Miami Hurricanes Football: Miami HC Mario Cristobal
Postgame Press Conference Transcripts: Texas A&M
Sat., Sept. 17, 2022
Kyle Field | College Station, Texas
Opening statement…
“Appreciate you being here. Obviously, played hard. Played physical, played tough. Mistakes, miscues and certainly gave ourselves a chance to at least tie the game there in the end, but not good enough. We’ve got to get better. Part of the fact that we know how to compete, or at least we showed that we can compete in a difficult environment, but competing in itself is just not enough. You’ve got to execute. You’ve got to prevent shooting yourself in the foot on some things. But we have a high-character team, competitive character is high. And we’ve got to get back to work and get better.”
On the muffed punt by CB Tyrique Stevenson…
“He made a poor decision, one that I’m sure…you carry that one with you. That’s very uncharacteristic of him. He’s been a good decision maker and certainly, we gave them the football and they ended up scoring the touchdown.”
On red zone efficiency…
“Down there four times, three field goals, one blocked as well, correct? We had a couple of penalties down there as well. We had an illegal man downfield. That certainly hurt us, put us behind the sticks. It’s not good enough. If you’re going to get down in the red zone against a team like this at their place, with as good as their defense is, you’ve got to score touchdowns and try to put them behind a little bit, make them chuck the ball around a little bit.
“Our d-line was playing well. Our d-line was getting after them, putting some pressure on the quarterback. A couple runs popped out, but bottled them up for the most part. Certainly, the defense, I thought they played a really good game. Offensively, we had our moments. But we had our miscues. We had some dropped balls. We had some penalties, especially on the next-to-last drive where we had to punt, gave ourselves a chance with the defense playing great again, gave us the last possession. But not good enough.”
On the play of QB Tyler Van Dyke…
“I mean, we’ve got to catch the ball too now. There were some things he did really, really well. Sometimes he was flushed out of there, avoided pressure, avoided sacks, got rid of the ball, made some good decisions in the run game as well. Tried to run him a couple times, they were squeezing the back side so much. But, we’ve got to do a better job as a supporting cast to give him an opportunity.
“He made some really good throws. Sometimes we had some good catches, sometimes we didn’t. We don’t point fingers in there. We just don’t do that. We played hard. We played physical. We played with intensity. And we competed like crazy. Against good opponents in tough environments, you’ve got to avoid making the mistakes that we made. You’ve got to avoid putting yourself in those down-and-distance situations. You’ve got to avoid making a mistake on a ball that bounces on a punt. We’ll learn. We’ll learn and we’ll grow. And bottom line is no one’s going to pick us up. No one’s going to help us. We’ve got to help ourselves. That’s what Hurricanes do. That’s the whole focal point.”
On the decision to kick a field goal down 17-3…
“I thought we needed points. I thought we needed a little bit of momentum. We had been down there, had one blocked, had missed another field goal as well before we were just outside the red zone. Thought we were going to get some points on the board and make it a productive drive.”
On WR Xavier Restrepo’s injury…
“It’ll be a while. It’ll be a minimum of six weeks.”
On having 27 first downs without a touchdown…
“It’s hard. It’s hard to imagine. Hard to imagine. We had some really, really nice runs. Had a couple chunk plays in the passing game and just missed opportunities. Give them credit – that’s a good football team. They’ve got a lot of really good players. Their d-line is outstanding. They called a good game on both sides of the ball. And I thought our guys handled the environment well. I don’t see anything that was shown by our opponent that confused us. We practiced what we saw. We executed well on some plays and other times, just some real critical errors, errors that it’s going to be tough to overcome. You’re fortunate enough to get a possession at the end of the game to try and tie it when you make some of the mistakes that we made.
“Now, going back to the team in terms of effort and toughness, I love it. We go hard. And there’s no quit in the team and now, real is real. We’ve got to get better. Playing a tight game doesn’t automatically make you more successful next week. We’ve got to go to work. We’ve got to look in the mirror and face reality. We gave up some opportunities that you just can’t give. And we did that. That’s upsetting. It should burn. It needs to burn. It needs to feel really, in a way, motivational knowing we could be a good team but becoming a good team is not just going to happen. We’ve got to keep working. We’ve made some progress, but we could have coached better tonight. We could have played better tonight. We could have executed better tonight. We’ll get back and we’ll get back to work.”
On the play of the defense…
“That front seven, particularly the front four, put a lot of pressure on them, made them uncomfortable. Even some of the throws they made were under duress. They were consistently in the backfield. They got us on a couple of their gap schemes. They ran counter and split zone, a couple wide zones, they hit as well, but aside from that, made some negative plays. Certainly, I think we had three or four sacks, but several quarterback hits and made it uncomfortable for the quarterback and allowed our coverages to play tighter. That goes hand-in-hand. Proud of the entire team, of our effort, not the end result. Back to process.”
On how the team rebounds from this game…
“There is no choice. It’s really not a choice. We’ve worked very hard to become a competitive football team and to have an opportunity…on a big stage like this and we came up short. There’s no sugarcoating that. And I’m not going to sugarcoat that. We have to go and get better and eliminate issues that hurt us in this game. And also, the things that we do well to get better at them and go forward. No one else is going to pick us up. We’ve got to do it ourselves.”
