What Austin Peay coach Scotty Walden said after 30-13 loss at No. 9 Tennessee

What Austin Peay coach Scotty Walden said after his Governor football team lost 30-13 to No. 9 Tennessee on the road at Neyland Stadium Saturday night in Knoxville:

Opening Statement

“Obviously we lost the game, but I think it is very evident that we played a different football game this week. We got back to playing Austin Peay State Governor football. No doubt about it. We played physical. We played fearless. I’m just so proud of this team because we had some hard conversations this week. This was not an easy week for our program. It wasn’t. As I said last week, the way we played against SIU was not to our standard. It’s not the culture we want to depict. I’m just so dang proud of our football team. They came out with grit. We had great leadership, player leadership. Like I said, we had hard conversations as a staff. We had hard conversations from a player standpoint and they responded. I just got done praising them because they could’ve had a miniscule mindset with those coachable moments. If you have ever been a student-athlete before, it is hard. It is very hard to sit and watch that film and get critiqued and get coached in front of your teammates in there when it’s not good. They took coaching. We made too many mistakes to beat a really good team. They’re a top-10 team in America. They are a College Football Playoff team, no doubt about it. They have as good of personnel as anyone in the country. I thought we did a lot of things schematically to give ourselves a chance. Kudos to our players, they fought their hearts out. That’s Austin Peay State Governor football. That execution, that effort, now we just have to put it all together. We are going to get there. I really believe that. I am really proud of our coaching staff, proud of our team and I’m proud of Gov Nation for how they traveled and supported us.”

Expecting the unexpected when playing an opponent like Tennessee

“I think we frustrated them in a lot of ways. We want to be that FCS team that no Power 5 school wants to play. I know my AD doesn’t want to hear that. He probably likes those checks. We want teams to be thinking twice before they schedule the Governors because they won’t get a team that is going to lay down. They are going to get a team that’s going to fight. It’s going to be uncommon, it’s going to be cutting-edge. We did a lot of things to disrupt their tempo and disrupt their rhythm. Again, I’m just so proud of the kids. They bought into the game plan. I’ll tell you one thing, I thought we did a great job as a coaching staff communicating the game plan because it was uncommon. Using unbalanced formations, mixing up our pressures on defense, different ways to stop their tempo when they got going on offense. They were unconventional. When you’re playing a team like that you have to be unconventional in a bunch of ways. I thought we came out and surprised them. It’s an art of war. You have to be where the enemy doesn’t expect you when you’re playing a really good opponent. I thought we did a great job at keeping them off balance.”

If future opponents can expect something unconventional from Austin Peay

“I think by nature, what we do is unconventional. We view the game a little differently. I think the answer is yes. Every game plan is unique within itself. We have to devise things that really work against their schematics. Things that can exploit their weaknesses. As long as we do that, there is no bad idea. That is one thing in our staff, we don’t get mad at any ideas. One guy may have an idea, this guy may have an idea, I may have an idea. We can splice it together and it becomes a play. The answer is yes. We are unconventional by nature. We are just going to continue. The biggest thing was the effort and the edges we played with tonight and I was very proud of that.”

What he liked about Austin Peay’s defense against Tennessee’s offense

“I really like the way we ran to the football and hit. I saw a couple times that they wore us down with the run game, and yeah they leaked some things through, but I really like the way we tackled. We had better leverage. We had better knock back and we hunted for the football. That is something we wanted to get back to, hunting the football. We had a lot of plays against SIU that we are right there in the backfield and we just didn’t make. I feel like we made a lot more of those plays tonight. I love our pass defense. I loved the competition on the back end. We told those guys, ‘play free’ and if you get a pass interference, who cares. Go compete for every ball. That allowed them to play free and not worry about making a mistake. That was the biggest thing I liked about our defense tonight. I like about our team that we did not fear failure. We came out here with no pressure. We got to understand that failure is growth. If you fail, how will you learn from it? Let’s go play the next play. I really loved the mindset of our defense tonight. We hunted the ball and tackled well.”

