Coach Hugh Freeze sat down with the media immediately following Auburn’s loss to Arkansas. These are the things that he said, with player quotes below.
Opening statement…
“First, our thoughts are with Champ (Anthony) and just a difficult injury. He’s playing at a really high level for us, one of our leaders, and I know our medical team will take great care of him as he goes through whatever the process is that you need to repair that injury. I don’t have the words. It’s sickening, sickening that we can’t take care of the football on offense, and I’ve got to get that fixed. We had four third and ones, they had three third and fours. I thought our defense, other than third-and-longs… if we could get off the field on third-and-longs that defensive effort would have been remarkable, truthfully, but they got two third-and-long conversions on penalties and then converted five of eight third-and-longs. We can’t do that. They played hard on defense, and I know the offense guys played hard, but it’s just discouraging.
You have one possession in the first half, but you don’t turn the ball over as you’re moving it. We turned it over on the Arkansas 29, 0 and 22nd. I don’t know how many points they got off of that. It had to be some, obviously, possession time in the first half when you’re doing that, it’s atrocious. It’s miserable to watch that.”
Jalen McLeod, LB
On how tough it is for the defense to recover from offensive turnovers…
“It’s not really tough at all. We take those opportunities every run, but, every time we step on that field, it’s an opportunity to be great and show how good we are. We’ve got to embrace that. We’ve got to embrace that this team, so we’ve got a head on our shoulders every time we got out there. We cannot move around, and if we move around, we are going to get blown out by 30.”
On how important Champ Anthony is to the team…
“Champ is a great spirit. He is great. He brings that energy. That is Champ. You can ask him, he is the energy guy and to see him go down and seeing that smile on his face juiced us up a little bit. It is disappointing that we did not get the win for him.”
Sylvester Smith, S
On what he thinks of today’s performance…
“I just want to start by giving all the glory to God because without Him and the opportunity to do what we do, I would not be able to do what I love and we would not be able to come out and play at the level that we play at. I just wanted to start by saying thank you to the man above.
On the defensive side of the ball, we put together a good game. We left some plays out there, but for the most part, I think we had a solid performance.”
On what he thinks they need to do better on three and longs…
“On third-and-longs, we just have to be more locked-in. I think that as a player you hear third-and-long and think it’s kind of easy to not be a 110% locked into the play because its third-and-long, but that comes back and bites you sometimes. You have to play every down like it’s a fourth down. We need to be more attentive to those situations.”
KeAndre Lambert-Smith, WR
On the loss at home…
“Like I said last time, no one likes losing, so it was a tough loss. We’ve got to get back to the drawing board, correct the corrections and come out here and try and knock off a top-20 team next week.”
On the turnovers and penalties…
“It’s frustrating, but we aren’t going to point any fingers. I feel like everybody plays a part in that. Everybody has to protect the ball as a team, receivers, offensive line, quarterbacks, whoever has possession of the ball at the time. I think we’ve got to get better at that. We’re going to look at the corrections and go back to work.”
On his connection with Payton Thorne…
“That’s who I got all my reps with when I first got here in the summer, so we’ve always had a connection since day one. We just made plays in the second half.”
Kayin Lee, CB
On the early penalties and third and longs…
“It’s very frustrating, but we’re still young. We know we are going to make mistakes. We need to play the next play. That’s something we have to go clean up and practice – our third-down plays and our third-down calls. Just execute even more.”
On the third downs kind of snowballing and it reaching a point where it may become a bit of a mental challenge…
“You could say that. I believe so sometimes, but we just have to keep fighting and play the next play after that.”
Philip Blidi, DL
On how difficult it is to play when there is constant turnovers…
“It’s hard. As a competitor, you work all week, you watch a lot of film on this, on the teams, and you get to the game and you have these mistakes. But at the end of the day, it was really a lot of self-inflicted mistakes. They’re (Arkansas) a good team, too. We knew that we had to do our jobs coming into this game and went through the things that we didn’t do the week before (against New Mexico). That’s something we didn’t get done, but we’re going back to work. We’ll get back to work this week and have a lot of things ahead of us. We have to keep working. We have to stay together.”
On how he gets the message across to his teammates that this season can still be saved…
“That was the biggest message coming out after this game – we have a lot of football ahead of us. We have great opportunity next week. They’re (Oklahoma) going to be a team that’s going to play hard. We’re coming off a loss and have a lot of things to prove. We have a lot of things to work on and the biggest message is to get back in the film room, get back in practice, get back to healthy and get back to work. We can be a really, really great team. If we all lock-in, do our jobs and just work on the things that are hurting us right now. The biggest message is to keep on working. That’s something that we are going to put our foot in and do for the rest of this season. Start next week with a Top 25 team.”
Payton Thorne, QB
On his conversations with Hank (Brown) after the game…
“I haven’t really talked to him yet, but it’s not easy. He’s a young guy. I’m going to be talking to him about staying off his phone, quite honestly. There’s a lot of stuff out there and that stuff is not important at the end of the day. What’s important is he watches film, and we watch film together, what we have to say for our team and for our offense. That’s what matters at the end of the day.”
On how he prepared himself at practice to potentially be called upon today…
“It was a new experience and gave me a new viewpoint of things. Now, I believe everything happens for a reason. If you take the right mindset, there’s always something to learn. Just picking up from what I needed to see this past week from a different vantage point. I feel like I learned a lot over the past 10 days or so.”
Jeremiah Wright, WR
On the conversations in the locker room after the game…
“Just being tested. Coach (Freeze) has been talking about that all week. ‘How are you going to respond to a test?’ We didn’t pass the test today, so it’s back to the drawing board. Go back and practice. Fix our mistakes and be tested again next week.”
On how the offensive line handled the QB switch in the game…
“I feel like we did a pretty good job at handling that. We have to be ready to handle that throughout the season. Like we did today, Hank (Brown) started out the first half, then we came back with Payton (Thorne) in the second half. The O-line has to be ready to maintain and do our job. That’s all. Focus on the call that a quarterback gives us, not matter who’s back there.”
On the team’s leadership within…
“Just keeping the team together and holding each other accountable and not letting anyone go out and put the blame on anyone. It’s not a blame game. It’s a team effort. There are 11 players on the field. No matter if you were on the field, or not, we still hold each other accountable. We don’t let anyone talk about each other or point fingers.”
Transcript via Auburn Athletics.
