	products recent interviews FastScripts archive about ASAP Sports

Our Clients:

Browse by Sport

Find us on

Subscribe to RSS

Click to go to
Asaptext.com

View our
e-Brochure

SOUTHEASTERN CONFERENCE MEDIA CONFERENCE

November 29, 2010

Josh Bynes

THE MODERATOR: Josh, could you briefly talk about Auburn advancing to Atlanta and facing South Carolina on Saturday.
JOSH BYNES: Basically, we've been working hard all year. And we finally are in a position where we've been waiting for and preaching about all year, getting to the SEC championship.
Now that we're finally here, we're grateful. And we're blessed by the opportunity. We're just trying to look forward to playing them again.
We know it's going to be tough, but we want to take it one practice at a time this week and just look forward to playing the game.
THE MODERATOR: Questions?

Q. This year there's been plenty of drama off the field, and it hasn't seemed to spill over and affect you on the field where you've had an additional amount. How have you guys been able to separate it? And what's been the important factors in doing that?
JOSH BYNES: I mean, we've been able to separate all that just like everybody's been able to separate things in their lives. There's a lot of things that go on in people's lives that you have to be able to separate and handle the job you're doing.
Things might be going on at home not too well whatever, with your son or your child or your mother, or something like that, but at the same time you go to work with a different mindset; you've got to accomplish your job and do your work.
That's exactly what we're doing, that's the same mindset. We know for a fact there's a whole bunch of things, stuff going on with family members on our team, something going on, the media in it and everything like that, but we know we have to go to work and handle our job.
That's all we've been doing, where we let that be to itself and that situation take care of itself. But we know when it's time to go to work and time to show up at the job to play football and make sure we get on track with our plays and we make it a point we all handle that.
Whatever situation was happening prior to the game or prior to practice, we let it rest itself. We know from the time we go to meetings, until time play ends it's all football and that's all that matters and we account for.

Q. Did you ever get to a point during the game say the other day when you're down by 24 where you think maybe this hill's just too big to climb?
JOSH BYNES: No, not at all. Because I think everybody on this team, me included, of course, have been, regardless of what situation, how many points we are down, we are able to fight adversity and come back and win.
We knew for a fact the things we did, we made a lot of mistakes defensively to get them up that many points. It wasn't really like they manhandled us physically or anything like that, we did a lot of mistakes that easily could have changed the game from just being down three points to us being up maybe more or something like that.
But the mistakes cost us early in the game. They took advantage of scoring points, 24-0. But we knew for a fact going into halftime that if we cancelled out those mistakes and played the same kind of football, because we didn't make any adjustments. People think we make adjustments all year. We really don't make any adjustments this whole year. It's been rarely, I can think of one time where we probably made adjustments all year.
The only thing different between the first half and second half, our feet are on the ground, our mindset is ready. We're going out there. We know we're going to finish the game and go out with a victory.
That's how we've been doing games all year, finishing and coming out and knowing in the second half, regardless what the scoreboard says, we'll come back and win. That's always on our mind, winning. No matter, any shape, form or fashion, as long as we know we're on top at the end of the day the scoreboard, that's what we're going to fight for and that's what we'll fight until we get there. That's what we've been doing all year and that's the kind of attitude this team has.

Q. Along those same lines, you gotta kind of feel like if you're down 24-0 in a hostile stadium, if there's anybody on that sideline that doubts that you can do it, you probably aren't going to come back. Do you feel like that, that nobody on that sideline doubted for a second that you could all do it?
JOSH BYNES: Not at all. Especially not as us as players. I think we don't really care what everybody else is thinking because we're the ones out there handling the business. We're the ones that are going out there playing football. Regardless what the coaches say, what the media, attitude of the fans, we know it's up to us 11 offense, 11 on defense to go out there and show that we believe in each other, we believe that 24-0 is not nothing new for us. We've been down before. Maybe not that high of a deficit but we're going to come back and win.
Not one guy felt like that at all. And it was just early in the game to feel that way anyway. I mean, we're not going to feel that way all year, going to change just one game because we played against Alabama in their house. That wasn't going to change any mindset at all. Obviously that's why we came back and won.

Q. I hate to ask another Cam question, but that was the first time since all this stuff with Cam had surfaced that you all had to deal with the fans, opposing stadium with the fans making the noise, the PA system playing songs, making reference to it. How did Cam deal with that? Didn't seem to faze him much?
JOSH BYNES: Didn't at all. You answered it already.

