“I thought we got contributions out of all three phases. Certainly we played better defensively than we have the past three weeks. I was proud of them and encouraged by that. We left some out there offensively, but you have to give Virginia some credit. They are a pretty good defensive football team. Happy to get out of here 35-10, I don’t think anybody’s beat them like that all year.”
– Georgia Tech coach Paul Johnson
“If you can’t run the ball, it’s hard to win and we did a really good job taking the run away from them.”
– Johnson
“We tackled better and we tried to be aggressive. We played a lot of man coverage. Our defensive coaches had a good plan and we stacked the box pretty good. The bottom line is we beat some blocks and tackled better.”
– Johnson
“Even though we didn’t get many sacks, we did get pretty good pressure when we did bring blitzes.”
– Johnson
“I would expect them to play that way. That’s the way I expect them to play every week. I’m proud of the way they bounced back.”
– Johnson on Tech’s defense
“The wind, it was a pretty big deal. It was blowing hard. When you were into the wind, you didn’t want to throw the ball deep. Where it really affected you was the kicking game, it was just like in the first half we were against the wind and right on the fringe of a field goal. We went for it on fourth-and-10 …whatever it was. It was affecting the game.”
– Johnson
“I told Synjyn, ‘Hey, you’re a big boy, get behind your pads and get behind Shaq (Mason) and get six inches.’”
– Johnson on Synjyn Days’ run on fourth-and-1 from the Virginia 6-yard line
“We were just really doing what Coach Johnson tells us to do, our assignment. There wasn’t really anything magical that happened out there.”
– Tech B-back Synjyn Days
“Honestly, I wasn’t sure if I got it. Luckily, the offensive line got a push and I think Justin (Thomas) helped push me over the line. Big kudos to Justin.”
– Days on the fourth-and-1 play
“I thought I caught it. I felt like I caught it, but whatever the official says goes.”
– Tech safety Jamal Golden on his second interception
“We didn’t do anything different. We ran our base stuff and played more aggressively on the receivers than we had been playing. That was just the main focus in practice this week was getting off the field on third down.”
– Tech defensive tackle Adam Gotsis
“Throughout the week, we practiced that: if you can’t get the passer get your hands up.”
– Gotsis on batting down passes
“We had the mindset, we can go out there, we can shut down the run. We trust our secondary to make plays when they need to. We need to do our job up front and we hadn’t done that up until the last two weeks. Even last week, we hadn’t done that great of a job.”
– Georgia Tech defensive end KeShun Freeman
“It’s pretty good because it shows that hard work does pay off. Comparing this game to some of the other games, the effort was much better. The will to play was much better. As a whole, we played as one.”
– Freeman
“They got up on us early, and they made big plays on us. You can’t come from behind and surpass a team that has such a prolific ground attack, and at the same time you’re dropping passes or having penalties and being non-productive with the ball yourself.”
– Virginia coach Mike London
