Comments from Georgia Tech players Zamari Walton, Jalen Camp and Djimon Brooks following the Yellow Jackets' 73-7 loss to No. 1 Clemson Saturday at Bobby Dodd Stadium:
Cornerback Zamari Walton:
On the play of quarterback Trevor Lawrence:
“I think we had a couple of busted plays, but he’s a good quarterback and he was just finding the open guys. He was getting some tight balls in. I think he just made a couple of good throws that could have been stopped, but they were really good throws.”
On his interception:
“I was in man coverage. The guy went vertical and I had eyes on the ball. He just threw it up and I came down with it. Just practice and preparation. (Receiver Cornell Powell) was on the numbers, I knew he was doing a vertical route and (Lawrence) just so happened to throw the ball, and I just tried to do what I could to get some points on the board for the team.”
On what can be taken from the game:
“It was a good experience playing the No. 1 team in the country, but I think we can take a lot of stuff from this. They threw a lot of passes. We can just go into practice and come ready to practice tomorrow and do what we have to do. Go over the stuff we messed up on and just get ready for next week. It’s about us. Just come in ready to play Boston college next and get things done.”
On third-down defense:
“It’s been a bit of a struggle on third down, but we’ll get that done. We’ve really just got to stay how we are on first and second down and so third down, we’ve just got to toughen up and get those big stops.”
Wide receiver Jalen Camp
On his touchdown reception:
“We were in a squeeze formation. We knew, we’d been practicing all week, once (Ahmarean Brown) motioned across, he would take that safety, which would leave me one-on-one with the cornerback. It was just my job to lead (quarterback Jeff Sims) out, give Jeff a target to throw to.”
On responding to the loss:
“I think it starts tomorrow, coming in, watching the film, just seeing what went wrong, cleaning up the things. Seeing (that) there were good things that happened out there, so seeing the good things and kind of trying to build off of that. But I think it starts tomorrow watching film and, and kind of putting that behind us and working to get better.”
On what the offense could have done better:
“Whenever you’re playing a good team like Clemson, you can’t really hurt yourself. The margin of error is so small. So just going out there, each play has to be your best play and has to be executed top notch. We had a few plays here and there we did not do that and that hurt the outcome.”
On response of team leadership:
“As leaders on the team, it’s our job to control the mindset in the locker room, because after a big loss like this you have guys that, it’ll affect the way they go out through the week. Some guys who are normally in here getting treatment Monday through Friday, you’re like, ‘Man, that didn’t work last week so I’m not going to do that.’ So as leaders, it’s our job to keep the mindset positive and make sure everybody sticks to the process.”
On what was most concerning about Clemson’s defense:
“I don’t think we were so much concerned about Clemson, because we knew coming in, they were a good team. Just every week, regardless of our opponent, the coaches do a good job of helping us focus in on what we can do, because if we go out there and execute our game plan, it really doesn’t matter who we’re playing.”
Defensive tackle Djimon Brooks
On issues defending Clemson in the first half:
“It’s a good team and you’ve got to keep mistakes to a minimum. I feel like we got good pressure, we did good things, it’s just we got to find ways to get better.”
On processing a loss like this:
“It’s just like any other game we play. We come in Sunday, watch the film, we give ourselves 24 hours to go over the game, review what we did, what we can do better, then we flush it and we move on to the next opponent. That’s what we’ve got to do with this game: Find ways to get better off the film and get ready for our next opponent.”
On defensive lineman Antwan Owens playing his first game of the season:
“It’s always good seeing guys recover from whatever they have going on. Antwan’s a good person good player and it’s always fun to play beside him. I was proud to see him out there, proud for him.”
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