchdown both times. ‘Alright, we're coming back, we're making it happen.’ Positive all the time and then there's just a mistake here to mistake there and it's like we can't click all at one time for four quarters, which is what we need to happen.”
ON DEION SMITH SCORING-“Oh, it's awesome seeing him up. He's been around me for a while so I mean this is what my fifth year and his think it’s his fourth so it's awesome seeing some of the battles and some of the things he's had to fight through. And obviously the most recent that ACL last year but before that he's been an ACL too so it's so cool seeing him get some opportunities and carries on to be someone kick returner knocking it down though it's awesome seeing him back in the game.
ON CHASE HENRY-“Oh, it's always fun seeing the young guy get in and see some success and I mean all they've seen is Friday Night Lights and everything and while that's cool, it's just a couple 1000 people that you're out here and you got the whole crowd roaring so it's fun seeing those young guys get some success.”
LB Isaiah Lewis
ON USC’S OFFENSE-“Excused my voice I got allergies and just yelling all game but we knew that team was going to be a threat, and he was still making plays regardless and outside of our coverage was so l respect to him. But we accepted the challenge and we knew that they're going to be throwing the ball all around so we just wanted to make sure we can play as tight as we could.ON VIBE IN THE LOCKER ROOM-“Definitely think that bye week time is crucial right now, because we're not where we want to be in our headspace isn't where it needs to be so we understand how important this bye week is gonna be. We’re gonna take the rest but also like we got to handle the details. I mean we were shoulder to shoulder, we're very tight team it's just like you said, putting the full picture together but we need to we need to get to.”
USC Players
DE Drake Jackson
ON HIS SACKS, FUMBLE RECOVERY, AND THE OVERALL DEFENSE- “It felt like three, but I don't know if you guys are going to give me the third one. Just to not to get any sacks last week and come here and dominate like we did today is just feels good. We're supposed to be doing things like this and I see defense and that's how we're supposed to come in. Next week we're gonna keep doing that.”WR Drake London
ON HIS TOUCHDOWN CATCHES- “Yeah, this is credit to Kedon putting the ball in the right place and he is such an accurate quarterback. So, I mean, wherever he puts it I’m gonna go try and get it.”RB Keaontay Ingram
ON THE OFFENSIVE LINE- “Oh man, the offensive line did a phenomenal job today. Got the backs up to the second level, we just got to be better making the safety miss and sometimes not making them miss run through them, you know, Get them on their toes a little bit so offensive line did a phenomenal job today.”ON OFFENSIVE RHYTHM- “Oh man, great, I feel like we played complimentary football today. When the run was there it was there. When the pass was there we were there. Playing complimentary football it showed in the points today so I'll feel like we did a really good job.”