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Florida Gators’ head coach Jon Sumrall, running back Jadan Baugh, quarterback Aaron Philo, defensive lineman Emmanuel Oyebadejo, and linebacker Myles Graham met with the media after Saturday’s 44-39 victory over Auburn.
JON SUMRALL
Opening statement…
“No bad wins, always good to win. We still have a lot to improve on that is not our best football. We are going to get there. We got so much to work on, to improve. The penalties were out of control. I mean 16 penalties; we won’t win another game all year if we do that again, not one more game. I got to get it cleaned up, us as a staff have to get it cleaned up, we got to play with more discipline. I did not agree with all of them, but still I am not going to let our guys off the hook, that’s inexcusable. But man, I grew up in this state. You know as a kid there were a couple of people I always watched and one of their names is on the field, Pat Dye. I got a ton of respect for Pat Dye; God rest his soul. Then the other two across the state, Gene Stallings and Bear Bryant, like I watched those guys my whole life and Bear Bryant died basically when I was born, but I’ve idolized the great coaches who have coached in this state. For our first SEC win and as a program, and me as a head coach to do it on Pat Dye Field, I can’t tell you what that means to me personally because I have a picture of Pat Dye and Bear Bryant in my office, in Moundville, Alabama hunting rabbits. To do it on Pat Dye Field means something to me, but this is about our guys. I am so proud of them; they found a way. A lot of people doubted them. I heard a lot of people all week second guessing why we were a favorite in this game. It didn’t have to be as close as it was. They were well coached, they are a good football team, wish them nothing but the best and excited to get back on this plane and get back home to get to work tomorrow.”
On QB Aaron Philo and his first road start as a Florida Gator…
“I thought he did really well. He has a little bit of a cowboy mentality. He is tough as nails. He will talk a whole lot just to talk, but he won’t back down from nothing. I can tell watching him, just how he carries himself. I got a lot of confidence in him; our team has a lot of confidence in him just because that is the way he is wired. He is a tough, blue-collar, chip-on-your-shoulder type of guy.”
On Emmanuel Oyebadejo’s performance this week…
“He was a true game-time decision. Him and Singleton Jr. were both. I think we will have a real good shot at getting ‘E’ back next week, but Emmanuel really only ran around a lot on Friday and never really fully practiced all week. He was very questionable going into the game and so proud of him for showing up and playing with the toughness he did.”
On limiting Byrum Brown…
“I thought for the most part, we did a good job, a little bit leaky at times. What I was not pleased with was what we felt like with him and the type of passer he was. We needed to stay on the top shoulder of the route all night and try and force him to make intermediate or short game throws, and we did not do that at times. But the run game, the couple he got, we just did not stay in our rush lanes. Most times you felt us push the pocket and not allow him to be real comfortable.”
On finishing…
“This week the conversation was three words: work the cut. I don’t know how familiar you are with boxing or UFC, but Justin Gates came out and talked to our team back in training camp and I showed them pictures of Gates’ fight against Topuria in D.C. on the White House lawn this year. Everybody thinks you knock the other guy out by just a big hit, that’s not how it happens. In fighting, you have to cut the eye and then you keep cutting the eye with the jab, and then at some point you wait for the uppercut. But you don’t start with uppercuts, you wear the other guy down and I think that was really on the headset all night… I would hit the all call button and say everybody tell the guys “work the cut.” Eventually if we keep working the cut, we will find ourselves victorious. They got a couple punches in on us, too. They hit our eye a couple times, too, but we were the last man standing.”
On responding in big moments…
“I don’t know that we played with poise. I thought we responded, that’s what I thought we did. If we played with better poise, we would not have had the dumb penalties we had. I do think we showed we have some mental toughness and resilience, but I don’t think we played with poise the whole time. I think our responses were good. Any time they countered, we had a couple of jabs left in the tank, we kept responding all night. So, I don’t know if we played with the poise I need to see us play with. I do think our response was really good.”
On the halftime adjustments…
“We felt good coming into the half about some things we could do, attack them offensively and some things we did not see. It is huge to set the tone early. I do think that was the game-deciding swing, back and forth like how we came out of the locker room at the start of the second half. I felt like we were a little bit more dialed and had been the whole game, to be honest with you, on both sides for a minute there. I thought it was a huge sequence, for sure.”
JADAN BAUGH
On what he saw on the fourth and one touchdown run…
“I saw daylight. I feel like my offensive line came to play. They had the mentality that we were going to try and seal the game and that is what they needed me to do.”
On coming back mentally after the turnover in the first quarter…
“I just appreciate Coach Sumrall because I was really in my own head there. I know that the turnover is not me and I owed it to my team to play a lot better. Coach Sumrall came to me and said that we were going to make more plays. I understood that and we ended up doing so.”
On his thoughts on having four-straight 100-yard performances…
“It’s just another day in the office. We have a lot more to work on. That’s how I feel. We had a lot of little penalties that we should not have. I think we put ourselves in a deeper hole than we should have been in. The game should have gone a lot better on our end. We got the job done, though.”
On being the first UF RB to have four-straight 100-yard rushing games since Fred Taylor…
“Honestly, I have to give him a call. Uncle Fred, he’s one of the greats. Everybody knows that. Being able to put my name up there with him and other guys, it is such an honor. Those guys have paved the way for me.”
On taking pride in the explosive runs that he has made this season so far…
“Honestly, it is all up to Coach Buster Faulkner. When he first came in, he said that we needed way more runs over 20 yards, and he tells me that all the time. So, the way that I practice is because of him. It just gives me more confidence each and every day.”
