CFP National Championship:
Georgia vs TCU
Monday, January 9, 2023
Inglewood, California, USA
SoFi Stadium
TCU Horned Frogs
Coach Sonny Dykes
Max Duggan
Dee Winters
Postgame Press Conference
Georgia – 65, TCU – 7
THE MODERATOR: We’re joined by TCU head coach
Sonny Dykes, along with student-athletes Max Duggan and
Dee Winters.
COACH DYKES: Well, tough one tonight. I think anybody
that saw that could see that we certainly didn’t play our
best. You’ve got to give Georgia a ton of credit. They did
a tremendous job of getting their team ready to play.
Those guys came out and played exceptionally well.
They’ve got a very good football team. Really talented.
And the thing that, again, I was impressed about Georgia
coming into the game is they played hard all the time and
they played well, and really had a lot of pride in their
performance in the way they played, and you could see it
today.
They did an excellent job. I thought their quarterback really
played an outstanding game. Tight end obviously played
an outstanding game as well.
And we just, look, we’ve got a good football team and it
was a tough one tonight.
We’ll evaluate what happened. Couldn’t be more proud of
our football team, though. And especially these two young
men that are up here with me right now just for what
they’ve meant to TCU football and just what kind of people
they are. I think we’re all disappointed that we didn’t play
better and we didn’t coach better and we didn’t represent
our team better than we did tonight.
But we’ll learn from it. And next time we’re on a stage like
this we’ll handle it better.
THE MODERATOR: Questions for the student-athletes.
Q I know that this isn’t the result you wanted today. But
when you look back on this season, after being picked
seventh in the Big 12 and everybody kind of overlooked
you guys, how do you put into words finishing 13-2 with the
Fiesta Bowl championship win?
MAX DUGGAN: I think Coach Dykes said it. Tonight did
not go the way we wanted it to. Disappointed in that
aspect. But tonight isn’t going to take away from this
season and what we were able to do as a program.
I don’t think that’s going to define all the good memories
and all the success that we had this season to project and
put this program in the right direction and moving forward.
I think that was the biggest thing of this program’s moving
in the right way in the right direction. There were so many
great memories this year. Obviously we’re disappointed
tonight, but not going to let this take away from a
remarkable season.
DEE WINTERS: I think he pretty much hit the nail on the
head. This is something we definitely weren’t looking
forward to. But looking back, it was a long journey. And I
think all the guys kind of appreciate Coach Kaz and Coach
Dykes coming in and showing us the ropes of how to be a
winner. And we’re excited to have them the next couple of
years.
COACH DYKES: I’ll say this to add to that, too. I think as
Max said, a loss like this stings. But we talked about this a
little bit in the locker room a second ago, just about how far
we’ve come in a year and what these guys have been able
to accomplish really when nobody outside of our locker
room expected it or really believed in them.
They always believed in themselves and they always rolled
their sleeves up and worked incredibly hard and competed
every single second of every day. And you couldn’t ask for
more than that.
Again, I’m disappointed we didn’t make a better show
tonight because that’s not indicative of who we are. But
we’ll look back — it’s going to take some time for the sting
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to go away, I assure you — but we’ll look back on the
season and build on it from here.
Q Were they that much better than you? That outcome we
were not expecting at all. Were they that much better than
you?
DEE WINTERS: You know, defensive flaws, they didn’t
really do anything special. We just kind of beat ourselves
up. Kind of just executed on our mis-alignments and kept
scoring on those.
We just kept beating ourselves up, just overthinking, trying
to run too fast to the ball and things of that nature.
MAX DUGGAN: They’re a great team. Everybody knows
how good they’ve been this year and prior years, and we
knew that. I think tonight was one of those nights where at
least offensively we couldn’t get anything rolling. They
were playing well on defense. We were shooting ourselves
in the foot. I was making bad decisions. I wasn’t executing
well and not putting us in a position to score some points
and move the ball.
But they’re a great team. Obviously that’s not what we
thought was going to happen or wanted to happen or what
we worked for. But it was just one of those nights where
we couldn’t really do much on our end.
Q I know it’s hard right now in this moment to kind of grasp
it all, but when you look back at this team, what are you
going to remember about the character and resiliency you
displayed all season long?
MAX DUGGAN: I think that’s the best thing about being
part of a football team and especially this one. I mean,
long pass this time, we’ll probably not remember the wins
and losses or stuff like that. But we’ll remember the men in
that locker room, the guys we got to grow up with, that we
learned more about.
