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The University of Utah Athletics
Postgame Quotes vs. Arizona State
10/19/2019 8:41 PM | Football
Head Coach Kyle Whittingham
Opening Statement…
"What a great effort by our defense first of all. Congratulations to Zack Moss for becoming the all-time leading rusher in Utah football history when you consider the running backs that have come through this program. The talent level of those guys, many of whom played in the NFL for quite some time. That's just an outstanding achievement. We're proud of him and he did a great job tonight. Those yards were tough, hard fought yards. There were no easy yards there tonight and so I'm proud of Zack for who he is as a person. Probably more than anything else, he's just a great person. He'll have his degree in December and I just can't say enough good things about him so congrats to Zack."
On the defensive performance…
"Our defense was lights out tonight. They were 4-of-18 throwing the football with an interception and just 25 yards. The defensive backfield was outstanding. The pass defense starts at the line of scrimmage and our front four applied pressure all night long. They never let the quarterback get comfortable. I can't remember a better defensive effort, certainly not as of late. They were 2-of-13 on third down. They did run the ball a little bit, but that's a good back. I mean that Benjamin kid is a good back so they did get some things on us in the rush game, but it was just a very good performance by our players, players did a great job."
On the offensive performance…
"Offense did enough to win the game, we weren't as potent as we've been. We turned the ball over four times, and which is hard to win the game for four times, but we found a way so that's another credit to our defense. They were in bad field position several times and stiffened up and bowed their necks and got out of drives. Couple of the turnovers early in the first quarter were costly, they were in Arizona State territory – one in the red zone. We don't do that it might've been a much different situation in the game. But they made the plays Arizona State so credit them for getting those takeaways. We got to be better with our ball security."
On how great Bradlee Anae played tonight…
"Awesome. Three sacks. I told him before the game you're going get three sacks tonight and I'll be darn, he got them. He's in my estimation the best edge pass-rusher in the Pac-12 and he showed it tonight."
On the defensive line playing well the last three games and if there were any changes schematically…
"Just getting home more often and a couple of those games there we dropped eight quite a bit, in fact at Washington State there were a lot of drop eights. We turned them loose with all four-man rush at least tonight and we got some good pressures in tonight as well. Hitting the quarterback early. We hit him several times early and it appeared he never got comfortable and the numbers bared that out."
On penalties reversing roles vs. Arizona State…
"Well it does. It was nice to see us stem the tide on those penalty yards, we only had 45-yards of penalty yards. Which is about right, I mean that's going to be a typical game where you can say yeah, we can live with that. They had quite a bit. They were well into the 100s so that was something that helped offset those turnovers like you said. That turnover margin, which we lost 4-2 I think it was."
On how important it was to have Moss set the record tonight with family in attendance…
"We weren't really trying to gauge when we wanted to get it. It just worked out that way and fortunately for him and his family it was great it worked out that way, but we didn't try to choreograph that or orchestrate it. It was just how it turned out. Without the injury he would've got it several games ago, but with the injury it slowed him down for a period of time there. How it played out was just fantastic for his family to be part of that and take part in that."
On where to improve the most moving forward…
"Well, we'll have to look at the tape. Defensively there was not a whole lot of things to correct. On defense right now I'm telling you we tackled well, we pressured the quarterback, we covered, we did a lot of good things on defense. We kind of got into a lull there on offense. We started out really well up and down the field and then hit a little bit of a wall and didn't get much going for several drives in a row, so we'll have to take a look."
On worrying about crazy things happening during the game despite leading the statistical battle…
"Yeah, because that's their M.O. Their M.O. is to hang in there and be in the game in the fourth quarter and find a way to win it in the fourth quarter. That's how they've been winning this year. We almost played right into their hands because we were letting them hang around and they were hanging around to their credit. I had a sense, 'Okay we can't let this happen' because that's exactly how they want it to unfold. Fortunately, we were able to get a couple more touchdowns there at the end and another touchdown there at the end of the game."
Utah Player Quotes
#6 Bradlee Anae, DE
On how the defense played…
"Coach Scalley had a great defensive scheme set up for us and we just went out there and executed as a defense and it was a great night."Â
On what was working so well for the defense…
"Just like I said before, our preparation during the week has been practicing hard and it was a pretty deserving night for us."Â
On how ASU tried to block him…
"There was a lot of chip blocks from the running back, from the tight end and double teams. Just scheming wise, offensive and defensive lines were able to apply pressure and whatever it took to try to slow me down."
