Butch Davis postgame comments

CHAPEL HILL -- Following N.C. State's surprising 41-10 annihilation of North Carolina in Kenan Stadium Saturday afternoon, UNC head coach Butch Davis spoke with reporters.

Opening Comments:

It is extraordinarily disappointing and frustrating to play as poorly as we played today. The things that we did today during the course of the game give you absolutely no chance to win the ball game.

There will never be a football game ever played that you can lose a turnover ratio as dramatically poorly as we did today and still give yourselves a chance to win. Six turnovers---you can almost totally disregard any of the other stats.

Once you get past the turnovers, there are other things that certainly contributed to today's loss – giving up big plays in the secondary, balls being thrown deep and not being contested, guys being open – all of those things contributed to the way that we played today.

I thought that our defense initially got off to a decent start after being put in just some horrible field position and that they rallied early. Given the field position, we forced a field goal, forced another missed field goal where they got a delay of game and got another chance to kick the ball.

We felt like going into the locker room with the score 10-3, that as poorly as we played that we weren't out of the football game. We had to do something to effectively change the game. We had to start to play better.

Unfortunately we continued to turn the football over. If you do those things you are not going to win.

On starting T.J. Yates:

The starting quarterback is always going to be judged on a body of work, how have they done not just in two and a half days of practice. T.J. was a 12-game starter for us last year and was off to a good start this season.

When he did return to practice there was a time where we weren't absolutely sure health-wise when could he really go in – scramble, get hit, get sacked, get back up and continue to play. That really didn't happen until last week, even though against Georgia Tech we put him in at the end of the game when we were managing the game and getting the butterflies out of the situation.

We gave him the start based on the things that T.J. has done. He's made good decisions with the football. That's how he got to be the starter in 2007. Does that change, you never know? As I told the quarterbacks, you are always going to be the victim of how you have played.

On next week's starter:

The quarterback that gives us the best chance to win that game. That's how we will look at it this week. Neither of the quarterbacks played particularly well today, but they also had some really good help in that performance today.

On whether he wished he had started Cam Sexton:

You can't look in the rear-view mirror. How do you know? We feel that both of those guys are pretty good quarterbacks. They have both had some pretty good success. Was T.J. nervous coming back for the first time? Conceivably, maybe so.

That is one of the reasons with the score being 10-3 that we let him play, let him get back into it, and see if he is the guy.

On NC State's Russell Wilson:

He played very well but that didn't come as a surprise. Every coach on our staff and all of our defensive players watched all the film that he had played this year. Everybody realized that really, truly you really needed to do a great job, keep him in the pocket and that he has got a great arm.

It's a complete problem for a defense when a quarterback can extend plays. Michael Vick was one of those types of guys, may not be the greatest thrower in the world, may not be the best operator but plays are never over.