Everything Scott Satterfield said after Louisville’s loss to Kentucky.
Everything University of Louisville football coach Scott Satterfield said during his news conference after the Cardinals’ 45-13 Governor’s Cup loss to the University of Kentucky on Saturday:
Opening statement:
“Man, just a tough day for the red team out there today. I think the first half, our guys battled well. Big stop defensively right before the half, and then a nice touchdown run by Javian Hawkins got us back in the game. Second half just could never get anything going, and just kind of got wore down really. Bottom line, got wore down by their offensive line and their defensive line quite frankly. I think they kind of dominated the line of scrimmage in the second half and I think that was obviously the difference in the game. Offensively for us, you know, we’d get something going, we’d get a penalty, get it called back and just too many false start penalties, just negative plays, self-inflicted ones, offensively, to get anything going. Then defensively, just didn’t tackle good at all today, and then again, I think their offensive line just kind of put it to our d-line.”
On knowing Kentucky was going to run the ball and about missed tackles …
“I mean yeah, we knew they were gonna run the football, but it’s still hard to stop — so were all the teams we’ve played. Defensively, we’ve struggled quite honestly, we all know that, we struggle this year tackling. You know, we don’t have very much depth there on that side of the ball. We gotta get a lot stronger, and I think that was evident, up front, really, at the linebacker level. We had guys there tonight, several times, and just could not get them down, broke tackles, and then he’s gonna score, you know, because there’s nothing else there. You’re trying to put everybody in that box to stop the run, and once they clear that 5- to 6-yard area, there’s not anybody else there, and if you don’t make the tackle, it’s gonna be a touchdown. That’s why they had so many big plays.”
On if tackles are a matter of angles or strength…
“You know, I think it’s a probably a little bit of both. It’s technique, it’s strength, it’s the proper angle, proper fit, where you’re at. I mean, it’s all those things, and we gotta get a lot better.”
On what Lynn Bowden was able to do …
“He’s a good athlete, good player. I think for them, it starts up front. Their offensive line is very, very good, solid, one of the better lines we’ve faced this year. They work well together, they’re big, they’re strong. Then, what it ends up doing is putting one guy on the quarterback. He was able to get away several times today, there were some big runs. Once he gets an open field, it’s hard to tackle. Once he gets to that point, he’s going back to his days as receiver that he had earlier in the year, from being kick returner. He’s hard to handle in an open field for anybody, and he’s a special player. What they’ve been able to do the second half of their season with him there, what, I think they’ve lost one game maybe since he’s taken over as quarterback. So, they limit your possessions offensively, they control the game that way, and it’s worked out well for them.”
On was Lynn Bowden’s touchdown at the beginning of the third quarter a backbreaker…
“Yeah, well we grabbed some good momentum at the end of the first half. We stopped him on fourth down and then two plays later we score, you’re feeling pretty good about it at halftime. You’re down four. Second half we couldn’t get anything going offensively and they didn’t really slow down. It was just a bad half for us. Whether we got worn down, I just think when you break it down to one thing it’s really just the trenches on both sides of the ball. They won the game.”
On his message to the team after the loss…
“I told them that one game doesn’t define us for this season. We’ve had a very solid year, we’ve grown a lot. We got here in January … to right now. But I told them, when you go through tough times, you go through adversity like this. You have to learn from it. You taste it in your mouth. They have to carry that on, particularly to the young guys that are going to be back as we go through the offseason. You have those days you don’t want to go to weights, you don’t want to do things right, you think about this, what it feels like in this locker room, so that propels you to work harder next year. You know I hate it for the seniors, hate for them to go out like this against this team, but for the young guys, you have to learn from it and grow.”
On how they turn their focus heading into a bowl game …
“I think for us, we will come back in, we will be in for the next couple of days, exams start and we are going to give them about five to six days off. We will figure out where we are going to go play our bowl game. We will come back in and start practicing. It really, for us, is going to be a new season. Put this one to bed, and now, for us, these next three to four weeks we’ll work on fundamentals, try to get better as a football team, try to heal up and mend some spots and then try to get ready to go win a bowl game and carry that into the offseason. What we did this year, we got a lot of promise with this team, a lot to build off of. We will continue to do that, us coaches will be out recruiting basically for the next week and a half. We will be out on the road for that, but that is kind of our schedule for the next week and a half.”
On their struggle in the tackling game …
“Yeah, it was pretty bad today. It was bad last week, too. You know, Syracuse, you know, against this team right here you’re going to have a long day if you don’t tackle. They run hard, their backs (running backs) run hard, their quarterback can obviously run and it was one of those days. It’s frustrating when you have a guy there and you just don’t get him down. It’s frustrating, as coaches and probably as players as well, we have to get better frontal, we have to continue to learn and grow as a football team and get better in that aspect.”
This story was originally published November 30, 2019 at 5:36 PM.