On if he is starting to campaign for his Heisman chances…
“Each and every day I feel like I put in so much work. Me and my team, especially the offensive line. If I am doing what I am doing, that means those guys up front [are] doing what they need to do. What I do is all up to those guys. I started doing the pose in the first game. It’s really the defenses’ fault. Last week, when I did not do the pose, they were upset. But it is a statement.”
AARON PHILO
On playing in an environment like Jordan-Hare and silencing doubters…
“We talked about it all week. All we need is us. We just need the people in that locker room, and that’s who came with us today and we got the job done.”
On his comfortability and if it is something the coaches are asking about throughout the week…
“I think it definitely is. They’re always very transparent with me, asking me what I like, what I don’t like, if there’s a call I don’t like. I’ve been in the offense for three years now and I feel like I’ve been preparing for this moment for a long time and all those banked reps just came to fruition tonight.”
On the team’s message to Eric Singleton Jr. with him being unable to suit up for the game…
“We know that Eric wanted to be out there for sure with this being his previous school, but we’re just telling him to keep his head up and we’re excited to have him back out there again.”
On if he had a feeling on how explosive the offense would be tonight…
“I knew that we were extremely explosive offensively. We stopped ourselves a lot tonight. When we go back and clean it up, I think we can be even better.”
On the offense’s ability to pass and run at a high level, keeping the Auburn defense on its heels…
“The defense played unreal tonight. I think they played their butts off. When we were able to run the ball like we were, it opens up the pass. The offensive line did a great job the whole night, pass blocking, run blocking, they played their butts off. I’m really proud of those guys, proud of the defense, proud of our whole team.”
On fans chanting his name after the game…
“Obviously it’s pretty cool, but I can’t let it get to me too much, I can’t get complacent at all. Got to go back, watch the film and get better, but definitely appreciate the love.”
EMMANUEL OYEBADEJO
On his breakout performance tonight…
“Since I’ve been playing football, I never had a week like this, you know what I’m saying? Coming back, like it wasn’t a typical game week. Wednesday, I didn’t think I was going to play this game. I didn’t know if I was going to travel or not. Thursday, you find out like, you’re going to warm up, see how you feeling. Yeah, so from that point, I just had in my mind, you know, like I feel like the part of this game that’s underrated is the mental aspect. Physically, I wasn’t one hundred percent, but mentally, I had to push, and this year it’s like, we’ll probably need to push so much. So when it happened this time, you know what I’m saying, I just had the mental fortitude to go and push and play through it.”
On cleaning things up moving forward…
“Yeah, definitely. I was thinking in the fourth quarter, this is a good victory, because you beat a good opponent, an SEC opponent. But, you know, like those lessons you could take. We are not going to look back on this and be too high and think that everything is all sweet, because it wasn’t. We had opportunities to really throw them out of the water, make the game not close. So we’re going to learn from them, need to learn from that because we got a good opponent coming up next week.”
On previously playing in the state of Alabama and motivations that came with that…
“So I had an EQ manager, he was at Jacksonville State. Yeah, over now and then, there’s a couple people being in Jacksonville, Alabama, there’s always a lot of people. My former head coach, Charles Kelly, he’s an Auburn alum. So, there’s always that connection.”
On his back-to-back sacks…
“Yeah, the first one, just go off the ball. I felt the chip coming. I just had that heavy emphasis, just straight up the top of the wrist. I can’t say I hit it with a move in that sack, but I got the chip, I just carried on a strand at the top of the rush. Rip and go, and the QB was there. So just feeling that. The second one, just get them. Just focus on having a good get-go. I [saw] them in front of me, so put my foot on the ground and just around through them. I saw them fall down. I look for the QB. I didn’t think I had that set until I saw it back because he kind of ducked and I missed it, and I thought someone else cleaned it up.”
On what it meant to make two plays like that…
“It was great. It was so great. Like I said, the week has been so difficult, so for me to come out and make those plays, it was really fulfilling, you know what I’m saying? I didn’t have the typical preparation this week, but I’ve been preparing for this the entire year. I spent so much time working my game, working my pass rush, having the skill-set, having manual moves that I can use. So, even though this week wasn’t ordinary or typical, I can still lean back on the stuff that I’ve been building. Not even just this year, but over the last couple years.”
MYLES GRAHAM
On the frustration of the defense and his confidence in fixing the mistakes…
“Yeah, I mean it’s frustrating for everybody and the penalties, they have to get fixed. Going on the road, first road game, you expect there to be some miscues and things like that, but it’s not really one thing we can attribute it to. We just have to all get better and clean it up.”
On bulletin board material and how it fueled the fire…
“Yeah, we just wanted to play for our brothers more than the people that were down on us. We wanted to prove to each other right more than we wanted to prove them wrong. So it was really about us and our guys in our locker room.”
On Kahleil Jackson’s 48-yard pass and what it was like for him…
“Yeah, I’m really proud of him, man. Really, really rooting for Kahleil Jackson. I think he’s a great player and we’re happy to have him.”
On Auburn’s tempo and how Florida handled it throughout the game…
“I don’t think we handled it the best that we could have. I think we did in certain situations, but not throughout the whole game and that’s just something we just have to fix, more urgency to get lined up and better fundamentals and technique and better communication. So we could have definitely handled it better throughout the game.”
Videos Courtesy GatorVision | Transcript Courtesy ASAP
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