Q. Why do you think it does keep happening that the defense -- I mean, seeming like it takes to the second half before you guys really get going?
JOSH BYNES: I think because -- I think our adrenalin keeps going. A lot of times we've got to think of something and we really just don't -- we've got to learn how to calm down in the first quarter, let things flow and play defense, play our kind of ball and not wait until the last time or crunch time to play all kind of great football.
I think if we start off like that and play the first two quarters as well as we do the last two, we'll probably be one of the more dominant defenses in the nation.
But we've got to play the first quarters like the last two. It would be a lot of stuff going on, adrenalin pumping, flow of the games, some guys get called into it and missing assignments and things like that. But later in the game, you rarely see any of that. It's like guys calm down and keep the composure and take one play at a time rather than looking to the end of the game.

Q. Are you surprised that's still happening? If you look at your last two games, I think Alabama and Georgia both put up 21 points real quick.
A. I think you can say kind of sort of surprised in a way, but is it as -- it all happened. It happened fast and it happened the way it did. But you look at the fact when we actually turned around, Alabama scored three points and Georgia only scored 10 in the last three quarters. We start off -- I'm not saying we're going to do every opponent like that because there might be an opponent we come against when we get down 21 we might not be able to come back.
I think it's a scary thing to think of. But that's why I said we're not that great enough of a football team to get down 21-0 like that and always come back, because it might be that one team to go out there and show us that when we're 21 down they're going to come out and say we gotta just play better and play complete and come out with the right mindset and our composure, rather than letting the game take over us and wait until really when we see a down, get that mind back right and all of a sudden play the kind of football we were supposed to be playing in the beginning.

Q. When you guys played South Carolina the first time, you were really able to shut down Marcus Lattimore and shut down the running game in general. What did you guys do that was so effective to stopping them?
JOSH BYNES: Basically play on the other side of their line of scrimmage. We got defense lined in the back field. Linebackers downhill. Closing gaps and closing lanes and safeties sitting in alleys, things like that, stopping the runs.
When you have the whole defense swarming to the run, you get pressure by your front four guys alone by themselves, can't ask for anything more. That's the big thing stopping the run because we had guys like Zac and Nick Fairley and Antoine Carter and Mike Blanc, and you have guys on the other side.
Guys up front at the defensive line position was getting penetration and frees up the offensive linebackers to stop the run. I think that was the key, that's part of the key for any game. If you get penetration by the defensive linemen and your linebackers find a hole, I think no team can run the ball. And if you are taking care of that, you can start the run pretty easily.

Q. The South Carolina offense is pretty multiple, but Jeffrey has kind of emerged as a big play guy for them. How does he rank as a play-maker in your mind and compared to the rest of the league?
JOSH BYNES: He's a really good guy to watch. He's really nice. I really like the way he plays. He plays aggressive. But at the same time he seems to look like he's humbled and not like trying to be flashy. Just go out there and make plays. I think when you've got a guy like, that it's got to be a good weapon to have on your offense.
I think we have to definitely watch out for him, because we have a lot of great receivers in the last two games. I know he's definitely one of them. He showed earlier what he can do. I'm pretty sure his last game, not last game, but the SEC championship, if we let him get free, let him do a lot of things more than he did the last game, it's going to be a lot of trouble.
We have to try to limit him as much as possible and get to the quarterback and get in throwing lanes, things like that. But he's definitely a great receiver. I mean, watching him immerse since we played them the whole year, that's all you seen him do was go out and make plays. When you got a guy like that, going out and making plays with that size and that capability, that's just something you've definitely got to keep your eye out for.

Q. You talk about Lattimore earlier. Is Jeffrey the guy you've got to stop, or is that a two-headed monster or three-headed, with Garcia?
JOSH BYNES: I wouldn't really call them three-headed, two-headed monsters, it's just that we didn't key guys on the offense that make the hole. If you let them run the ball, Alshon Jeffery might not get all the passes he wants. But if you stop them from running like we did earlier in the year -- I don't know if I messed up his name -- Alshon Jeffery might get all the yards he got earlier in the year.
But I'm not really going to say we can't stop them. I mean, you can't -- as much as you want to, you wish you can, I mean, one of them -- might one of them have a good day. Just like we play Alabama, Julio had a great day.
But we definitely stopped the run. You know what I'm saying? Because they knew the running game wasn't it. It was more the passing game that Alabama wanted to emphasize.
So I think the same thing earlier in the year when we played Lattimore, they couldn't run the ball, so they threw the ball, and he was the guy to throw to. It's going to go either way. We stop the pass, I'm pretty sure they're going to run the ball to Lattimore more, and he might be the guy we have to stop.
So you gotta think about it, and it's not really a three-headed monster. Depends on what works for them. If we stop the run like we did earlier they'll throw the ball. Just like any offense you go against. If we stop the passing, then you'll see the running game opening up the passing. So it could go either way, depending on how the game works out. And I think we stop the run and limit the running game earlier then they'll resort to probably passing again.

End of FastScripts

ASAP Sports, Inc. | T: 1.212 385 0297