Penn State Football
Visiting Coach Postgame Press Conference
Vs. Villanova – September 25, 2021
Head Coach Mark Ferrante
Opening Statement
I'm proud of our guys and the way they played and the way they competed all the way through the four quarters. We got "big-played" to death. I think it was probably six big plays, obviously the opening play of the game on their possession and then a few other long plays. But I'm really proud of the way our defense played. I'm proud of the way our offense stuck in there and put a couple on the board at the end. And I think we'll learn a lot from this game to be honest. So we have next week off in a bye. We'll go back, make corrections, lick our wounds get healthy, hopefully. It looks like we got off a pretty healthy day. Our trainers weren't on the field other than Tyler Will. Update on Tyler is he's doing okay, from everything we've heard. We actually hear he might be coming back and joining the team to go home with us so that'll be huge if that's true. We'll take the bye week, make the corrections and then get ready for our next opponent, which is a big one, James Madison in their place.
Q: Mark the punting situation was different today...
A: Yeah, our starting punter today was out so that was tough. We got Will Bartel who's really our backup placekicker, he hasn't really done much punting, so he took the first one. Then we put Connor Watkins in there who was a quarterback, a little better athlete, a little bigger guy. We knew we'd struggle on the punting game a little bit. We didn't get the 40-plus yarders to maybe change the field position, but we were able to get it off. Field position was a big key all day. They were on our side of the 50 a lot in the second half. Our defense, like I said, had a couple field goals even on short fields, so I think there's going to be a lot of positives on this. No one wants to lose, I'm not a moral victory guy, so I'm not walking with anything, but we are walking on with our head held high.
Q: What are the guys going to learn from this?
A: Well, I told him we're going to learn a lot from this. We do have a bye week. Traditionally, we come in tomorrow to clean up the film and get a lift in. I gave them tomorrow off, so I think that'll be a little bit of a lift to get in the training room a little bit on their own and just heal their bodies up because that's a big physical team. I'm sure our guys will be sore. I told them I was proud of them, I told them I thought they hung in there and we battled until the end and that's all you can ask.
Q: Mark you mentioned this in your opening statement, but you guys put together two fourth quarter touchdown drives while the game was kind of out of reach. What does that say about the character of your team going into conference play?
A: Like I said, I'm real proud of our guys. We do have that never die attitude; we do have that resilience. We use that word a lot in our locker room it's kind of our motto. Keep tapping the rock, just keep showing up, taking it one play at a time. Hopefully good things will happen at some point in time. We were fortunate enough to get a couple of balls in the endzone during the game. I'm real proud of their resiliency, that's the word that keeps coming up, and the way they stuck together.