Neal Brown Press Conference - UL Lafayette Game

Good afternoon, I'm a little under the weather and not feeling great. Don't take my lack of perkiness as not eager to talk to y'all. I just don't feel real great today.

Georgia State wrap-up first, I'm not very pleased. A lot of you were there after the game and I wasn't pleased with the way we played. I thought our effort was good, our effort gave us an opportunity to win the game, our execution did not. We didn't execute like we needed to in any phase.

After reviewing the tape, the thing that I was most discouraged about in the postgame was the number of penalties and unsportsmanlike (penalties). After going back and reviewing the film, I don't think we played the game in any ill-spirited way. I don't think we played the game the wrong way. I thought our kids were aggressive, but within the rules. That was something I was really upset about, because it was out of character for how we've played the whole season. We've been one of the least penalized teams in the league; we have one of the biggest turnaround in penalties especially unsportsmanlike from a year ago. And quite frankly I feel okay after watching that film. I don't think our kids did wrong. I want to take back that comment about not representing Troy, because I feel like our kids did, they played hard and played the right way, we just didn't play good enough. We didn't play good enough to win the game.

Offensively I thought Brandon Silvers played well. After going back and watching the tape his numbers weren't overly impressive, but we had nine drops on the day and we didn't play well enough at the wide receiver position. That's something that we're going to concentrate on a lot this week and we'll play better this week. I know we'll finish on a better note at that position than we played on Saturday.

Our O-line is getting better in pass protection. I think we gave up one hit on the quarterback. We didn't have any sacks and they're getting better, now we've got to get back and create room for Brandon (Burks) and (Andre) Flakes in the run game. We didn't run block overly well. Brandon (Burks) didn't have one of his better games in the run game; he's got to make some better decisions. He was effective in the pass game. It wasn't just a colossal cluster offensively; it was just one guy here and one guy there. It was a drop ball, it was a mistake, it was a missed block at a point of attack; all of a sudden you're in third-and-long and we're going to struggle.

I thought we did some good things in the first quarter. Defensively I thought we played well early. We gave the offense a couple of opportunities that the offense didn't take advantage of. Georgia State's good on offense, the Arbuckle kid is really talented. They've got three plus receivers they are talented at wideout and we busted a couple of calls on some big plays. They ran the ball a little better than I thought they would. We played more coverage giving our corners some help and did lack some numbers in the boxes.

In special teams, I thought Ryan Kay had a tremendous game. I think his net average was around 45. Jed (Solomon) was off, Jed didn't kick the ball very well on field goals and extra points. He missed two, almost missed a third on the extra point. We had a couple of costly penalties on punt returns. I thought one of them was correct, the other one I could see it either way. But we've been sound in special teams all year. And really the story of that game was the story like a lot of the games we've lost in our conference. We're very competitive, we've been right there the whole time with everybody in our league with the exception of Georgia Southern, we have some room to make up there. But with other teams, we've had opportunities to win in the fourth quarter and bottom line we didn't. There's a number of reasons why and there's some things we can talk about next week in a wrap up, but right now we're going to move on to (UL) Lafayette.

Playing down in Lafayette, one of the better venues I think in our conference. They have a really good home crowd setup. I read where they're going to have a blackout; it should be a fun atmosphere. They do a good job tailgating and so forth down there in Cajun country. I think both teams come in in similar areas, looking to finish the year strong. I thought they were competitive against Appalachian State last week. Their season didn't go the way they wanted it to go. I think they had four years in a row of nine win seasons and they're not going to get to that number this year. I have a lot of respect for them. I think coach (Mark) Hudspeth has done a great job since he's been there, know him well.

If you look at them starting on defense they're a three-down front team, they move around quite a bit. They're a little different each week, as I've watched them over the last three days. I think their linebacker Dominique Tovell is a good player. I think he was second team Sun Belt last year. They've got a safety that transferred in from I think Ole Miss that's talented. They've got a linebacker that transferred from Arkansas that has made a lot of plays. They've got a bunch of real good-looking bodies up there. I thought they played Appalachian State really well. Appalachian State's one of the top one, two, three offenses in our league and I thought they did a good job containing them at their place last week.

Offensively, they've had their struggles a little bit like we have. They play a couple of different quarterbacks. The kid that's getting most of the playing time right now is a kid named Brooks Haack from Katy, Texas, a kid that I'm very familiar with. A kid that we looked at at Texas Tech. He's a winner; he won a lot of games at high school. Elijah McGuire is the guy that makes them go on offense. He's the running back; he's closing in on 1,000 yards – really talented, really fast kid. They've got a big wideout, a 6-4 kid that's really over the last three or four weeks starting to play at a high level. He's their leading receiver. They've got another kid (Riles) who's done a nice job. They've been a little bit of a moving part up front. And then special teams the head coach is very involved in their special teams. They've blocked a couple of points, they've had a kickoff returned for a touchdown, so I think they're real sound in that.

Our message to our football team is, we need to finish this year strong. I'm not pleased with what happened at Georgia State. I thought that was a game that we were capable of winning. I'm not saying we're better than them by any means, but that was a game that we were capable of winning and we didn't win it for whatever reason. And we have a chance to get another conference win, and we need to finish this year on a strong note. I think our senior class has done a nice job of buying in. They've done a good job of continuing to play hard and I'd love to send them off with a win and going into our offseason for the rest of the team.

Troy University Athletics

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Ryan Kay

Brandon Silvers

Neal Brown Press Conference - UL Lafayette Game

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