After Georgia Tech’s 22-21 loss to Northern Illinois Saturday night at Bobby Dodd Stadium, four Yellow Jackets team members answered questions from media about the game. Comments from quarterback Jordan Yates, wide receiver Malachi Carter, linebacker Ayinde Eley and defensive back Wesley Walker:
Yates on his objective going into the game in place of Jeff Sims:
“Just to be the next man up and always be ready for whenever my time comes and just fill right in and keep running the offense.”
Carter, on what message team leaders have for younger players:
“Honestly, just, we’ve got to forget about it. The worst thing you can do is dwell on a loss like this. Everybody, definitely, we don’t feel the best about this, obviously. We lost to this good team that came in and they played well, but the biggest thing is just looking forward. We’ve got a long season ahead. We’re planning on playing these 12 games and we’ve just got to look forward and prepare for next week, Kennesaw State.
“The biggest thing I can tell everybody is just keep your head up. Keep each other up. Know that we are a great team and we’ve got to believe that going on for the rest of the season. Because dwelling on something like this can easily bring a team down going forward. But that’s the biggest thing, just trust each other, believe in each other and know that we’re going to pick it up next week. That’s the biggest thing.”
Yates on if the team still needs to learn to win:
“I’d say we definitely have room to improve, for sure. I think we actually have a pretty good amount of experience across the board. We’re young in some spots, but I know the guys are going to rally. If we’re put in this situation again, we’ll come out with the outcome we want to come out with.”
Eley on Northern Illinois’ downhill run game:
“We prepared for some of the formations they showed and stuff, but they just came out of camp, too, so they had some new stuff that we hadn’t seen before. So we adjusted to that.”
Credit: ACC
Eley on Northern Illinois’ game-winning drive:
“The whole drive, every yard of that, I’m pretty sure Wes feels the same way – he remembers every yard, every play they called. It’s just something we’ve got to go look at the film and we’ve got to clean it up. We’ve got 11 more games and this is only one of them, so we’ve got to patch up your wounds and keep on moving.”
Walker on Northern Illinois’ two-point conversion:
“We were in a call and the wide receiver (Tyrice Richie) just sat it down. He sat it down in a zone where, really, where that’s the most unprotected area in the call. I didn’t know if it was a catch or not. It was kind of unclear if it was a catch or not. They called it a catch, so it was a catch. I didn’t know, so I was really unsure of what it was, so I was just waiting on the call and they said it was a catch. We’ve just got to put that behind us. we can’t dwell on something that we can’t control anymore.”
Walker on his fourth-quarter forced fumble, which set up Tech’s go-ahead touchdown:
“That’s probably the biggest thing we practice in practice and emphasize is just ball disruption, attacking the ball. So when I saw one of my teammates holding him up, I just fell back on my training. It was more natural I wasn’t really thinking. That’s what we do in practice. It just naturally happened.”
