Press Conference: Elko & Co. return to Baton Rouge in Week 4

The following are live, paraphrased notes from the Monday afternoon media availability:

Mike Elko

• Wrapping up the game, I don’t think there’s much to add. It wasn’t up to the standard of where we want to be. We’ve got a great opportunity this week to go on the road and we have to respond, that’s what this program is built on. Looking forward to the opportunity and the challenge. An injury update: Unfortunately, Terry Bussey will be out for the season wirh a lower body injury.
   
• You make decisions early in the week on where guys are. You’re always evaluating guys. That will happen this week. We were loose in terms of we never got comfortable with what we were trying to do. As the week went on, we were tweaking, trying to get our guys in a comfortable spot, and we never felt great. That showed on Saturday, as that was one of the worst defensive performances in my career, and I own that. It was loose in the fact that we didn’t hit it how we wanted to.
   
• It’s an opportunity for Aaron Gregory to step up. He’s a really talented kid and a competitive kid. You saw younger guys step into those roles as we had to rotate. We’ve always been a next-man-up mentality, and we’ll need that again.
   
• I’m not sure what was said on the broadcast. It’s the same defense we ran last year. We need more people to drop back and pass, and we didn’t get that this week.
   
• It’s too early in the week on Ashton Bethel-Roman and Jamarion Morrow. We’ll wait for the injury report.
   
• We’re always walking a fine line of health and effectiveness with Marcel Reed running. He’s not a guy you design quarterback runs for like some of the other guys you see around the country who are 220 or 230 pounds. He’s a guy you want to get loose on the edge and we’ll get more for him there.
   
• You don’t want to say things are moving in a good direction after what happened on Saturday, but I can see progress with that offensive line group. I thought we had bigger running lanes, cleaner pockets, and some progress was made but overall it’s hard to talk about positives after Saturday.
   
• We have a lot of pride in how we play defense here. We will rise to the challenge. We’re evaluating in film study, walk throughs, and practice. One of the challenges you see across the country early in the season is you spend so much time going against your own offense, and every offense has their own multiplicity to it, so across the country defenses are a little behind. It’s not meant to be an excuse, but we’ve got to catch up quickly.
   
• What I see in Sam Leavitt is an ultra-competitive kid. He can hurt you with his legs. He’s fast, escapable, and will throw his body around. He doesn’t back down from contact and that’s what I see when I watch him.
   
• That was about the noise that comes out in and around the program when you lose a game like that, and controlling what we have in that locker room. I didn’t mean for anyone to take offense to that. We want to stay internal and stay positive within that locker room. That was seriously not a shot at our fanbase. They’ve been great.
   
• There’s easier venues I would choose to do our first road trip in. You have to draw confidence from the success we’ve had on the road in our first two years, but it will be challenging. I’ve only gone against Lane Kiffin’s offense once, but I think it’s changed since then. I don’t have a ton of experience against Lane Kiffin.
   
• The biggest challenge with Daymion Sanford’s injury was how long he had to stya off of it and building up strength and speed on it. We had a good start getting him on the punt team two weeks ago, and then we got him in defensively last week. We’ll evaluate him moving forward this week.
   
• His inconsistency showed up. We have to continue to evaluate ways to put him in position to succeed. I have a lot of confidence in Marcel Reed. I believe in Marcel Reed. He’s our quarterback.
   
• It’s not the first time we’ve lost a game and it won’t be our last. We are analytical of everything that happens each week. We try to improve everything heading into the next week. You’ve got to develop a mindset moving forward heading into next week.
   
• We’re not going to focus on last week much more. We know we’ve got an opportunity in front of us and we’re excited.
   
• I don’t really know Lane Kiffin well. Obviously, we interact at coaches' meetings. I’ve got a lot of respect for Lane Kiffin. He did a great job at Ole Miss, and I’m sure he’ll have success at LSU.
   
• We went through this last year, having a hard time generating pass rush, and then when we got into SEC play, we got to play football differently. I’m sure LSU will have a lot of confidence in what they do and stick to it.
   
• Obviously we felt like the week before we weren’t able to get it to Mario Craver as much as we liked. There was a lot of under-coverage on Isaiah Horton, which created more opportunities to get it to Mario Craver. Then with Terry Bussey going down, it created more targets for him.