FSU postgame with Swinney, Venables, and Morris

by TigerNet Staff - Sun Sep 23 01:11:52 GMT-04:00 2012

"Obviously we took a little bit of a step back tonight. One thing I'll say is - obviously Florida State's got a really good football team. Playing a team like, that, especially at their place, you can't do certain things to help them. We helped them a little bit in a couple of areas. The kickoff return was huge - just a huge momentum swing in the game; it kind of lit a fire for them over there. We couldn't stop the run. We just didn't play four quarters. It's a great game for us to grow and learn from. There is a lot of football left. Certainly we've got a lot of improving to do. Our team, I thought they fought hard, but again, right there at the end the momentum changed late in the third quarter going into the fourth quarter we just weren't able to turn it back. But I'm proud of them continuing to fight. The touchdown at the end that's a nice job. We didn't get the onside.

"All the credit goes to Florida State. They are a very good football team. We did a lot of good things. We won the first half and played fairly solid in the third quarter. Just kind of got away from us there in the fourth quarter. Again, just a couple of momentum plays that really hurt us.

"But as we tell our guys all the time - the season starts tomorrow. We'll get home whenever we get home. We will get back at it tomorrow as staff. You have to go on the road and win and we didn't get that done today. We have another opportunity next week to go to Boston College. A place we have only won at one time. So, we have to try and get back on track. Obviously this is a tough loss because it is a division loss as well so we don't control our destiny any more. That's the difficult part of it but it's far from over. We've got a lot of football left. We are still in the car we just don't have our hands on the steering wheel anymore. All we can do is take care of what we control and that's our preparation and how we go play in the next ball game. It's a big lost but you can't let this thing beat you again. What we have to do is learn from this. Obviously there is a bunch we have got to do to get better. Flush it. It's so much more important what's in front of us. We've got Boston College and then we have five out of seven after that at home. We still have an opportunity to have a really good football team; we have an opportunity to have a great season. Anything can happen. There was going to be a winner and a loser tonight and unfortunately we lost the game. We have got to move on from that.

"A lot of credit goes to Florida State. They played really well, made some big plays. And again, was able to run the football and have some key momentum opportunities that they took advantage of."