Georgia Tech coach Paul Johnson's comments following the Yellow Jackets' 34-10 loss to Minnesota in the Quick Lane Bowl Wednesday night in Detroit in his final game as Tech coach.
» More: What Tech players said after Quick Lane Bowl
Opening statement
“Well, certainly, that’s not the way you would have scripted to end the season. But we don’t get to write our own endings sometimes. They played better than we did, coached better than we did and they won the game. We got off to a terrible start offensively and when we don’t move the ball and answer offensively, it becomes really difficult. So it was a game of limited possessions and they were scoring on all of theirs and we weren’t and you couple that with the fact that, special teams, we shanked three punts out of three. And I don’t think they ever punted. (Editor’s note: Johnson was correct.) So we never got to see their punter. But it’s just a disappointing way to end it out. I feel for the kids. I wish I could have done something to help them do better. I thought we had a good plan going in, but clearly, it wasn’t one that we could execute, so maybe it wasn’t so good.”
On if he expected Minnesota’s defense to be so strong up front:
“You never know when you play. I think that what happens is we struggled inside some but we also struggled on the perimeter. I mean, we didn’t block ’em anywhere. We got the ball out on the perimeter several times and it’s like one of those things, I’m sure when you look at it, it’s never as good or as bad as it seems. You look at the tape and it’s one thing here and one thing there, and in a game where you don’t get the ball as much and the other side’s scoring, you can’t miss your opportunities.”
On the emotion in the locker room after the game:
“I think that there’s emotion, but nobody wants to lose. And certainly those kids didn’t want to lose. But when you play a game, one team wins and one team loses and they played better than we did. So they deserved to win.”
On the one-sided outcome in his final game:
“I mean, certainly I wasn’t expecting that. but that’s life. You move on. I’ve played a lot of games. I’ve had a lot of games go our way and some that didn’t go our way. That’s part of it. If you’re going to get in the arena, you’re going to have some of those. It’s going to happen.”
On if he considered putting in backup quarterback Tobias Oliver:
“Yeah, when we had all of eight possessions, it’s hard to put somebody in. I didn’t feel like the first couple of series that it was anything TaQuon was doing. We had to get it fixed at other spots. And then once we got to the second half, when we started moving the ball, and that was hard, but we were moving the ball and getting it down on their end. We just couldn’t finish.”
On what he told the team after the game:
“We don’t get to write our own ending and everybody’s disappointed in the way it ended. I told them I was sorry I couldn’t find something better that they could do, that we could do to help them win the game and that I would miss them.”
On punter Pressley Harvin’s performance:
“Probably trying too hard. He was killing the ball in practice and pre (game). Sometimes you have a bad game. We didn’t play very well. I give them some credit, but we played horrendously. Maybe we were trying too hard.”
On giving his final post-game news conference:
“Contrary to what you guys said, I’ve never had a problem with the media. Really until I came to Atlanta. I’ve got about 8 million congratulatory things from everybody who’s ever covered me at any school I was at. So that may have been the perception you guys wanted to paint. You painted it. You did a good job with it. I don’t think that you ever asked me anything I didn’t answer or you asked for an interview that I didn’t give you. So write whatever the hell you want. That’s my final press conference.”
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