When stuff got tough and things kind of got hard, you saw
what type of men that we’ve got in our locker room that
continue to fight, believe. It’s such a fun group to go to
work with. It’s the little stuff that you’ll remember about this
season. Probably less about the wins and losses, but what
great men we’ve got.
Q Max, how much was Georgia’s pressure, was that the
most pressure you’ve kind of seen all year in terms of how
consistent and quick they were?
MAX DUGGAN: I mean, they were good up front. I don’t
know. I don’t really know compared to stuff coming up in
this year or this season. They had some blitzes, some
pressures they got through. I held onto the ball a little bit
too long, wasn’t getting through reads, was kind of causing
trouble for the O line myself. It was kind of on me.
But they had some good schemes. Again, going back to
the stuff we were doing that we weren’t executing well, and
they were playing well on their end, and that isn’t a great
recipe for success.
Q This hasn’t happened to you. How can you describe the
feeling, the frustration early in the game when you figured
out what you’re so good at wasn’t there tonight?
DEE WINTERS: You know, it was just something that we
really had to finish, like you said, but Coach Kaz did a great
job just trying to tell us always have that next-play
mentality, to come out and just compete. And you go from
there.
MAX DUGGAN: I think when stuff like that happens you’ve
got to go back to your roots, go back to your values, the
culture that we set. It was frustrating. Haven’t been in a
situation like that. But you’ve got to dig yourself out of a
hole. You’ve got to believe.
I know going forward, this program is going to get on this
stage again. And if we’re ever in a situation like that, I
know we’re going to be able to get out of it, have some
success. And I’m pretty positive in that.
THE MODERATOR: Questions for Coach.
Q You said you guys are going to sit down and evaluate
what’s next. I guess, is there any value you can take from
this game kind of showing you and the staff how much
further you guys need to go to kind of really become a
championship program?
COACH DYKES: Yeah, for sure. You know, that’s the
good thing about, I think, our program and really our
coaching staff, and we’ll look in the mirror. It’s what I told
our players afterwards. We have to look in the mirror.
It all starts with me and works down from there. And the
thing that we did, we had a formula that worked where we
played pretty well for 14 straight weeks. And we carried
the same formula into this game. We didn’t do anything
different.
There was no preparation that was any different. There
was no — I didn’t have any sense that our players were in a
different place. Their preparation was good.
There was zero difference between preparation for this
game than there was for the Michigan game 10 days ago
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or nine days ago, whenever that was.
So I think what happens sometimes is you get on a run like
we’ve been on. You play a lot of games like we played this
year that are emotional games and games that you put
everything you have into it to win it.
You did it nine days ago against a Michigan team where
we had to hold on and fight and scratch for every inch
against a very good football team and found a way to win.
And got out there tonight and Georgia did a great job, got
off to a fast start.
We answered. Cut it to 10-7. And then for whatever
reason it went downhill from there.
We’ll sit down as a staff and begin trying to figure out what
happened tomorrow and make sure it doesn’t happen
again and learn from it.
I think that’s the best thing that happens when you face
adversity like this, you make mistakes and you learn from
them. And you get better as a program. You get better as
a coach. You get better as players. And the next time you
handle the situation a little bit better.
But our preparation was really good. I thought we had two
of the better practices, when we were in full pads, than we
had had all year. And to be able to have those — and it
was week 22 for us, I believe — for the players to practice
like they did 22 weeks into the season, it’s a real credit to
those guys.
And, again, I don’t know what happened tonight. We ran
into a really good team and we did some very
uncharacteristic things and it snowballed on us. And that
hasn’t happened to us one time this year that we haven’t
been able to fight our way back and figure out a way to get
back in the game or win the game. We weren’t able to do it
tonight.
So we’ll self-evaluate and make corrections and go from
there.
Q You mentioned that this sting is going to last for a while
and you’ll get back to work evaluating this tomorrow. But
when you think about how you carry a thing like this into
the future for this program, what’s the next month or so
look like for you as you put together a plan to do that?
COACH DYKES: Look, our guys have been going, we’ve
been practicing pretty much since the end of July. And we
have a bunch of young people that are 18 to 22 years old
that have really poured everything they have into it.
They’re been home one weekend since the football started
to see their family.
So these guys have paid a lot into this run and into having
this kind of success. They’ve given everything they have,
made a ton of sacrifices. We start school here pretty
quickly.
