Army West Point Black Knights College Football Pregame Quote, 11/05/2019

We are obviously disappointed with the outcome of Saturday’s game. Those academy games are big rivalries and I thought our guys were excited to play and up for the game and played really hard. Obviously, we just didn’t play well enough. We didn’t make enough plays and the other team dead and unfortunately, we came up on the short end of it. I thought Jabari (Laws) did a really good job handling the start and taking us through the game. Unfortunately, he got knocked out there with a few plays to go and we couldn’t finish that last drive. Kelvin (Hopkins) came in and did all he could to help us win the game. Defensively I thought we played an outstanding first have. We gave up some big plays in the second half which cost us. Probably the play of the game was that fourth down at the beginning after we took the opening drive down and we were on about the four-inch line and we just couldn’t ram it in there. There’s just no camera view that shows if he was in our not, but when they unpiled he wasn’t in there and that’s the game. You have to find a way to worm your way in there or reach the ball over or something. Even so, we had chances to win the game. We were ahead at halftime and we had opportunities in the second half and obviously on the last drive. We’re going to try to learn from it and get better and improve for this week. We’re glad to be back home and have UMass coming in here. We’re excited for the opportunity to play again. It’s been a long time since we had a victory unfortunately. That’s been uncommon around here. Our guys are working, and I am very pleased with the efforts they’re putting into it and their attitudes. They are fighters and we’re going to continue to do that.

On team leadership:

Leadership is important, and it does not matter where it comes from. Not necessarily from any one class or any group of players or any particular guy, leadership is needed regardless of what point of the season we’re in, or in the offseason, we are always trying to encourage those guys who can lead and will lead to step up. We certainly need that continuously this week and at this point in the season.

On getting into a different formation than the traditional triple option:

We got into that formation not to do anything different then we normally would have done with the ball. It was just based on how they had defended us in the past, and that’s how they have defended other option teams like Navy in particular. It just felt like we had something with those formations and movements off of those that might open up some plays for us. They did not play exactly like we thought they might, so we did not use it as much as we might have. That’s something that we have done in the past, either spread people out or use some motions to help us with different looks. If you watch their season, and Navy’s season, it’s things that they have done as well to move people around and just kind of gain a numbers advantage or a blocking advantage.