What UAB coach Trent Dilfer said after 56-24 loss at No. 15 Tennessee

What head coach Trent Dilfer said after UAB’s loss to No. 15 Tennessee Saturday afternoon at Neyland Stadium in Knoxville:

Opening Statement

“Not a lot to talk about. That’s a really good football team. Very talented. Very, very well coached. That’s the thing that stands out is the quality of their systems, their schemes, how disciplined their players are. They do a great job and overwhelmed us early in the game and it was just about trying to compete the best we could for the rest of the game.”

How Tennessee overwhelmed them

“Just destroying us at the line of scrimmage. Just their ability to create a wall at the line. We want to run the football, we want to be creative in the run game, they just blew up our run game. They got enough pressure on the passer, especially in long yardage situations. And then offensively, their combination of physicality and the tempo in which they play at, your cleats aren’t in the ground. It’s one thing to play against a really good athlete, really good scheme, it’s another thing to play when your cleats aren’t in the ground because you’re just trying to turn around and lineup. We did everything we possibly could, every tool we know in practice to prepare for it, but until you play against it, it’s very hard to simulate the tempo. And then they had a really cool wrinkle where they put the receivers in the boundary, called FIB, formation into boundary, so it limits the playcallers’ calls because it’s not something that a team does all the time. They led with it and it really created some problems for us.”

The wrinkles UAB used on offense

“We felt like we needed every tool in the toolbox. Never once did I think we could line up and just play our normal offense against them. We felt like we needed to score 35 points or more. If this was a game that was going to be in the teens or low 20s, maybe you don’t use those tools. We felt like we were going to have to score a lot of points so we wanted to use all the tools necessary. Those are things that we practice. We have a thing called Funky Fridays all spring and summer. Funky Fridays are our way to kind of introducing new tools to the tool belt of offense and they were pretty successful today.”

UAB WR Corri Milliner not making the trip

“Just didn’t feel like this was a game that he would help us win.”

The biggest takeaway about his team

“The biggest thing that I said to them in the locker room was it’s very easy to get negative in those situations. You’re getting your tail kicked. You get down that much early, it’s a real opening for negativity, complaining, blaming, all the things that can hurt teams. I didn’t hear any of it. And they weren’t wide-eyed. It wasn’t like, ‘Oh my gosh’ and hide in a hole. They were like, ‘Okay, we’re not playing our best. Let’s go back, one play, one more play at a time. Keep fighting. Keep competing.’ So the audio of the team I thought was the best that it’s been. That’s not a moral victory, but it’s something you’re looking for. I think you can build off that. Offensively, we know we can throw the football. We don’t want to throw it that much, but we know we can. To be able to throw it for whatever, 300 something yards against that defense, only turnover one time. Quarterback only turned it over one time and I would argue it’s not even his fault. Says a lot about our ability if we need to lead with the pass.”

If he felt like his team competed well in the first half

“I felt like there wasn’t a give-up, there wasn’t a quit, there wasn’t a feeling sorry for ourselves. We did not play very well, obviously, when you’re down that much. It wasn’t a woe-is-me attitude. There was more resolve to come back and play better. Now again, please don’t take this like I’m saying it’s all good. But you’re asking me what positives came out of it, I did see that it wasn’t – it was very opposite of Tulane last year, I’ll say that.”

Spreading the ball around through the air

“You have to spread it around against teams that have a physical advantage over you. You can’t just create one-on-one matchups and say, hey, we’re gonna go win those. You have to work through progressions, you gotta use motions and shifts to create leverage for your players and they have to make plays in tight coverage and I thought we did that. There was a couple that we probably could’ve had that we didn’t make, but for the most part, I thought the receiver play was pretty darn good.”

Being on his phone right before kickoff

“My phone is out on the sideline every game. I have a daughter who is getting ready to give birth. I wanted to show her the environment. And I always FaceTime or send a video to my grandson.”

Safety Sirad Bryant stomping on kicker Max Gilbert’s foot

“I’ve seen an Instagram video of it. I’m not happy with it. I want to get the full video of it. He will be disciplined because of it.”

What he got out of today

“We have to be a better football team. We got to show up Tuesday. The players have Sunday, Monday off, we got to show up Tuesday morning for practice and be a better team. I think part of that is how you respond to getting your tail kicked. I think that part of it is how you competed at the end. Did you finish? Did you fight? Did you claw? Did you scrape? Did you do all those things? And then I think as coaches, we have to identify things that we need to change to help our players out, put them in better situations to be successful. I believe we will be a better football team on Tuesday, but we won’t know that until we play Army.”

Where he’s at as a college coach

“I continue to grow. I’m not even close to where I need to be. Obviously, the record shows that. I take it very serious to get better every single day. Looking for more answers all the time. Feel like I have better people around me. Like I was as a player, you’re always trying to grow and get better, and I’m trying to grow and get better as a football coach.”

First half defensive struggles being on Tennessee or UAB

“I think it’s both. We have some things on defense that we need to fix. That’s four games in a row that we have not played at a high level on defense for 60 minutes. We showed signs of it. Again, I kept saying this, I didn’t know who we’d be until we’re four games in. We’re 2-2, we’re four games in and I have a much better idea of who we are. We have a bye week to kind of tweak some things. I think we’ll tweak some things that make us better.”

Seeing Tennessee’s Edwin Spillman and Kaleb Beasley, who he coached in high school

“I saw Kaleb before the game as we were walking, praying around the field. And then Edwin I got when teams line up back-to-back to run plays, I yelled his name and he came over and gave me a hug. At the end, we got a Lipscomb picture. Jordan Jackson who played for me at Lipscomb is a coach here, now, too. And then Joshua Reuben on our team, so we got a big picture. Those kids are great kids. They’re everything college football is all about. They’re awesome off the field, they’re awesome on the field. When they were eighth graders, I said I can’t believe I’m saying this, but this is what NFL players look like as eighth graders. I think they’ll both play in the league. Man, they’re just fantastic kids. Kaleb, shocking, he scores. He found a way to score all the time when I coached him and he scores today. I said, man, I hope you guys run the table. I’m really close to those two and I’m proud of them.”

The little things with receivers being good

“We really came in with a mindset of try to play every snap as if it’s in a silo. That’s the only thing that matters is that play. And that’s hard for receivers to do just in general. That’s hard for most young players to do. I thought our receiving crew did a great job of that. We don’t go three-and-out very often. This is not an offense that goes three-and-out very often. And usually when we do, it’s a temper tantrum on the sideline. And there weren’t temper tantrums. They were like, okay, what do we have to do to get better? Let’s look at the pictures. What’s coming next? I think I can win on that. This is what they’re doing. There was a conversation of moving forward to the next play instead of bitching about what had happened in the past. I’m really proud of them for that. They competed hard. They embraced the week of work. Our receivers worked really hard this week. They knew it was a big challenge. That’s a talented secondary and it’s a really good scheme. It’s one thing to have talented players, I talked to Coach Martinez after the game, I said Idon’t know what I’m more impressed with, how good your players are or how good your scheme is. They don’t take the bait. It’s very hard for defenses not to take the bait and they don’t take the bait. They just sit back, trust their scheme, trust their players, trust in their assignments and they make it incredibly hard to get explosive plays against them.”