Georgia State Head Coach Shawn Elliott
“As you can see it was certainly not the day we had expected. When you come out and you have a loss 34-15 to Western Michigan and probably in every phase and every aspect of the game we had multiple issues as far as sloppiness – coming from our kicking game into our offense and to our defense it was kind of a day of 'what ifs.' The basic fundamentals for us offensively just – we're a big inside zone team and the basic fundamentals of running the inside zone were not evident today at all. There was a lot of miscommunication up front from the offensive line that led to a lot of pressures and a lot of sacks and fumbles. We started two new guys on the offensive line, two freshmen at right guard and right tackle. When you go back and look at some film that probably had a little bit to do with it. They go out and practice and should've been prepared to go in there and make the adjustments, make the calls and ultimately execute the schemes. When you add that with a freshman back it can look ugly at times and it was certainly very, very ugly out there today.
Defensively our strong suit, up until the last two weeks, has been to stop the run and have an ability to really shut down the running game. In the last two weeks there has been an inability to get a hat on the ball carrier, defend out gaps, to make adjustments and go out and execute. And then we can't go out and fundamentally execute an extra point, then there's cause for serious concern.
In my entire career I've never thought that it would come to a day where you see the fight really taken out of our football team. It's one of the things that we talk about a lot, is having tremendous fight and there wasn't a whole lot of fight out there. If there was, it was that other team, cause our fight wasn't there. Ultimately, I've got to take control of that and it's got to go from myself to our coaches and then to our players. If they ultimately don't know how to fight, then we have to teach them that and I've addressed that with them. As ugly as it was in the first half, you're still within striking distance roughly with two minutes to go and then they take the ball down and just pick us apart in the last few minutes and kind of throw a dagger into us right there. It wasn't methodical, it was very quick and very easy.
We call these first four games of the season the 'opportunity season' and you've got to see how you can grow as a football team and how you get better and improve. Ultimately here we are four games into it and the entire three phases need great improvement.”
Q: What was your assessment of the underclassmen who had to step up in the secondary today?
“For the most part their play was okay. It really showed right there in the drive right before the half. They tackled a lot better than they did a week prior and I think I mentioned this last week, one of them came up to me and said 'when does the game slow down' and I said 'how many games have you played' and he said 'this is my first one' and I said 'it'll start slowing down after the second one and after the third one. We can sit here and want them to be the very best – and that's what we all want – but you've got to look at it and say 'they've got to improve on their fundamentals, they've got to improve on their sight and they've got to get more experience. All in all it was an okay performance.”
Q: What were some of the positive takeaways from this game moving forward?
“Positive upsides? We'll I'm going to have to sit back and really think about that one. I'm not sitting here with a lot of positive thoughts in my mind right now and anybody that is should be mistaken. We don't have a whole lot of positives out of these last two games.”
Georgia State QB Dan Ellington
What were you seeing out there and what kind of adjustments did you make to try and help the offense?
We knew they were going to give us a lot of man looks. They blitzed some so we had to adjust to that. We knew what it was going to be out there all week, but we just had to go out there and execute.
I agree with coach completely that we lost our fight. We got a lot of young guys on our team and we have to make sure as leaders that they keep their heads up and push ourselves and the team and play until there is triple zeroes on the scoreboard at the end of the fourth.
What type of areas in the offense do you want to improve in?
We just want to get better at every single thing every single week. Running the ball, catching the ball, and making better reads and stuff like that will help. We're fine I promise we are going to continue to get better each week and I'm not doubting my guys one bit.
What have you learned about yourself that you can take into this conference schedule?
The game has slowed down a lot for me. I just have to follow and execute what coach gives me and just going out and playing and seeing what they defensively do and go off of that.
Western Michigan Head Coach Tim Lester
“I thought we were meeting the line of scrimmage pretty good. There were two penalties that were called that put us in 2nd and 20. I knew if we could stay ahead of the team, then we could grind it out first down with a 10-minute drive. I'm proud of the way the guys finished, but we need to finish better but proud of the fight they showed.”
“I felt that two-minute drive was big. I feel—I've been saying this for a while—we have to be able to run and throw if we're going to go where we want to go. And although today's plan was to run it left then right and sometimes run it in the middle, we got called to do a two-minute drill, and we executed it great—we went right down the field. That coverage was a unique coverage. We've seen it before-- we really haven't seen it from them. Jon Wassink (QB 16) did a great job seeing the front side safety, and he squeezed our tight end—opened Keishawn Watson (WR 13)—and popped it in there. That was just good throw, reads—a great drive for us.”
“We needed to go after their quarterback—he's a talented kid. We couldn't let him get comfortable. Early on, he was comfortable in the pocket, and we were planning on playing some coverage and seeing if he could throw it and beat us, and he did. The first couple balls (he threw) were nice, and so we started bringing some pressure, and the tides started turning after that.”
[On QB Jon Wassink] “Jon played great. He missed one throw—scrambled one time—threw it a little bit wide and was upset with himself, but he did such a great job seeing the game—talking me through what he already saw. He changed some games and got us out of some bad ones. We had the play that was called to Jayden Reid (WR 87) for a touchdown that got called early, and he got out of it because it wasn't a good look, and he didn't want to show it. And good thing we didn't because we came back first drive of the third quarter and hit it. He is super smart, and that two-minute drilled showed what kind of a passer he is, but he also made great decisions. We just need to build from it and keep moving forward.”