If playing free is why Austin Peay went for it on fourth down on the first drive

“One-hundred percent yeah, I mean what do we have to lose? I think we did a great job on communicating what to do. Our players were not hit with the unexpected. They know I love to go for it on fourth and short. It was all about today having a four-down mindset. It’s not about a three-down mindset, let’s get it to fourth and manageable and let’s go for it. Let’s put the pressure on them. I loved to have that goal line one (back). That was a great stop by them. I would love to have that one back. I thought we did a good job on fourth down. I thought that was a key difference from Week 1 to Week 2, our mindset. I thought we played really tight. We were trying to be so perfect, trying to be so right. Let’s relax and play. We got back to playing to our roots today.”

What it was like seeing what this Austin Peay team is capable of, based on how it played at Tennessee

“Last week I was pretty critical of our team. I said I was embarrassed after the game. I give credit where credit is due. This week I am proud. I am beyond proud of our team. I am beyond proud of our coaching staff. We talked about earning national respect this week. When you’re on a stage like this, it is all about your mindset going into games like this. We have played Ole Miss. We have played Bama. We have played Tennessee. We want to play the best. We love it. The reason why we love it is because it’s an opportunity to get our brand out there. To get this Governor out there. To get this nine-three-one out there. To show people this is Clarksville, Tennessee. This is Austin Peay and Clarksville, Tennessee. Not Austin, Texas. This is an opportunity to put our school on the map. I think we took a step in that tonight. I think beating these guys would have put it over the top. We are going to beat a Power 5 school at some point while we’re here. We’re going to do it. I can feel it. Our kids are bought in. It’s cool to earn that national respect but we have to build on it. We have a great team in ETSU coming next week. We are going to have to prepare. We are going to have to have that same juice and that same edge about us every single game this year because we play some really good teams including East Tennessee State coming into Fortera (Stadium) next week.”

Austin Peay’s level of play late in the game 

“I saw the fight of our kids. Two things that we emphasized going into the game that were focus points for our football team that we set as a coaching staff was that we want to walk out of here tonight and we answered both of them. No. 1 was fight. We wanted to walk out knowing that we fought because we felt we kind of lost our edge last week for some reason and this week we fought – we absolutely fought – we played disciplined football. Secondly, we wanted to play free, meaning that we wanted to play instinctive and we wanted to let our kids play and I think we did a great job devising a game plan that allowed them to play free. Man J.J. Clark, our defensive coordinator, dialed some stuff up and had a great plan for these guys along with Chris Jones, Aaron Foster and Seth McDonald. And our offensive coaching staff had a great plan too. I also give credit to our kids for that fight. I will point out, there was a drive, it was late, before the touchdown drive we scored late in the game and I told the defense, because I called a bad drive the drive before, I said, ‘hey listen brother, please get the ball back because I’m going to call some better plays this next round I can feel it because I saw some things, our kids saw some things and they did that. We got a stop, we got back on the field, we scored a touchdown by Trey Goodman, so just proud of the fight.”

Playing winning football on the road against Tennessee

“Yeah, I think we played winning football tonight. Now, certainly there are some areas that we need to be better. The drive that I want back out of any drive was when we talk about the middle eight all the time – that’s a staple in our program – that’s winning the last four minutes of the first half and winning the first four minutes of the second half. We got the ball with 4:45 on the clock left and we went three and out and I was like, ‘ugh, I wish I had called a better drive and wish I would have put our players in a better position because we really could have booked that clock and you saw what happened. Obviously, we gave the ball back to them with two minutes left, they went down and Joe Milton runs the quarterback draw to give them that 13-6 lead at half time, so that’s a drive I want back. Again, Tennessee is a playoff team, and their personnel is just elite, but we can’t allow seven yards a carry, and that’s not me being critical of our defense, but I think that we can be better against the run, so there’s areas to clean up. But there’s no doubt in my mind that we played winning football. I think that if we play with that edge and that drive, I think it will put us in a position to win a lot of games, so we need to stack on it. I am very, very proud of this football program right now.”