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

These comments came following the Oklahoma game as Coach Shula answered questions from the press pool ...

Mike Shula – Obviously, it was very disappointing. In a tough loss like that where we didn’t play like we wanted to play, there were still some things that were positive that we’re going to build on. That’s going to be real important for our team to take the good things we did against a real good team. They’re #1 for a reason and we found that out today. They’re a well coached and talented team. But we’ve got to take those good things and grow. And we’ve got to learn in a hurry and correct the bad things. I thought we were a little sloppy early, for whatever reason. But we hung in there and our defense kept us in … kept the score low and gave us a chance. We got going there and got the touchdown after the missed field goal, got it back to 13-10. We held them again and then they come with the fake punt. What a gutsy call, what a great call on their part. That allowed them to stay on the field, and then they came up with a big play. But again, we’ve got to build on the good things and we have a lot of football left. It’s disappointing, but I think we still have some great young men. Everyone on that sideline. There’s not one person in there getting frustrated. Everyone was believing until that final second that we were going to be able to find a way to win it. That’s what it takes. No matter the situation, that’s what it takes. We can work with that.

Press Pool – Mike, you mentioned the fake punt and how big a momentum shift that was. Did you think you had all the momentum at that point. Talk about how much that hurt.

Coming of the score we were down 13-3. We get a real nice drive and Brodie made some plays. It was a third and long and you’re backed up. We had a blocker coming on from one side. They made a great play. That why they’re pretty good. And that’s why Coach Stoops is a pretty good coach.

Does this say anything about the gap, or lack thereof, between the #1 team in the nation and your program right now?

Well, I think you can look at it a little bit that way. But what we talk to the players about is the we’ve got to look at ourselves first before we even compare ourselves to anyone else. Let’s compare ourselves on “Are we getting better?” And there’s some things that we did do tonight that we did well on. Obviously there were some things that we didn’t. If you lose to a team like that you want to give your best effort. And I don’t want to take anything away from Oklahoma because they’re a great football team and they’re going to make a lot of teams make mistakes. But I’m talking about some of the pre-snap penalties, a couple of wrong formations, a couple things special teams wise. It just looked sloppy. That’s not how we go about doing things. We’ve got to grow up in a hurry. Each guy has to have that attitude and they will because they’re good football players and good young men.

Yeah, well … we had a couple chances there, a couple of long throws down the sideline where it looks like we could have easily been in bounds and we weren’t for whatever reason. We talked about that. Each game you are going to have your opportunities to make plays and you’ve got to take advantage of them. When you don’t, that’s what happens. Then all of sudden, you lose the momentum and get behind, and that’s not something you can do against a team like Oklahoma.

They’re resilient. I think defensively, to keep us in the game like that when we struggled. That talks a lot about our defense. That starts with Joe Kines. Our defense is going to play well each week. Offensively, the first thing I think about is Brodie. He got hit a bunch and was dragging himself off the ground. But he stayed with it and made some plays, even when he was hurting. As far as pulling the ball down and running, he kept us in the game We just didn’t execute well enough down inside there to try and get a touchdown.

Can you talk a little bit more about the defensive line? It seemed to do a good job of bottling up that Oklahoma running game.

They (OU) were good. They do a nice job in the running game. They’re big and they come off the football and they do it in a lot of different sets. They do it in some 3 and 4 wide receiver sets and kind of spread you out. That puts a premium on your defensive line to make plays. Because when you do that sometimes defensively …when your linebackers are spread out and out of position … we’ve got to have the line step up … Antawn Odom, “Chief” Nautyn McKay-Loescher, Anthony Bryant and Ahmad Childress and Jeremy (Clark) … all those guys have got to make plays. It’s going to be that way every week. If we can just try to stuff them at the line of scrimmage, it will be hard for them to find holes for their back to run in.

As good as the defense was, how disappointed are you in the big plays it gave up. I think 4 plays accounted for some 160 yards.

Yeah, there were some big plays. They (OU) do a nice job. They pick and choose the times when they’re going to take a chance for a big play. They threw the ball accurately when they had to. They hit a couple of the quick screens early when we had some blitzes on. Then they had the fake play off the quick screen that they hit a deep pass on. Those are things we all have to learn from. That’s the thing about playing defense. When you’re playing well, then all of a sudden you give up one big play. I thought our guys fought back, even defensively. They stayed with in. We’ve talked about this before with the players. You’ve got to have a short memory, especially back there in the secondary. You have to go on and continue to play with confidence. I thought our guys did that.

I’m not sure. We’ll look it. Our guys reacted to the screen and they sent the other guy deep. We didn’t react quick enough to that

Going into the season, from an execution standpoint, is there a certain place you expected to be right now, and where are you in relation to that.

We need to be better, better than tonight for sure. No, we’re not where we need to be. I’m not sure any game you’re going to execute like you want to. If you make enough plays … We talked to our offense about staying on the field, making some first downs. And then we’ll get into a little rhythm and we’re going to make plays. We’ve got some guys who can make plays. But if you get in a long yardage situation, 2nd, 3rd down and long, especially against this team (OU) because they’re real good on third down with their third down package. That makes it tough to keep drives going and sustain things. The one drive we scored on, I don’t think we had third down the whole drive.

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)

Reposting small portions of these pages is allowed on message boards and chat boards. All other reuse is prohibited.
© 2003 Druid City Online Publishing