We’ve got a good plan on how to give our guys some rest.
We have a significant group of newcomers that start
school, that actually report tomorrow, believe it or not.
Show up on our campus and go through orientation to start
moving into the dorms tomorrow.
So no rest for the weary. We’ll get back. We’ll start
helping those players get settled and they’ll start school a
week from Tuesday and here we go.
So we’ve got to give these guys a little bit of a break. It will
be a little bit of a different schedule maybe than it normally
is because of that.
We’ll wrap up recruiting. Still have three or four recruits
that we’re chasing, and hopefully get those guys on board
and just continue to build and learn from tonight and,
again, make sure it doesn’t happen again.
Q Can you just describe what this entire run has done for
our city of Fort Worth and the university in general?
COACH DYKES: It’s one of the things that’s most
disappointing. Look you hate it for your players and your
fans that traveled all the way to LA. They really invested in
our program. I know flights were expensive. I know tickets
were expensive. I know all of it was hard to do. And our
fans answered the call every single time we asked them to
do something, they’ve done it.
And we’re all very appreciative. We’re disappointed for
them. We feel like we let them down with our performance
tonight.
We certainly wouldn’t be where we are without them. And
wish we would have represented TCU and the football
program better tonight than we did.
But, again, we’re proud of what we’ve done, proud of them,
appreciate their support of us. It’s been a fun year. It’s
been a long year. I think all of us probably need to catch
our breath tomorrow and get back to the grind stone here
pretty quickly.
Q You used the word “uncharacteristic.” What’s at the top
of the list that was uncharacteristic?
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COACH DYKES: It was interesting. You look at early in
the game and we really protected the quarterback well
when we dropped back to throw. It got worse as the game
went along. Our threat of running the football consistently
went away.
But we felt pretty good after a series or two that we could
drop back and throw the ball and we could create some
things offensively. Felt like we could also run the ball.
We just dug such a big hole for ourselves. We never could
quite get them stopped defensively. We never could get
out of our own way on offense.
First play of the game for us was a false start. We
probably have had three false starts all year. You know
what I mean? And probably over a thousand plays, maybe
had three false starts. First play of the game we have a
false start tonight.
Just things like that. That’s just not who we are. We’re not
that kind of football team. If we make those mistakes we’re
not going to win football games. We’re certainly not going
to be playing for a national championship making those
kind of mistakes.
And I thought we had some busts defensively, some
alignment busts, assignment busts. We cut some
receivers loose. Again, that’s not something we’ve done.
I think in some ways, our guys, we got in the locker room a
little bit before the game. You could sense some tension in
the room. And we’ve got to try to not have that. We
haven’t had that in the past. We’ve been pretty loose.
The guys were really excited to play, really fired up to play.
I thought we were probably just a little too fired up, maybe
a little too emotional. And as a result did some things that
we don’t normally do. I just don’t think we were in the state
of mind that we needed to be in.
And we’ve got to do a better job trying to get our players
there. And obviously failed in that regard. And, again, we’ll
learn from this mistake and hopefully address it and make
sure it doesn’t happen again.
Q Did you feel like — earlier you talked about preparation
and how things were working for 14 weeks. Did you feel
like — I’m not sure if you were saying this — but did you feel
like you should have altered from that for this game?
COACH DYKES: I don’t know. I think it worked for us in
the past. Did you have a second part to that question? If
you did I didn’t mean to cut you off.
But let me answer this. I felt we had had success. We had
played probably close to our capabilities throughout the run
that we went on this year. And you know, we didn’t want to
change that. We felt it kind of got us to this point as a
program and we didn’t really want to change it and we
were comfortable with that preparation style.
Q Do you feel like this loss taught you anything about what
you need to do as a coach to prepare?
COACH DYKES: For sure. Certainly. We’ll certainly sit
down as a staff and watch the film, talk about, go through
every single call we made in the game and say, okay, look,
why didn’t this work? Where did this go wrong? What
could we have done better?
And talk about preparation. Talk to some of our players,
get some feedback from those guys about how they felt
coming into the game, Did we feel like there was too much
of the game plan, not enough in the game plan? Just all
those things.
I know leading up to today, I know our guys felt very
comfortable about the preparation, felt like it was as good
as we had had. As I said, the practices were very good.
Felt like the game plan was good coming in, and clearly it
wasn’t what it needed to be and clearly we didn’t execute it
the way we wanted to.
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