What Oregon S Bo Nix Alex Forsyth Bennett Williams Had To Say After The Ducks Lost To Georgia

Ducks quarterback Bo Nix, center Alex Forsythe and safety Bennett Williams recapped the Ducks’ loss. Below is the transcript from Oregon’s postgame press conference. Q. Bo, walk us through the second interception? What did you see? what were you thinking Why fly to this area? BO NIX: We made a good play, and they got right into it, and a bad decision. Q. Bo, obviously, this is a Georgia program you’ve seen a few times. Same old Georgia, or did you see different things from Kirby’s defense? BO NIX: It was Georgia herself. I’ve seen a lot of these looks. They are just really good. Really good at the point of attack. Very good to play the ball. Really good at tackling. It’s just hard to move the ball on these guys. Q. Bo, two turnovers on offensive drives. Move the ball. You’re approaching the scoring position. Can you tell us what goes through your mind after those two turnovers? Did you feel defeated? How were the discussions with Dan? BO NIX: Well, the first one I feel like the guy had a great game. The second, obviously, bad decision. Things like that happen. Unfortunately, they were on back-to-back drives, and that can’t happen in the first step. But my coaches were very encouraging. They kept me in the game. In such a situation you simply cannot be defeated by it. You have to move on to the next game and do better. Q. Two-part question: First, just for this fall camp and competing and winning the job, and then second just a self-evaluation of how you thought you performed overall today? BO NIX: Well, first off, I have to give credit to Ty. He did a very good job. Both very good matches. What was the other part of the question? Q. Only your self-assessment. BO NIX: I feel like after the spring and summer you’re more consistent offensively. You understand it a little more when you’re in a new system. Then a relationship with the receivers and tight ends is obviously very good through the fall. Then it’s all about competing and enjoying your time out there and making good decisions and moving the ball. Q. Bo, there was so much focus on this game for months and months and months and months. Is there an element of feeling somewhat relieved to be on the other side and able to go back to work? What kind of No. 1 on the to-do list for you when you get back to Eugene? BO NIX: It’s unfortunate that the opportunity was lost and it wasn’t a different result. Obviously, you hate to lose, but you have to get over it. We have a long season ahead of us. We have a lot of football to play so we will look forward to it and get better. Come back tomorrow and work and see what happens. Q. You mentioned earlier that the coach leaves you in the game. You didn’t usually see a one-sided game like this one where the quarterback stays. What did it mean to stay in and do you think that last drive was something to build on? BO NIX: Absolutely. I think it was just, obviously, their decision. We just wanted to see how we competed and how we responded to that kind of adversity. It showed a lot for our team. We continued the battle. I mean, that game was tough. I won’t lie to you, it wasn’t pretty. I can’t sit here and say it was. I can’t really say much about it. I mean, obviously, it is what it is. They beat us very badly. Q. Bo, Dan has talked a lot about “so what, now what” when adversity hits you. How important is that message right now and how important is what’s coming in the next two weeks to what this team wants to accomplish? BO NIX: Yes, that message is now. That’s why he says it. It’s for opportunities like this. We have to come back next week, face the next opponent and continue to build our season. Q. Bo, you converted very well on third down and had your moments during the game. What did you think of Kenny Dillingham’s play-calling in this offensive streak you had? BO NIX: When you look at the game, we moved the ball too early. Obviously, the turnovers got to us. It’s just some key third downs that we didn’t make to keep moving the ball, but I felt like our third shot was important for us. We emphasized that a lot, and that was one area we did well. Q. Bennett, when you specifically look at the box score, but even just going through the game itself, when it’s 9 out of 10 on third down, what goes through your mind as that number just gets away from you and they keep converting every time you down the third; BENNETT WILLIAMS: Next game. A lot of things today that just repeat themselves. They obviously had a game plan to attack the perimeter, and we didn’t do that well enough. They started to know what was coming, and they executed, and we didn’t. Q. For Alex, Georgia obviously had a lot of key players on their defensive front. Can you give us an insight into what they did to be effective? ALEX FORSYTH: Yeah, they were trying to mix things up a bit, they gave us some exotic looks. Coach Klemm has prepared us all week for almost everything we are going to see. I just trusted our rules, but at the end of the day they weren’t good enough. Q. Alex, you said during media days this year that you were thinking about those last two games last season and how much they left a memory in your brain. How does that feel in the context of this game now and that we have a similar effect with those two games? ALEX FORSYTH: I hate losing. There are no moral victories in defeat. There are no small victories. We have to get back to work. You have to be an adult for this. You must take the medicine. When you look at the film, hey, I’ve got to do better, we’ve all got to do better, and we’ve got to find that. Don’t hesitate. Don’t pretend it’s not there. You have to attack it head on, and that’s the only way we’ll improve. We really need to take control of this group and make sure everyone is 100% aware of this. Once we land in Eugene, it’s a brief memory. “So what, now what.” Q. Alex, no touchdowns were scored today. We can dig into the box score and take it out all we want, but from an offensive lineman, what’s the biggest thing you need to improve as a unit from Week 1 to Week 2? ALEX FORSYTH: Establishing the run game. To be able to, I guess, get to it early and be trusted to kind of put the game on our backs. We’re a bunch of vets up there. We just didn’t do a good enough job today. Obviously the score says so. We just have to be better, and pretty much be able to take over a game and be able to run the ball and just make plays. That’s all. Q. Very simple, Alex. Is it the best team you’ve played against? And just seeing that physicality after people have been talking about it for months, what was it really like playing in that game? ALEX FORSYTH: I think you’ve had this game circled on the calendar since late last year. I know I have. I think throughout fall camp, looking at film and seeing what we’re going to face. They are, obviously, a really, really big group. Really talented; played too hard; play smart I don’t know what their penalties were, but I don’t think they had many of them. Yes, they were a very good team and they were really very talented up front. Q. Bennett, does a loss like that cast doubt on just this team and direction or something? BENNETT WILLIAMS: No. No, and I’m sure there are guys, right, on the team where doubt starts to creep in, but that’s our job as leaders to help them understand that we’re a really good team. We didn’t show that today, yeah, and Georgia was obviously very good, right? We didn’t play the way we should and it got out of control. The score shows it, but we have to go to the next game. That’s a loss, right? I know the score says 49-3, but it counts as one loss whether we lose by one point or lose by that much. Now we’re on to the next game and our job as leaders and all of us is to make sure we go to the next game, as he said earlier. Q. After that for both of you, you are two of the biggest players. You are two of the leaders of this group. You’re talking about a player-driven team. No matter how much you may not like it and I may not like it, we live in a world in college football where what’s going to be said in the next 72 hours is that you’re already out of the playoffs, that there’s no way, that the best that all you can do is win the championship, maybe a Rose Bowl, and that’s it. As older guys who’ve been through it and seen it, how do you prevent that message that’s going to be in the national conversation all week from breaking through and being, okay, what do we play all season for the next three months? ALEX FORSYTH: Yeah, I think we just have to reiterate to the guys that there’s not one person that’s in the College Football Playoff — there’s not one person that’s going to rank these teams that’s going to ever downgrade Oregon Football. The only people I care about are behind that door, and they’re the only ones who will make a difference this season. Just keep blocking out the outside noise. They’ll try to tear you down and backstab you and smile in your face and all that when you do good, but just keep moving on to the next game, the next game. Just don’t even worry about it. Q. Bennett, there were a lot of missed tackles today. What was said on the sidelines to try to clean it up? BENNETT WILLIAMS: That was one of our main goals in the game is to be good tacklers, and we certainly didn’t do that today. I know it’s the first game. We show statistics and…