Mizzou head coach Gary Pinkel discussed the Georgia loss, team speed, James Franklin's helmet issues and more on Tuesday. See a transcript of the teleconference below and hear audio in the player above.
CLICK HERE FOR PHOTOS OF THE MIZZOU VS. GEORGIA GAME
On how Mizzou speed matches up with the SEC:
“I think we had real good team speed. You want that kind of speed that players play the speed they actually run. We run well, but we are in a league that everybody runs well and we recognize that. They had great speed and I think we had pretty good speed ourselves.”
More on speed:
“Every team has speed in this league. Most of the teams in the Big 12 had it too. You have to be able to run well. We’re not doing anything different. We are recruiting the same way. Our player development is exactly the same way. We will just continue to try and work hard, develop our players and bring speed potential players in our program which is always in our philosophy.”Biggest challenge following the loss:
“I think from a caution standpoint with such an emotional game and such a build up from many different avenues is to make sure we don’t have a hangover here. The mistake I made in the game, and I think I did I didn’t handle the (emotion of the athletes). There is an optimum level to compete. There is a certain zone. If you are too high you don’t play well. If you are too low you don’t play well and I think I could have helped some of our players more in terms of talking to them about it and educating them about not getting too hyped up. I didn’t think I did a very good job of that.”
On costly turnonvers:
“What wore us out was turning the ball over on the one-yard line and four-yard line. That will wear you out fast.”
On James Franklin having to leave the game for helmet issues:
“It is a new rule they have. If a helmet comes off and it is not a foul that caused the helmet to come off then they player has to come off. He didn’t take it off. He was in a scrum and snaps were undone. You couldn’t tell really what happened underneath there. That presents a problem for not just Missouri but Georgia or anybody if the quarterback gets tackled in a big pile of players and all of the sudden the helmet comes off. It presents a problem. We are going to try and get the snaps better on his helmet.”
On missing Franklin for a couple plays and the challenges that posed:
“It is your back-up quarterback. You never do it. What you do is you become much more cautious with a back-up quarterback. I hope it doesn’t happen again. I have been doing this for 35 years and I have never had to pull a quarterback for a play and put him back in.”
What stood out about Franklin’s play last season at Arizona State:
“A second year starter in that environment broke a record in the stadium. (He) drove the team down in that environment and put us in a position to win game with a field goal. We missed the field goal and lost in overtime. When I saw that I said this guy has a chance to be really, really good. He did about everything you could to put us in position to win the game.”
On how Mizzou played around Franklin last week:
“I think we had some good players around him. The trouble is our offensive line. Five of our top 10 offensive linemen are out. We moved our right tackle to left tackle, our center to left tackle and brought in a red-shirt freshman in to snap the ball That was our plan and that is what we did. That is difficult. Snaps were errant. We didn’t execute that very well…Any time you put an inexperienced line in front of a veteran quarterback it is much more difficult to quarterback and you are not going to have as much time to throw.”
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