University of Richmond Athletics
Richmond Football Postgame Quotes -- Nov. 11, 2006
Nov. 11, 2006
Richmond head coach Dave Clawson
On the Spiders struggling with field position:
"Right now we're just not a very good football team. We're not playing well on offense at all. We're not making any big plays at all. Against a team that does what they do you've got to stay with them, you've got to take some short balls. For the long plays you've got to make some guys miss. You've got to attack them down the field vertically and we just could not get a big play all day. On defense we're not playing well. We're not tackling very well, we're not covering very well, we're not rushing the passer very well. Field position hurts but with the way we're playing, it's hard to say that's the whole game when we got beat as bad we did."
On Richmond's fumble recovery for a touchdown off the opening kickoff:
"I've never seen anything like that before. I was certainly glad to see it but those 13 seconds turned out to be the highlight of our game."
On the team's injury problems:
"We're banged up in a lot of places right now. We're banged up at linebacker and on the defensive line, and we're banged up at running back. Obviously not having John Crone has had a real impact on what we're trying to do on offense and last week we didn't have a fullback play well. Now we're trying to do some one-back stuff. It's difficult to run the football and we're not throwing the ball well and after we catch it, we're not getting the yards after the catch. You try to get it going by doing some two tight end stuff and using the tight end as a fullback but it's just not as effective as going downhill. We just don't have the personnel to do that with John Crone out."
On trying to stop Towson's offense:
"We were trying to pressure them. We probably ran more blitzes today than we have all year and when you blitz, you don't have to cover for that long but we didn't cover. They had so many balls behind us and in front of us, it's a Catch-22. You can not blitz and help guys out and give them time. Or if you blitz you've got to cover on the outside and we did not do a very good job of covering the outside today. They had a lot of plays on our corners."
On Richmond's five turnovers:
"We turned it over ourselves a number of times. We threw three picks. We threw the ball 41 times today and had 138 yards to show for it. With the three picks, there are a lot of different things. Part of the short passing game, you've got to deliver the ball and get some yards after the catch. We're not getting any of that. We catch the ball and we get tackled and we fall down. We're constantly never getting ourselves out of the hole. It's just hard to get on 15 and 18 play drives when you have the ball at the 10-yard line."
On the Spider seniors and their last game coming Saturday:
"This is their senior year and is their legacy going to be a team that won an A-10 championship and found a way to win at the end or is it going to be a team that got off to a good start but couldn't finish at the end. We have one more week to prove ourselves. We play William and Mary next week at William and Mary. It's our big rivalry game and I just hope we have a team with some pride and shows up and plays hard.
On the impact of John Crone injury:
"For a guy who doesn't get the football much, I can't underestimate what he means to our offense. Our strategy to win this year was going to play good defense and to get the ball downhill with him as our lead blocker. We did some one-back stuff to mix it up and to give him a break and it's something that when he went down, our season has turned."
"Right now we're not making big plays at receiver and we, for the most part, with the exception of Arman Shields, have possession receivers. We're very young at quarterback so to have to be in one-back sets and to throw the ball so much with a young quarterback with basically a group of receivers that aren't getting a lot after the catch...Without two backs we're not getting very good looks either."
"The thing that just sticks out is that we throw the ball so much but there are no big plays. The long catch for Arman was for 12. The longest play of the day was Josh Vaughan's screen. We're not making any plays to overturn field position. That was one of our biggest concerns going into the season. We talked about it in the spring -- we need guys to step up and make plays because so many of our big plays last year were produced at the quarterback position. That's why our margin for error was very small. We had to play good defense, we had to be able to control the ball, run it downhill. Our depth at fullback was not what it needed to be because when he went out we haven't been able to play the next fullback. We tried that last week, the results weren't very good. We don't have an offensive identity. We want to be a downhill run team with our personnel this year and we're not able to do that so we are having to major in things we're not designed to major in."