#99 Leki Fotu, DT
On how great it was to get the ball back for Zack Moss to break the record…
"It was pretty exciting and I think everyone was pretty stoked to come out and see him break it. It was an honor for us defenders to get the ball back for him and witness history."Â
On preparing for the ASU offense…
"Watching film from last year, we knew what type of offense they were especially this year with their quarterback. We just tried to keep him in the pocket and just us doing our job to apply pressure and to make him throw some bad throws."Â
On how the defense picked their game up after seeing injuries on the offensive side of the ball…
"In games like this we knew the defense was going to have to step up big time, especially from the results last year and what they did to us on the defense. So we knew we had to help out the offense the best way we can and tonight I think we did that."Â
#2 Zack Moss, RB
On how he feels after breaking the record and if he was worried he wasn't going to get there tonight…
"Honestly right now, I just feel grateful. I knew the defense was going to get the ball back somehow, someway so I wasn't really worried about that and I just wanted to make sure we got this win. If I have 30 yards, 40 yards it doesn't matter as long as we got the win."Â
On enjoying the last touchdown run…
"Yeah we finally got a crease and it was tough sledding all night but we finally got the crease and we just kept going and that's what we wanted to do. Just keep competing for all four quarters."Â
On having his parents here tonight…
"Yeah, I mean I was pretty emotional at the beginning of the game just having my mom here. The last time she came out I was injured so it was just special to have her, my dad and my family out here for this one."Â
#55 Nick Ford, OL
On what the offensive line was trying to do to open it up for Moss…
"I would say for the most part it was us going through the fundamentals. You could see clearly on the field that they loaded the box and brought as many people as they could to stop Zack and apply pressure on Tyler. As an offensive line we just did everything we can to bring everyone up and try to make everybody miss."Â
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On the emotions heating up during the game…
"We both have hard-nosed play styles and we came out and our main focus was who's going to be more physical. The couple times they hit a couple of our players it really fired us up because we really did take every single block personal and every single run personal so it was definitely an emotionally filled game."Â
Arizona State Quotes
Head Coach Herm Edwards
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On the excessive number of penalties...
"First of all, I told Coach Whittingham that I'm embarrassed with our football team when it came to the fouls. We lost our composure and I don't believe in doing that kind of stuff. I've never been involved in a game where a team had 12 fouls. For some reason we just lost our composure. That's not the way we play and I apologized to him."
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On what decided the game...
"You have to give Utah a lot of credit. They put a lot of pressure on our quarterback. They found ways to get to him and he was under duress most of the day. Eno (Benjamin) ran at times pretty well. Defensively, we kind of held in there for a while. That missed field goal took some of the air out of us. We thought we could get it to one score, and then they hit that big run on us and that was about it. We were pretty much done because it was going to be tough to come back down by 18 points against a good defense on the road. But you have to give these guys a lot of credit."
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On where his team goes from here...
"I told our football team that we're going to find out a lot about ourselves this next week. We've got the rest of the season left. We've got to find out a way to regroup and head down to Los Angeles and play a football team that won on Thursday. The second half of the season will tell us a lot about where we're at. They hit us in the mouth and they beat us up. Credit to them."
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On his team's inability to score...
"It was missed opportunities. We couldn't convert on third down. On third down tonight we were 2-for-13. If you can't move the ball you aren't going to score, and that's the game. We couldn't move the ball. We ran the ball 33 times for 111 yards but we couldn't do anything in the pass game."
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"They got us in some third and longs. Penalties. A couple of times we had some drives going and then we had a penalty. We got turnovers on defense early in the game and did nothing with them. We got three turnovers and we didn't do anything. It was one of those games where you have to give these guys a lot of credit. They have a fantastic defense and they didn't let us score."
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On his team's youth...
"We don't want to make excuses. We don't want to do that, but our youth on both sides of the ball showed up today. It just did. We've been waiting for that to happen, we were hoping it wouldn't happen, but I'm not naïve enough to think that it's not going to. This was a big football game. You want to be in these moments because you find out a lot about your football team. Hopefully we can get in more positions like this the rest of the season."
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Jayden Daniels - QB
On Utah's defense...
"We knew coming in that they were a good defense. There's just some things we have to fix. We didn't have our best game today but you can't dwell on it. They are just a relentless defense. They are going to get after the quarterback. It's just a stout defense that we played today."
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On not being able to score after turnovers...
"Really, you just look at the penalties. That's what killed us, the penalties. They are a very stout defense. We're not a very penalized team. But they are already a good team, so the free yards we gave them just kept adding up."
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Kobe Williams – DB
On what caused his team problems...
"We've never had a game where we've been penalized that much. Those guys never really drove it on us. We were just trying to play solid defense and keep it going, but those penalties killed us and got us out of whack a little bit. That's a tough team that's very physical. They've got a great run game. We only allowed 14 points right up until the end."
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What the defense did well...
"Just playing our ball and playing physical. Just bringing that to match them with what they are trying to do, which is running the ball. We just tried to keep it going and then Zack (Moss) got that run at the end."
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