Ole Miss coach Pete Golding had the perfect description of Saturday afternoon in Gainesville, Fla. for his team.
“That was an old-fashioned butt-whooping right there.”
There’s no better way of explaining what happened in the 52-28 loss to No. 21 Florida. Of course, Golding had more to say than that in his post-game press conference. Here’s everything else he said:
Pete Golding, Head Coach
On his overall assessment of the loss to Florida…
What an awesome environment. I thought Sumrall, Buster and all those guys had their guys ready to play. That was an old-fashioned butt-whooping right there. I thought in all three phases, especially in the first half, we just couldn’t really get anything going offensively. Third down was a struggle. Defensively, we lost leverage, had missed tackles and gave up explosives in the run game and pass game. I didn’t think we executed really well on special teams either. Kickoff was an issue all night in the return game, and it started with bad field position. When you play a really good football team that’s coached really well in a tough environment, you have to play better in all three phases, and that starts at the top. We have to do a better job coaching them, and obviously we didn’t do the things necessary Monday through Friday to play a really good football team. We’re going to have a lot more of these. I just left the locker room, and I told them after the LSU game, “Look, this is one game. This doesn’t define your season.” It’s a what-have-you-done-for-me-lately business, and it’s no different tonight. The sun is going to come up tomorrow, and we’re going into a bye week. We really have to evaluate the things we’re doing well and need to continue doing well. We have a lot of issues right now in all three phases that we have to address, starting with coaching and playing, to put a better product on tape because that wasn’t good enough.
On whether the defense can turn things around after allowing 300 rushing yards…
I think so. There are points in time when you have to make decisions. You have to make a decision that, “You know what? I’m not OK with that, and that’s not OK.” That starts at the top for us. We put some things on tape that we have to clean up, and we’re going to continue to get exposed as long as they’re on tape. I think it’s a good time for the bye week for us to really evaluate how we’re doing it. The guys who are doing it, are they doing it consistently enough? Do we have some guys we need to look at to play better football? I told our group that I love our group. I think they’re wired the right way. But right now, it’s not a good enough product, and that starts with me.
On whether the tackling issues can be fixed…
I hope so. With anything, when you’re not very good at it, you have to continue to work at it. That’s something we’ve emphasized every week. We’ve kind of reset how we drill it and how we structure it. We go live on Tuesdays against the scout team, but it’s continuing to show up. We definitely have to evaluate that this week.
On the frustration of the second half after cutting the deficit…
That’s what I kind of said at halftime. I felt like it was about as bad of a first half as you could potentially have. We go for it on fourth down and don’t get it. Several things occur, and then we go out in the second half, score on the first possession and get it down to three points. At that point, you feel good, and we just could never get a stop on defense or string them together. I thought our offense was moving the ball effectively in the second half. We just never really gave them a chance. Then in some of those games, when you lose leverage or miss tackles, you probably start getting into some calls that you shouldn’t. It becomes feast or famine on some of those things. A couple of times, I probably put our guys in an all-or-nothing position that became explosives because I was trying to get back into this thing and get a stop. We have to do a better job stopping the run. Obviously, we knew coming into it how many times they could hand it to No. 13 in one night. It wasn’t like it was a surprise. You have to go back and evaluate it, and Buster did a great job. But it was nothing we didn’t see on tape. He does a really good job of window dressing his stuff, and they do a really good job. We just didn’t get our players to execute, and that goes back to coaching. I told our players we have to look in the mirror as well. We’re all accountable for it. We have to go back and clean this thing up. They did a really good job.
On playing without Kewan Lacy…
That’s what I told the group when I huddled them up just now. This is the greatest team sport ever invented. We came with 74 dudes. We have 74 guys on our travel team in the SEC. That’s plenty of guys. This isn’t an excuse about who played or who didn’t play. We’re a team. It’s always going to be a next-man-up mentality. That’s what this league is. You’re going to get banged up at every position. That’s why you recruit, that’s why you coach and that’s why you develop guys. We have talented guys at every position who can come in and play winning football. I’m not putting this game on Kewan at all. Offensively, I thought we got into a rhythm in the second half and were able to move the football. Defensively, we couldn’t get a stop when we needed one to allow the offense to start stacking some scores and have a couple of possessions without the other team scoring. This one wasn’t on Kewan. I know that.
On why the defense hasn’t come together as expected…
I think tackling the guy with the ball is a real thing on defense. It’s kind of important. Right now, we just haven’t found that good combination of stacking things together, meaning consecutive series. Consistency and execution are what this game is about if you want to be an elite football team in all three phases. Right now, we haven’t been consistent on defense, regardless of which 11 guys are out there or what positions they’re playing. That’s our responsibility, and we have to get that done. There are still flashes of winning football on that side of the ball, but definitely not enough tonight.
On whether he saw a lack of toughness against Florida…
The thing I addressed at halftime was that we had a lot of guys trying to ankle-bite, diving at ankles and all those things. I addressed the manhood at halftime a little bit. There was a lack of courage, in my opinion, at times where we were picking and choosing. That’s an elite back, and he’s a big back. You have to go chest-to-chest with him whether you like it or not. If you go thigh-board with him, he’s going to step on you and you’re going to be on the ground. His missed-tackle rate was No. 1 in the NCAA. We watched every one of them. We went through it and said, “Look, here it is.” You tackle different guys differently, and that’s week to week. That was a big emphasis this week. Obviously, we did a poor job coaching it because we weren’t able to get that done.
On whether the bye week comes at a good time…
You don’t have any control over that. I don’t want them to get this taste out of their mouths. That’s what I told them. Part of people’s problem is I never got the taste out of my mouth from Miami walking off the field. Part of the problem sometimes is that we move on too fast. When I say the sun is going to come up tomorrow, the sun is going to come up tomorrow and it’s a new day. But it’s a new day to go get better at what we don’t do well. You better have that burning in your gut in order to go fix something. I think we have guys like that. We don’t have enough guys like that right now, and that was kind of the challenge. We get to choose. That’s the beautiful thing about this game. You get to choose whether you’re going to go all-in and do things right or not, and we get to choose who plays. It’s our responsibility through the week to hold them accountable and make sure we’re doing the things we need to do. We have to go find 11 guys in all three phases who are doing that. We have more guys than that who are capable, and we have to make sure we’re making them do that Monday through Friday so we can have a better product on Saturday. We’re in control of this and we get to decide. I think it’s a great time for them to sit on it a little while, go watch the tape like we do every week, clean this thing up and really focus on the things we have to improve to play winning football in this league. There have been times in all three phases where that’s what it looks like. That’s an elite football team, and that didn’t get washed away tonight. It’s still there. But when you put something on tape that other people are going to try to take advantage of, you have to get it off the tape. That’s what I’m excited about this week.
On the short kickoffs from Lucas Carneiro…
Some of the direction was by design. The wind was a little bit of a factor from a range standpoint, but I definitely don’t think he hit it like he has been hitting it from a kickoff standpoint. Obviously, the one in the fourth quarter, the bloop was a bloop. It was by design, not to go out of bounds obviously, but to give us a chance and see if they would bobble it around or anything. The last two kick returns had gotten out around the 40 by that point, so we thought we’d give ourselves a shot around the 35 regardless. But no, I don’t think he was hitting the ball really cleanly on kickoffs. I’ll have to watch the tape on that part.
