Bateman On What Went Wrong Saturday & How To Fix It
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CHAPEL HILL – North Carolina defensive coordinator Jay Bateman met with the media Monday for his weekly press conference to discuss what went wrong in the loss to Florida State and how he and the unit can go about making corrections.
Above is the video of Bateman’s presser and below are some notes and pulled quotes from what he had to say:
*UNC Coach Mack Brown cited 11 missed defensive assignments, and 14 missed tackles in the loss to Florida State. What issues did Bateman see on film, after such a strong outing last week vs Duke?
“I think the missed tackles were the biggest issue because they did a good job getting the ball to our corners, and to our safeties, and when those guys miss there’s nobody left,” he said. “I think some of those tackles were ones that really hurt. The explosive plays we gave up were a couple missed assignments, the other ones were missed tackles.
“There’s missing in a good way, and missing in a bad way, and when you cut the rest of the defense off like what happened with our corners a couple of times, that’s gonna be an explosive play, and that’s what we’re trying to limit right now. Most of the time when you played as bad as we played, you come back in as a defensive coordinator, you look at the film, and you say ‘man, I should’ve played this different, I should’ve called this differently.’
“I think we felt really good about some of our calls, we just need to execute better, and ultimately that falls on me, so we gotta come back to practice tomorrow and get after it.”
*Brown and Jeremiah Gemmel both spoke after the game about the struggles in the second and third quarters being lapses in communication. They related it back to the second half struggles in the loss at Georgia Tech. How can Bateman and the defensive staff improve those communication errors when half the guys are doing one thing, and the other half are doing something different?
“We have put a big emphasis on it,” Bateman said. “I thought it improved a week ago, and then it took a step backwards last week. Eventually, you get to a point where the guy that’s not communicating, and the guy that’s missing the signal, and the guy that’s not playing it right, you just replace that guy.
“I think there’s some of that at some level, you start to get frustrated with a guy that isn’t communicating. We’ve had a lot of hard talks with them yesterday about the communication has to get better. We have kids that are very smart, Jeremiah Gemmel is really smart, Gio Biggers is really smart. We have guys that are really bright guys that can get us lined up, and frankly, we’re gonna have to play those guys more, because I really think a lot of the mistakes we had were guys not talking to each other, and that’s gotta improve.”
*In the losses to FSU and GT, when things started going poorly defensively, they continued that way for a while. UNC gave up 35 points and 352 yards in the middle two quarters versus FSU, and 32 points and 313 yards in the second half at Georgia Tech. Does that snowball effect stop by a player making a play, or does the staff have to change something to help it stop?
“Ultimately, it always falls on us as the staff,” Bateman said. “However, if you want to be elite, then at some point the player driven standard becomes important. I don’t think we handled adversity well against Georgia Tech, and I don’t think we handled adversity very well against Florida State. Yes, we had some communication errors, we’ll get those fixed. The missed tackles are something I can’t stomach as the defensive coordinator.
“Ultimately, when things are going bad, you have to at that point lean on each other, and start to play better, and I don’t think we’ve done that. What bothers me about those two games is I felt like we’ve been in those situations before, and responded much better. We’ve gotta get back to that mind frame.”
*FSU QB Jordan Travis rushed for 107 yards and two touchdowns last year against UNC. This time around, Travis scorched the Heels again for 121 yards, and two touchdowns. How did Carolina prepare for Travis, knowing how dangerous he is on the ground?
“I thought we had some really good answers, we got free guys to him a lot, and didn’t get it tackled,” Bateman said. “A lot of the missed tackles were ones on him, where it’s really important that you leverage the football, and that didn’t happen. Part of it is there’s a reason they run him, he’s really good at running, and when you run the quarterback, everyone else is accounted for.
“It forces you into one-on-one tackles, and we didn’t execute those one-on-one tackles as well as we should have. Even on the long touchdown run, we had a breakdown, but we got two guys to the ball, one of them tripped, and the other one missed. If we’re getting two guys to the ball, and two guys don’t make the play, it’s hard to get two, much less three. I felt like we had the right leverage most of the time, I thought we did a better job keeping him in the pocket, especially early in the game than we did later in the game.
“That was our big emphasis, was not letting him scramble, because I felt like that’s where he really got us a year ago. I think we had good answers, and I think we missed tackles, and ultimately, if you miss tackles in this day and age, you’re gonna have a hard day on defense. This game is about blocking and tackling, and tackling people, and not getting tackled, and we didn’t do that very well.”
*Last year, young guys like Tony Grimes, Myles Murphy, and Ja’Qurious Conley came in later in the season and made big plays. This year, young guys like Jahvaree Ritzie, and RaRa Dillworth have flashed that same ability. What does it take for these younger guys to be able to get significant playing time?
“Number one, I think they’re both playing a decent amount, Ritzie is playing a lot,” Bateman replied. “When they’re ready to play, they’re ready to play. Last year with Tony and Ja’Qurious, it took a while, JQ got hurt. Once they had enough under their belt, and they had enough knowledge to go play, then they went and played.
“I think RaRa is playing, he’s not playing as many snaps as he wants, or I want, but he’s playing really significant snaps, the first third down of the game, RaRa was in. We’re trying to find roles for those guys and play them, and not just those two, other good young guys too. Right now when Ritzie goes in, that means Kaimon Rucker comes out, or that means Myles Murphy comes out.
“I think they’re playing the right amount right now, they’re getting better, and they’re gonna be really good players.”