UNC-TCU Postgame Interviews: Kaleb Cost & Max Johnson

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. — When the dust finally settled Monday night and the national spotlight shut off, the Tar Heels had opened their landmark campaign in a far from stellar fashion, getting dismantled by TCU 48-14. Junior defensive back Kaleb Cost and redshirt-senior quarterback Max Johnson spoke to the media following the season opening defeat. Watch those complete interviews below and read some noteworthy excerpts… 

Kaleb Cost

“I mean, we just gotta be tougher as a team as a whole — taking it day by day, practice by practice, drill by drill. And when it comes to game time, we just gotta be tougher all around and compete better as a team.”

“I wouldn’t say we felt helpless at all. We still kept grinding, we still kept pushing to try to get some production out of that game. All in all we lost the game at the end of the day and it didn’t go our way, but we still kept going for it.”

“We absolutely appreciate Tar Heel nation, and we will need that every single week absolutely. We’re sorry we let y’all down and it won’t happen again. We promise you that.”

“We’re just moving forward. Just moving forward, and the mood is fine. Obviously we’re angry as a team, but like I said it’s back to the drawing board, and we’re gonna use that to take to practice and to the next opponent.”

Max Johnson

“No, I mean I thought we were prepared for the game. We prepared you know, for a week and a half now for TCU specifically. I mean, I believe we’ve been working on our fundamentals for, you know, this whole past year. You know, I thought we were prepared for the game, but you know it didn’t go our way, we gotta do a better job executing.”

“I think we just gotta communicate better with each other. They made some good adjustments. We made some adjustments coming out of halftime, and we just gotta go out there and execute better. We had some things that were there, and, um, we just gotta do a better of going out there, competing every single play, and throughout the whole game.”

“Yeah, (Jake and I) threw a couple of touchdowns together when we were at Texas A&M. I honestly didn’t even know he was in the game, my brother was. I knew the play was called, we had a tight end there, I didn’t know it was Jake at first, and once I threw it to him, what a special moment. Just to celebrate with him it just felt like we were little kids again, playing peewee football, and just going out there celebrating. But we gotta come to work next week and put on a better show.”