What Tennessee defensive coordinator Tim Banks said after 42-17 loss at Ohio State

COLUMBUS, Ohio — Everything defensive coordinator Tim Banks said after No. 9 Tennessee’s 42-17 loss to No. 8 Ohio State in the first round of the College Football Playoff Saturday night at Ohio Stadium:

Q. Tim, why do you think they had such success in the passing game in particular? (Indiscernible)?

TIM BANKS: Yeah, they’re a really good program, a lot of good players. They just really did a good job tonight. They didn’t do a ton of things that we necessarily hadn’t seen on tape.

Our hats off to those guys, but they did a tremendous job tonight, and obviously it wasn’t our best showing.

Q. Josh Heupel mentioned losing one-on-ones a little bit tonight. For the offensive line and for the DBs when that happened, what is the message in the middle of the game to keep them engaged and prevent that from happening again?

TIM BANKS: Yeah, we’ve played a lot of good football around here, and we’ve beaten a lot of good teams. You’re going to see good skill week in and week out. I thought our guys competed all night and gave it their best effort. Just unfortunately we just came up a little bit short tonight.

Q. Tim, you guys had a couple stops there in the second quarter to kind of get you guys back in the game, then the third quarter you weren’t able to sustain on defense. What were the issues to start the third quarter?

TIM BANKS: Yeah, it’s always difficult. We had a couple calls that didn’t quite go our way based on the situation. I mean, again, I don’t want to be a broken record, but you’ve just got to take your hat off to Ohio State. They did a tremendous job tonight.

Like I said, I have the utmost faith in our guys, and I’m very proud of what they’ve done to this point. It’s super disappointing. We only got a couple stops. To beat a team of that caliber, we obviously need to play our best game, and unfortunately we didn’t do that tonight.

Q. (Regarding Ohio State controlling the line of scrimmage).

TIM BANKS: Yeah, I think anytime — it goes hand in hand, your back and your front, different things you have to do coverage-wise to give a front the best chance to be successful and vice versa. We just weren’t able to find that combination tonight to give us a chance to play winning defense?

Q. I’m curious, how much do you think their success offensively was because of what they did and how much of it was you guys not doing what you’re capable of doing?

TIM BANKS: Yeah, I think the truth always lies somewhere in the middle. You’ve obviously got to be a defense that doesn’t beat themselves. Obviously we’re playing great talent.

Obviously we’ll evaluate the tape a little bit closer to have a better answer, but I think overall there were some things that we’d like to do better, and unfortunately we didn’t.

Q. You guys both this year had the luxury of a lot of multiyear seniors up front. What’s that going to be like, saying goodbye to a lot of friendly faces who played a lot of football around here and just kind of developing again for next year?

TIM BANKS: Well, for me, I told those guys in the locker room, when a lot of guys decided to leave here when we took this job, those guys stayed. So I’ll forever be grateful for that. I love those guys. They gave us everything they had.

Then the class that came right after them, we were still building, and those guys came to be a part of it. We’re going to miss those guys. It’s going to be very hard to replace the leadership that those guys gave us, but we feel really good about some of the young guys that we’ve brought in and some of the guys that show some promise early in the year. The standard will be the standard. We’re excited about the youth that we have.

Yep, we’ll miss the leadership, but we’ve definitely got some guys that are going to pick it up.