Jonathan Smith Postgame: "They had great balance on both sides."

Following the loss to Oregon, Michigan State head coach Jonathan Smith met with media to discuss the game. Smith was open about what went right and wrong for the Spartans in the 31-10 loss to the Ducks.

Oregon was pretty dominant at the line of scrimmage on both sides of the ball. Something Smith noted in his post-game press conference.

You can read some of his top quotes below or watch the full video included at the bottom.

Opening Statement…

“Okay, let me start with credit to Oregon, Coach Lanning, that staff, they do a nice job. They’ve got a
good team, and they came and played well tonight, way better than we did, forced some issues on us,
and we’ve got to find a way to respond and get better. You know, you look at the game, a couple early
turnovers that we got in the end zone were huge. Obviously, we turned it over early that was not ideal,
and then I think it really separated into half of them scoring a touchdown, making 21-0. Challenged the
guys at halftime, like ‘hey, we need to play four quarters.’ I thought we did that, but we just did not play
well enough against a really good team that, you know, they found ways to separate. So, look, game six,
you know, halfway point of the regular season, and we come on the bye, and we’ve got to regroup,
we’ve got to find ways to improve, starting with us as coaches, finding, you know, best ways positionally,
where we’re putting them in, scheme, where we’re at flaws, and find a way to improve on it, and move
forward because we’ve got a lot of football left in front of us.”

On challenges facing the Oregon defense…

“Well, I think the line of scrimmage was not to our advantage, I mean, looking at the run game and
protection, that start with something we’ve got to find a way to get better. They’re good up front
schematically and did a nice job on a couple of things that we needed to respond to sooner, and we
didn’t get that done.”

On issues in the red zone…

“We talked about the call, first and 10, taking a shot at it, if it’s not there, yeah, ideally we’re throwing
the thing away, Aidan (Chiles) is a competitive player, you know, he’s going to go put his shoulders in
there, and all of that, well, you’ve got to keep the ball locked up.”

On Oregon’s success in the running game…

“Yeah, you know, it was similar to last week. I mean, picking and choosing, they’ve got some perimeter
play. That quarterback’s a good player, so you give them a bunch of one-on-ones to stop the run, can he
get exposed that way, but if they did. They had great balance on both sides. They were throwing it,
running it…we needed to find a way to get them one-dimensional. Didn’t do it tonight.”

On monitoring Aidan Chiles’ confidence…

“Yeah, you’re back and forth. I think a little bit, you know, we’ve got other guys, you know. Tommy
(Schuster) works hard as well, and got to a situation where, you know, we want to give him some time.
Aidan (Chiles) just finished on a scoring drive. The game was three or four scores at that point, so all of
that. We weren’t thinking much about his psyche putting Tommy in. It just felt like the right time to do
it.”