On Mike Major’s resignation: “Obviously, I am very saddened by it but life goes on and things don’t always turn out the way you want them to. This season hasn’t turned out the way we wanted it to. Mike is a class guy and is a very courageous guy. I appreciate him a lot as a friend and have appreciated his association throughout the years. Hopefully, he will stay around awhile and be director of football operations.
“I have had to let people go in places I have coached before but it has never been someone I have coached with this long and had this close of an association with, so that is hard.
“We need to go to an eight-man front. If you look at the teams that are similar to us in our conference, South Carolina and Mississippi State, they play an eight-man front and have a good scheme for coverage behind it, but you have to stop the run first in this league and I think that is the best way to do it.”
On the status of the other defensive coaches: “We will address all of that after the season. Certainly Coach Major had a tremendous amount of input on who got hired on that side of the ball when he came here. That is my job to evaluate the staff yearly and when the year is over I will sit down and do that. I will certainly let whomever I choose to be the new coordinator have a lot of input on that.”
On the Vanderbilt game: “It was a terrific disappointment. Watching that film yesterday was a gut check. We just had so many missed opportunities, at least offensively, that it was really hard to watch.
“There were a number of outstanding performances in the Vanderbilt game. I thought on the defensive side particularly there were some young guys that really played well–Leonard Burress, Octavius Bond, Anthony Wajda. Quentus Cumby had the big interception that got called back but it was still a good play. The same young guys have been playing all along-[Jeremy] Caudill, [Otis] Grigsby, Dewayne Robertson. On the offensive side we can move the ball well, we are leading the league in offense, we just are not making plays down there when we have to make them. I thought Jared’s [Lorenzen] fumble going into the end zone really hurt us, but when you watch it on film and slow it down, it was really close. It was just an effort mistake. Chad Scott ran well and our offensive line played well.”
On Tennessee: “Well, they are really talented and it is a typical Tennessee defense. I have mainly looked at their defense; I haven’t really watched much of their offense. They have big fast guys up front and fairly good-sized guys in the back that cover pretty good. They really had a big game against Arkansas this weekend.
“They have jelled pretty good. They have changed quarterbacks and I think [Casey] Clausen has played more steadily for them and that is probably the biggest thing. Defensively, even their early games when they were struggling, they were playing good defense. They are very talented on the defensive side of the ball.
“We are just going to go compete as hard as we can. We haven’t beaten Tennessee in a long time and it is a rivalry game. It would make our season to go down there and do that. It would be a big boon for us and so that is what we are going to try to do.
“A lot of our kids have not been in the situation where they have to make the play to win the game and they just try too hard. As they get older and more experienced it will be easier for them.”
On the defense as compared to the rest of the SEC: “We are pretty close. We are a lot closer than it appears on the surface. We have about 30 people right now who have been suiting up on the defensive side of the ball. Very few of those are seniors and very few of those are walk-ons. Plus, we have a few people who aren’t suiting up who are pretty good players, Dennis Johnson being a main one. I have to make a good decision about who we hire and turn it over to them and let them do a good job. We are very close and a lot of good things can happen here.”
On special teams: “We have some young kickers and punters that can come along and play. Our deep snapper was young this year. We will probably revisit some of those things and see how to get better at it.”
On the injury of Dennis Johnson in the season opener: “It was pretty big. He was one of the best players we have ever recruited around here. He was going into his junior year and at the point in his career where he was physically mature enough to make a difference. Last season, he was second team All-Conference. That is a pretty big loss for us.
“We have dropped nine balls in the end zone this year. We have lost four games by a total of 14 points and we have won two. If we take care of business on that kind of stuff, we are in a bowl game right now. So we aren’t very far away.”
