Jeff Brohm Admits Loss to Kentucky Really Hurts

Louisville coach Jeff Brohm praised Kentucky and didn’t mince words about his team’s play following Kentucky’s 38-31 comeback victory Saturday. Here’s some of what he said:

About the two fumbles being good defense or carelessness…

BROHM: “No, we didn’t do a good enough job protecting the ball. We work ball security every day. Probably more so than any team in the country and have done a great job thus far of not fumbling the ball much this year – which is hard to do. Interceptions occasionally happen. We have done a great job of not fumbling the ball. We let one sneak out and they got a touchdown that shouldn’t have happened. Luckily the call was in our favor. We were just trying for a few extra yards, but we can’t let the ball come out. We are driving the ball down the field, and you have to secure the football. The quarterback starts scrambling and I know he is trying to get some extra yards and the first down, but you have to protect the football. You can’t display it so they can put their helmet on it and punch it out. Attention to detail needs to happen. They made a couple of physical plays and knocked it out and it hurt us.”

About what went wrong on Ray Davis’ touchdown…”

BROHM: “I can’t tell from the sideline. He was untouched, which is ridiculous. We wanted to push him back because they were almost in field goal range. We pretty much had an all-out blitz called and someone didn’t contain their gap and he snuck through. That sometimes happens when you are blitzing and hoping to get a negative play. But if one person does not do their job, it is going to create a crease. I am going to assume that is what happened just from looking at it from the field. When I see it on video, I will be able to tell you.”

On the penalties and the emotions of the game…

BROHM: “Completely disappointing. We couldn’t have talked about that garbage any more than we did. And the person who did it is a great player for us. He’s a great young man… it can’t happen. And it was costly – costly penalties. Just foolish, childish and our guys are better than that and that person is better than that too and I’m sure we’ll get it fixed, but that stuff can’t happen.”

What was Kentucky doing up front to stem the blitzes on Devin Leary…

BROHM: “They had a couple of play actions where they were run-blocking and kind of keeping us on the line of scrimmage and allowing them a little more time to try to make the throw. We’ve got to get off blocks and we’ve got to cover better. There are too many guys running wide open. When some guys are wide open, it’s easy to make the throw and that’s what they did today. We’ve got to fix that.”

Does this loss hurt a little bit more than others and does it help to have the game next week against Florida State to help rebound from that?…”

BROHM: “Yes, this one hurts more than the others. We wanted to win this game, we put a lot of emphasis on it. I give Kentucky credit, they came in here and beat us. Congrats to them. We didn’t do a good enough job and yeah it stinks. Our fans were great, they showed out, they wanted to win, they did their parts and we didn’t do ours. So, we’ve got to look in the mirror and man up and work hard to fix it, because we have a top-four opponent that we’ve got to play next week down in Charlotte. We’re going to have to play a whole lot more efficient football to have any chance to be in the game.”