Southern Miss Coach Jay Hopson Media Conference Transcript (Sept. 10, 2018)

HATTIESBURG, Miss. -- Southern Miss football coach Jay Hopson held his weekly news conference at the Duff Athletic Center, Monday, as the Golden Eagles get ready to make their first road trip of the season this weekend at Appalachian State.

The Golden Eagles and Mountaineers play at 3:30 p.m. ET/2:30 p.m. CT at Kidd Brewer Stadium in Boone, N.C.. The game can be viewed on ESPN+ as well as be heard on one of the affiliates of the Southern Miss IMG Sports Network.

Here are some of things Hopson said during his news conference:

Opening statement
"It was a tough day and tough loss. We had our chances, but didn't play our best game by any stretch of the imagination and that's football. We have to get better this week and get ready for a hard week of practice."

Expectations for Appalachian State
"They're a good football team. They took Penn State to the wire in overtime. App. State is always good, solid and a well-coach football team and we know we've got a big challenge (ahead of us)."

Offensive tape from Saturday
"Those films on Sunday are tough to watch. There's so many opportunities in the game that you go through and of course we had turnovers, but we've got to eliminate turnovers. On top of that, there were opportunities, whether it was the fourth-and-one, or whatever, we've got to make that. You've got to move the chains right there and we had a couple opportunities in the kicking game that we didn't convert. We had a couple chances on plays that were big plays that got called back. All those chances give you an opportunity for those three points that you need. Again, we didn't execute and we didn't deserve to win."

Fourth-and-one play
"He made a good play, but we've got to have more precise execution right there from the exchange and get north and south. Again, he's the guy that tripped us up and give that kid credit. We've got to make sure we're executing on all cylinders."

On offensive line
"The journey in football is to get better and, as coaches and players, we all know it's a long season. The second week does not make a season, but we know we've got a long journey and it's a good wakeup call. We've got to be ready to roll each and every Saturday. This week's no exception playing an outstanding football team, but we know we've got to be more precise in the things we do."

On what should have gone differently
"There's always things I'd like to do personally different. If you ever have to blame anyone, then you blame me. Bottom line is I'm the head football coach and we always say around here -- no one person, no one player, no one coach – nobody is going to lose the game. We're going to lose it and win it together. That's what we do and we're a brotherhood, but the bottom line is I'll take all responsibility for everything in the football program... Not too many seasons I've been through that you don't go through some type of adversity and that's what's hit now. We've just got to go to work and that's all you can do -- roll up your sleeves and battle and fight back."

Jay Hopson on struggling to contain ULM QB Caleb Evans in the running game
"We have to tackle. Where he hurt us more than anything was on a couple of scrambles. It wasn't so much run game oriented. He just scrambled and took the ball a couple of times and we lost containment. We had opportunities to tackle him and we didn't tackle him. That's something we are going to focus on this week, making sure we are tackling well. If you get the opportunity for a six yard sack you have to take advantage of it. We can't let him get loose and go haul and make 15 yards. I don't know what his statistics were for the game running but I felt like most of his runs were scramble type broken play runs."

Jay Hopson on the 49-yard touchdown touchdown pass
"We were in a man-free coverage. We certainly would have liked to have been a little bit closer to him than we were, but we should have had a guy over the top too. Defensively we got out of gap once and we had a coverage error once. The defense basically scored 14 points and that was one of the two big plays, two big explosive plays. That's something as a defense that you always want to eliminate, but we knew coming into the game that Monroe was an explosive offense. Last year they continually put up 50 and 60 points, so we knew we were playing a really good offense. They are a senior-laden team, they have a lot of guys back so we knew they were capable of making big play because that's what they had proven all of last year. Again, you have to eliminate those things and that's something that we are going to do. Other than a few tackling errors and a couple of big plays that there were some good things on the defensive side. The objective on defense is to hold them to one less than we get and on offense to get one more than they get. It's a team game. It's not an offense and defense game.

"Jaylond Adams played a tremendous football game on offense, made all kinds of plays and we did some good things on offense but we have to get better in all phases. That's the reality of football and again, that's our journey, get better this week and better next week."

Jay Hopson on making adjustments in the running game
"Naturally you want to get better every week, but we have excellent guys playing and coaching there. We are going to work to get it better. That's what we are going to do. We certainly weren't pleased with the running game on Saturday, that's obvious. Again, we have good running output and we have some young guys there that are just getting their first opportunities to start but we will get it together and we are just going to keep plugging."

Jay Hopson when asked if he thinks any adjustments need to be made
"We have plays there where we could get some big plays, we really do. To me that all comes down to execution. Monroe loaded the box up and when they do you have to execute in other areas. Football is still a game of chess and tic-tac-toe and it's a numbers game. The bottom line is that you have to take advantage of what the defense is giving you and each week a defense is going to give you something a little bit different. That's the game."

Jay Hopson on ball security with Jack Abraham
"No, I mean we are going to talk about it. He's sitting there and dropping back to pass and he can't see what's happening behind him and a guy comes back and knocks the arm down or he gets hit from behind. Again, those are things that you have to give credit to their defensive lineman. He won the battle against our offensive lineman and got the sack so you can't really blame Jack for that. He was hit both times from behind but we do have to get the ball out of our hands if we feel pressure and we have to protect the ball. That's something that we probably work on more than anybody in the country. We work on it constantly so hopefully we will be better this week."

Jay Hopson on the last interception of the game
"We probably didn't have the best read by our receivers right there. We should have broken that route off a little bit shorter and maybe we could have gotten rid of it. They sent a linebacker firing through there so we should have broken it off and just popped it on him but we carried that too far across the middle."

Jay Hopson on Player of the Week selections
"Our offensive play of the week was Jaylond Adams. He was fantastic. Jaylond is that kid that just practices hard and plays hard. He just had a tremendous football game. Defensive we went with Jeremy Sangster. We thought Jeremy had a really good game and Zac Everett was our special teams selection. Zac had a really big punt and I though he played good."

University of Southern Mississippi Athletics

Southern Miss Coach Jay Hopson Media Conference Transcript (Sept. 10, 2018)

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