Postgame football interviews Alabama / Oklahoma with Mike Shula, Dave Rader, Brodie Croyle, Justin Smiley, Shaud Williams, DeMeco Ryans

Brodie Croyle (#12 So. QB, 6-3 200 lbs. Rainbow City, AL - Westbrook Christian)

These comments came following the Oklahoma game as Brodie Croyle answered questions from the press pool ...

Press Pool – In light of the defense you were playing tonight, which may be the best in the country, do you feel the offense took a step forward today?

Brodie Croyle - I think we took a step forward. We made a lot of plays against the best defense in the country. There’s no doubt about that. Those guys deserve every bit of credit they get. We took some steps forward, but missed out on some opportunities we should have capitalized on and scored some points.

How much better is playing this defense going to make you for the rest of the season?

After going against that defense, you feel like you can go against any defense in the country. We moved the ball extremely well in the second half. We’ve got a lot of things we need to work on for sure, but we feel better about it.

You were taking some hits out there. The defense was like bees buzzing on you.

Those guys bring it, that’s for sure! As I said, they deserve every bit they’ve got. Tommy Harris and all those guys.

I know you don’t come here to play teams close, but yet the fans were giving you a standing ovation coming off the field. Just put in perspective about how you guys feel about it.

We lost. We don’t see any good in losing. The number one team in the nation … who cares. We’re Alabama and we’re supposed to win. We’re never the underdogs. That’s the way we look at it. It happens that we lost, but we can build off of it kind of like we did last year. We don’t get another shot at them. That’s the bad thing about it is we don’t get another shot at them. Those guys are going to go a long way.

Was it frustrating to you guys to seem like you were an inch away or a play away the whole night long?

Well you know, it is. We were close on a lot of plays. There were some big plays that were supposedly out of bounds. I took a sack or two in times when I shouldn’t have. There’s just those opportunities that we missed, especially against a defense like an Oklahoma. We’re going to have to correct those things this week in practice and come out here ready to play next week.

You talked about gelling last week. Do you feel that has happened and you guys are on the same page?

We gelled more. I don’t know what we ended up with on offense, but going against a team like Oklahoma you have to feel good about moving the ball. We feel like we took another step, but we’re definitely not where we need to be and we’re probably a couple of games away from that. Every game is a learning experience and we showed we can play with the best in the country. We just have to feed off that, not accept the loss, but we do have to feed off the fact that we did play with the best.

Talk about Shaud Williams as a player and what he does to help ya’ll step up your games?

What else can you say about him? All the adversity he’s been through. All the coaching changes. All the people doubting him, saying he’s too small and can’t handle the load. He’s a stud. There’s no other way to put it. Give him the ball and good things are going to happen. Throw him the ball and he’ll make people miss and score touchdowns. That’s the way we look at it. He’s our leader and he’s the man we’re going to look to.

Ahh .. that’s football. I expected it coming in. Those guys are big, fast, strong … that’s the reason they’re the number one defense in the country. They were bringing a lot of crazy blitzes at us, nothing different than we’d seen, but there’s some things we can’t pick up. As the quarterback, you have to stand in there and take it. We took some pretty hard ones, but I got a week to heal.

Talk about the momentum shift after the fake punt, and then how you guys were able to come back.

That fake punt and that score … that was tough on us. We’d just scored and got the momentum. We’d just got the crowd back into it. For them to do that, that was definitely a big play for those guys. They had their big plays and we had ours. They made the most of their and came out seven points on top.

Click on the name for parts of their post-game interviews ..
Coach Mike Shula (Alabama Crimson Tide Head Coach)

Brodie Croyle (#12 So. QB, 6-3 200 lbs. Rainbow City, AL - Westbrook Christian)

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