Scot Loeffler Monday Press Conference Transcript (Buffalo Game)

October 25, 2021
Weekly Press Conference
Doyt L. Perry Stadium
(Bowling Green, Ohio)

Head Coach Scot Loeffler

Opening Statement:
Good afternoon. Saturday might have been the first time this season that we walked off the field and as a coaching staff, and as players, majorly disappointed. We felt like we took a few steps backwards. It had the taste, smell and feel a little bit of the past and that has not been the case over these last weeks of our season. We’re looking forward to getting back on track. Looking forward to having a great week and getting ourselves to Buffalo and being super competitive and give ourselves a chance to win.

Q: What was the biggest reason for the step back and how do you make sure it doesn’t happen again?
Loeffler: No disrespect to any of the teams that we have played, but no one has beat us. We’ve beat our ourselves completely. It’s been BG on BGSU. When you have nine penalties and all nine of which never occurred during a play, pre-snap penalties, an unsportsmanlike conduct, and that’s discipline. Just like I said after the game, that’s on me. We need to become more disciplined. We will with time and age, but that needs to be addressed. Defensively, we didn’t do the things we normally do. We stopped the run, but we didn’t stop the pass game whatsoever. I think they had five incomplete passes all day long. And then, in the kicking game we had a blocked punt and we also had a muffed kickoff. It was a recipe for disaster. We were in the same position we were in the Northern Illinois game and we found a way in the Northern game to score touchdown, get a stop, have a chance to put the thing into overtime, missed on a double-move. We were in that same scenario versus Eastern and then within a two-minute span we’re down 28. That’s what tasted and felt like last year. With all that being said, we got a lot of corrections to do. We have a lot of work to do during the week to get over that. We have a lot of work to do in January through August to get over all these issues. But we were disappointed, just like I said. We were moving completely in the right direction and we took a step back.

Q: Is it something you can fix in-season?
Loeffler: Well, the big picture wise you need another year. The short term, it’s not next year yet, it’s not January yet. We're doing everything within our power that you can do during the season to fix these issues. To say that they're going to be perfect during the season, you can get some corrected. If you get some corrected, you have a better chance to win than not getting them corrected. In the grand scheme of things, big picture-wise, there are things that we need to occur from January through August. We had taken a huge step from January through August last year, but it’s still not enough. Right now, we'll worry about January through August when January comes about. We're trying to fix some difficult problems during the season. Hopefully, we can make some headway in these next four weeks.

Q: Has there been any thought to use anybody else at QB?
Loeffler: Absolutely not. I always call it like it is at that position. The tipped balls and all that that occurred were the tackles being pushed back into his lap. He did some really good things on Saturday. The things that didn’t occur right were out of his control. Just like I said, there was one time that he was the East player of the week and I didn’t think he played very well, at all. I mean, he had great numbers and all this other stuff. There’s times where he hasn’t had those numbers and played excellent. There’s things that are completely out of his control that the average fan doesn’t see.

Q: Is it reassuring, in a sense, knowing that some of these issues are internal and it’s not necessarily the opponent on the other side?
Loeffler: Yeah, that’s football right now. It’s so even across the board and there's so much parity across the board that, generally speaking, it’s the team that doesn’t beat themselves. That’s what we’re doing right now, we’re beating ourselves. We need to take the next step and I look forward to taking the next step. But it's going to take a lot of great effort and a lot of change. We’ve made tons of change, but not enough. That’s normally what happens when you have so much youth. The urgency, the understanding, that every single thing matters during the week, every single thing matters off the field, in the classroom, it all adds up. Young guys, generally, it takes some failure to realize that they really do matter.

Q: What do you want to see from the veterans you have this season?
Loeffler: Well there's only a few and it needs to start somewhere, though. Those few that we do have need to get together and make a decision on what they want this team to look like, what they want the locker room to look like, what their standards and expectations are. It was a huge step whenever Clawson took over and he was able to give the team the locker room. We’re still not at that point. It’s a coach driven team right now and that’s not good. The championship teams are player driven teams. We’re still not at that point yet where we have enough leadership that’s going to run the locker room, that’s going to spark practice, that’s going to hold other people accountable during practice for effort, for attention to detail. That will occur with time, but one of our major issues is that right there. That one, I don’t know if it can get corrected right now, but we need to get it started. We need some of these older guys to step up and start falling into a role that in today’s generation, and I don’t know why, it’s uncomfortable. It wasn’t when we played, it was what you did. It’s an uncomfortable deal for these guys right now and that’s figuring out why it’s uncomfortable.

Q: Did the Minnesota win go to everyone’s head?
Loeffler: No, not at all. We’re too young to even remotely think that win got in our way. No, not at all. For a young team, I thought they handled that quite well. I thought our juice and our energy the next week at Kent was great. We just didn't find a way to finish five or six plays.

Q: What is the early outlook on Buffalo?
Loeffler: Very good team. They were exceptional last year, the back was exceptional. They’re still really good, though. They play hard. We have to play our very best game and stay out of our own way to give ourselves a chance. This is a team that we have to drag in the fourth quarter and find a way to win at the end.

Q: What was your message after the loss?
Loeffler: The four things that we're going to work our tail off on is our main objective this week, besides winning the game. Number one, when someone tells you to do something, you do it immediately. You’re on point. We have a tendency right now that a coach will say something to a player, two, three, four, five, six, seven times to get it done. That's just age, that’s maturity. Our goal is one time, just one time. If you don't know it, that’s why we meet for hours, ask the question, ask why. The second is to really focus on -- it’s hard and I don’t get it, but we still haven’t figured this point out yet. There’s players that do it and there’s players that don’t do it -- is there should be no different mentality, no different speed on Saturday as opposed to Tuesday. No difference. Zero. That's how you get rid of those five or six plays because you have some consistency of how you do business. Right now, we’re up, down and around because of what occurs during the week. I know everyone hates hearing that, but it’s the truth. That’s why we’re not finishing the four-to-six plays that we’re supposed to finish. And then three, competitiveness. We’re going to really work on putting ourselves in positions of win or lose, the game is on the line, put the ball on the 10-yard line and you have to stop them. We need to ratchet up and learn how to compete a little bit better than what we’re doing right now. Last, but not least, it hasn’t happened this year, but it happened on Saturday, so we addressed it. Bad stuff is going to happen in a game, that’s football. There’s ups, there’s downs, there’s momentum swings. I said to them ‘We have to really concentrate on your never out of the fight.’ It kind of reminded me the day. 17 years ago, we were down 17 points with five minutes and 49 seconds in a stadium that has 120,00 people and 20,000 were left and we found a way to win the game. We were never out of the fight. We never gave in. We need to work on that. If things go bad, we’re not out of the fight. To be able to let those bad plays go and 100% concentration on that play and worry about our job. Those are four things that we're really concentrated on.

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