Dan Mullen: The SEC East "Hasn’t Been Clinched by Anybody"

“I would have liked to fix this and that. There were no turnovers in the game and we really would have liked to create a turnover or two in the course of the game. There were a couple mistakes and some negative yardage plays offensively that I thought really set us back at times and set us off-schedule. It’s hard to do that coming back. Our third-down defense was really good, and I thought our red-zone defense was good for the most part, but we didn’t get off the field on third down. With a team like that, you’re going to let them drive and then eventually stop them in the red zone. We did that for most of the night, but third down defense was a big one for us.”

On the length of the offensive drives...

“When you’re down two, you have to score once first. It’s ‘let’s make sure we put a solid drive together and get the touchdown first’ and we did that. That’s kind of the whole thought that goes into that. We don’t need to panic, just run and execute our offense. Let’s take it down the field. We executed clean and we punched it in. I thought we played okay on offense at times. Some mistakes kept setting us back at different points in the game. Obviously, we only ran 52 plays offensively which is not very good. We needed to stay on the field better on offense and get off the field on defense.”

On struggling with the run game...

“We wanted to take the lead and we fell behind early, so we were throwing a bit more. The goal was to try to take the lead. They scored that touchdown to take the lead and that was the biggest play of the game. We were off the field on third down and they got sent back on. I don’t think we tried to call many running plays. When we ran the ball, [Lamical] Perine had seven carries and 31 yards. [Dameon] Pierce was three for 13.”

On Jake Fromm ...

“I thought he did a good job. Give their offensive line credit. They did a good job with not allowing pressure.”

On Georgia’s success on third down...

“You can go in any direction you want to go. We had missed tackles, they got helped out a couple of times, and we missed coverage.”

On the future after this game...

“Every year is independent. There’s a lot of football still left to be played. The division hasn’t been clinched by anybody and it wasn’t going to be clinched by anybody today. Win or lose this game, next week’s game is really big for us. That’s how it works.”

On the defensive schemes...

“We called a lot of different defenses. There’s a lot of different answers for why they were good on third downs, not one thing. We mixed up different looks. There were 18 third downs and each one is going to be pretty independent to be honest with you. We had a penalty that gave them a first down, we had a ‘call stands,’ which I thought that was one of the biggest plays of the game.”

On timeouts...

“We had the wrong personnel on the field. The first two drives, we had two different things. We had the wrong personnel on the field for the play call. We had ten men on the field and then they didn’t get lined up right. One I got in late and the one in the fourth quarter, I think they signaled the wrong formation and the receivers weren’t lined up. At that point, it was too big a point in the game to not use the timeout. I was frustrated because there’s little things you can point out. That’s a very manageable situation. It’s signaling and formation and getting lined up right.”