UVA football coach Bronco Mendenhall talks with reporters after the Cavs’ 41-10 loss to Boston College on Saturday.
Opening statement:
“First of all congratulations to Boston College. They were very well prepared, they executed very well, they had an exceptional plan versus us at all phases, and I think were the better coached, and the better prepared, and the better executing football team today. (It’s) my job and I’m responsible for how our players play. And so our players, they do the best they can and clearly then they weren’t prepared in a manner to have the kind of chance they needed to play at a higher level. So I’m anxious to learn from this as much as possible. There’s lots and lots to learn, and expose all kinds of new things for us to work on, and with that hopefully comes growth and progress as hard as it is to handle. So yeah, I’ll take questions.”
On Boston College quarterback Anthony Brown:
“Well I think the plan they had was really good. Their was no way that they were going to allow sacks, so the ball was coming out very quickly with man to man type of beating routes and he was delivering the ball on time to well executed routes and consistently. And then on play action where he is athletic enough, he bought enough time for routes to develop, a first route, a second route, or even a third route sometimes and that combination between those two things really gave us problems. And right from the beginning and very surprisingly because we believe on of our strengths is playing really good pass defense and play really well on third down and so the had a very good plan, they executed it really well, and to their credit.”
On the development of the program:
“I’m not sure we lost sight of it, but again, I’ve talked a lot about managing interference and I’ve tried to express week in and week out, at least up to this point, we’re just at the very beginning of this program and what I want it to be and I think we all want to skip ahead a number of chapters to see how the story ends. It’s word by word and letter by letter and page by page and that was driven home today again of where we currently are, where we can be if we’re not really well prepared and really precise and compete at an elite level and if you have an injury or two along the way. That shows again the impact that some of those things can have.”
On Boston College third down conversions:
“I think their plan. Offensively I think it was the best plan that we have defended to this point and so I give their coaches credit and they players credit for executing it really well. Again, the thought was this was going to be a really physical game and a really run-oriented game, really if you look at their yardage of points, a lot of it was around us and over us rather than through and so the game took on really a different context than what I had anticipated and our adjustments weren’t effective in terms of counter measures. Conversely, I think when our defense plays well there’s kind of an energy of our team and I think it effected our entire team, including our offense, that there was some surprise there, that they were able to hold onto the ball, convert third downs and move it.”
On defensive tackling:
“The only tackling that I recognized that I found fault with are run fits especially on the perimeter. We had a misfit a number of times on the perimeter and then I think the only other time it was really exposed is quarterback scramble. That allowed a number of third downs to convert. In terms of tackling the running backs, there was a third down early on one, two, or three guys on the far sideline had a shot. But I didn’t see it being much different than what it has been other than the execution was allowing the angles to be off and plays we normally make we didn’t make and we didn’t make it repeatedly. A lot of that has to do with preparation and as the team starts to move forward and as this resiliency piece starts to build in, which we have shown a lot of resiliency, when you get to about this point, almost every player on the team now is having to battle something to get healthy enough to play and practice long enough and get enough repetition to be able to play. That’s something else we are going to have to manage really effectively.”
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