John L. Smith 10-1

Head Coach John L. Smith (opening statement) -"Yesterday we came back to work, looked at the tape, went to the practice field, got some stiffness and soreness worked out and proceeded to get on to Auburn. We tried to make corrections, which we will continue to do. Again, second game week we get to go on the road it's good. I thought our guys did a good job of traveling last week and our vets did a good job of preparing our rookies for the travel and did a good job as far as that goes. The focus I thought was very, very good when we traveled. We have to continue to do that. We've got to go get on to Auburn and that's where we are now."

Head Coach John L. Smith (on injuries) -"The guys that have been missing, (Chris) Gragg, no, (Tevin) Mitchel, none of these guys have been cleared. Dennis (Johnson) will be back. He was cleared and he played. He has the broken hand, but he'll play with that again. (Rohan) Gaines should be ready to go, but other than that nobody else has been cleared."

Head Coach John L. Smith (on if the injured players have accepted they might not return) -"They don't want to push themselves to get better? No. In fact, Tevin (Mitchel) came out and ran last night, as did (Kaelon) Kelleybrew. I think they are pushing themselves. You have some of them that aren't going to come back and can't come back. Like (Kody) Walker and probably Kiero (Small), even though Kiero wants to come back. Is that realistic? Probably not. That's kind of being honest. I think with those that are capable of coming back they are still wanting to come back and are working at it."

Head Coach John L. Smith (on mistakes) -"We have to maintain. We, and I don't want to make excuses, but it's consistency, it's mistakes. Just like last week's game. It's 13-10 and we are driving down the field, going down to the 7-yard line, but a mistake of an alignment so we turn around and back up because of the penalty and then we throw a pick. You can't do that. You have to keep it rolling against good football teams. It's just consistency and mistakes. A lot of new guys, a lot of new people, new guys in there. As you take a look at your planning, what you want to do as a coach is pare it down, pare it down, pare it down, pare it down. You give them what they can handle. It's not what Tyler Wilson can handle. It's not what Chris Smith can handle. It's what can Johnny Jones handle, who is the new guy coming in. You try to do that but leave yourself enough bullets to have some ammo out there. It's a fine line. We are trying to get it as simple as we can to make sure everyone can align, execute and do their job. Also, expand it enough to give you a chance to give them enough looks. It's a game plan you can win with."

Head Coach John L. Smith (on RB-Knile Davis' performance at Texas A&M) -"He got off to a real good start. I think Knile came in and at least from the beginning on, you could look from the sidelines and say, 'Yes, that's Knile. Come on. Keep it going, keep it going, keep it going.' Hopefully we can build on that for this week and I think he will."

Head Coach John L. Smith (on if he thinks RB Knile Davis would be better had he experienced contact before the season) -"No. I really don't. I don't know that that would change anything at this point. I guess you could second-guess yourself at this point and say maybe we should have. When you look back you could say 'OK, yes, let's give him contact to begin with,' and then you lose him for the year and then what do you get? Then your hindsight is really ugly."

Head Coach John L. Smith (on the team's goals for the rest of the season) -"We've got one goal, and that's to go get a win. At this point, that's the only thing we should be thinking of. All this other stuff, the hype and all that stuff are all gone. Let's worry about going and getting a win."

Head Coach John L. Smith (on CB-Davyon McKinney) -"McKinney seems to be OK. He's going to be alright. There was a stretch of time where you would go back and look at video and see there's a guy we can really build on and tweak and give him more snaps. He had a stretch down the field that he played pretty darn good. He was trying to be physical."

Head Coach John L. Smith (on what is keeping CB-Tevin Mitchel from playing) -"It's the gall bladder. It's the recovery on the gall bladder and the soreness that he's had. The jogging I guess that it creates in your body is not completely healed. So I guess more that."

Head Coach John L. Smith (on what has been positive with this team) -"As we start looking offensively, I think getting Tyler (Wilson) back after the layoff has been a great deal and we're improving and he's improving and is going to continue even though people are going to look and say that last week's game wasn't a good game by him. That and then Cobi (Hamilton) has really stepped it up. I think some of the other guys on the wideout position have too. Without (Chris) Gragg you need some other receivers. I think we've made at least a portion of being able to run the ball. We have to continue to concentrate on that. We've shown some improvement, not nearly as much as we'd like. Defensively, I think our front has improved. I think they are much more disciplined than they have been. They have been able to stay fresh because that's the one place we have depth. So improvement has come there and you add Tank (Wright) back to that front mix. It makes you better down front as well. I think that's been an improvement. We have to continue in the secondary because anytime you lose guys it's not an improvement."