Tommy Tuberville Quotations

We are proud of Blake Field, ... He became our starter with an hour's notice. He did a great job handling the football.

We started finding out a little bit about Blake Field's nerves.

We appreciate the hard work and efforts that David gave to the Auburn football program over the last year. He did an excellent job as our defensive coordinator this past season, and I know he'll continue to be successful in the future.

We're not going to start talking about anything but playing the next game. It's a good start. It's a good start.

We did keep a few guys out of the game to get them healed for next week. They should be back next week.

We tried everything that we could. There are no excuses.

We were caught by surprise when we got to the stadium and Brandon had a stomach virus. He had a 103-degree fever. We were fortunate it was this game.

We're glad to have him back. I was one of the guys that said we were going to miss him because he brought a lot to our conference. He brought a lot of interest back. We look forward to playing him.

Somebody asked me who I'd be pulling for. I'll just have to take the Fifth on that one. I'll be pulling for both of them. I hope both of them go over 100 yards.

No complaints on our part. We'll go down there and play, and it will make no difference on who wins and loses.

One more game (USC vs. Auburn) would have been perfect this year.

Obviously, when you turn the ball over like we did you can't beat a team like (Tech), ... We have to run the football better. We can't beat good football teams running like we did.

I get off the bus, and he's the first one I see, this 18-year-old standing there crying. It takes you back.

I always judge our recruiting by linemen. I think this has been an exceptional year.

He had grown so fast and so tall. We had to strengthen his stomach muscles. He hasn't had a problem since.

He needed to write some papers. I told him we didn't need him out there these two days. He'll be out there tomorrow.

We threw the ball too much in the Georgia Tech game. That was my fault. We didn't stick with our running game, and it cost us in the long run.

We threw high passes, we dropped balls, I called the wrong plays. It's just a mixture of things. You can say we weren't ready. We didn't have the emotion that we had the last couple of games. That's pretty obvious.

He's a breath of fresh air in that league.

He's got great presence on the field, in the huddle, at the line. Even when there's pressure around him in the pocket, even with six or seven people (rushing) and he's got to get rid of it, Brandon always looks like he's in control. That's the sign of a good quarterback.

His players responded for him. And that's the sign of a guy that's done a great job for a program. And he can kind of look at that, because his players turned it up a notch for him.

It is full-speed tackling, and we want to see them compete. But we're not going to go out there and do a lot of things that's going to get spread around.

I think Brandon Cox is going to be a heck of a college quarterback. He's going to make a name for himself.

Respect you have to earn that and we didn't early in the season. We were forgot about for a while, and we're kinda moving back up.

It doesn't make a hill of beans. I remember being at Miami and I don't think we ever were a Top 10 team (in recruiting) and we won three national championships.

I think he's overcome that. Tampa Bay is very interested, and San Diego. That's two of the teams that are really looking hard at him.

I think he's going to really help us next year. He will be a guy that will have an opportunity to step in and play very early.

That's the problem with the voting. We vote at the beginning of the year and don't (change) votes at the end of the year. I would hope in the future we would pick the four best teams at the end of the year and play them off and have a true national champion.

We're blocking better, staying on longer, and staying on blocks down the field. It's all about confidence. It was hard, opening up with two tough teams like that, but we've been building it back.

We'll play when we get there, I guess. It's not our fault that we can't get down there. You'd love it if this game had been in the day where you could have a little leeway in case there's bad weather. Obviously the conference is not worried about that, so we're just going to go down there and play and hopefully we can get down there in time.

We got the game plan in. All we are doing is polishing it and working on special teams. We had a little scrimmage with the underclassmen and it was a good day. We'll give them a few more plays tomorrow. It was a good day, a good practice, but it was a little wet.

We have not executed way we were at the end of last season,

We played a lot of people on offense and defense. We're going to continue to do that. We got a lot of depth. Last week, we just got in a situation where we couldn't (play many players). This week, we forced ourselves to play young guys.

This spring, we're going to concentrate in the area of being very physical. You can't talk about it; you can't put it on the blackboard. You have to do it on the practice field. We're going to do that this spring.

We used last week to our advantage of getting guys healthy. We've got almost everything in that we want to do against Arkansas. We're going into this game healthy and full of speed, a lot of energy.

We called practice off on that Sunday and basically said we'll meet back here tomorrow afternoon, everybody go home and make sure everything's safe. You don't realize the devastation that happens. It's like a bomb that goes off. In the Miami area there wasn't any water, food . . . or electricity for a month.

We were not able to finish off drives and execute and put the ball in the end zone. When they have nine men on the line of scrimmage and are playing man coverage, you have to take to strengths and use them.

We would have liked to have played one of those first five away, but that's just how the schedule works out. Our players are excited, and we'll be ready to play.

We average 15-20 more plays than the NFL. We have to examine scenarios that make it better for the players and reducing the number of plays is one of them.

We always win some, we always lose some. This year, we probably won more than we have the last few years. We probably had more success today than we thought we were going to, and that always makes you feel good. Our guys worked hard, they did an excellent job in selling the program. It's been a good month.

To me, a national champion is the team that plays the best. We're not beating teams by two or three points. We've pretty much named our score most of the year.

Up to this point, our guy was pretty much on target. It's one of those things, it comes and it goes.

We've got a lot of guys that have size, speed and quickness. I always judge our recruiting by linemen and this has been an exceptional year. We're always looking for guys at defensive line. We feel like all eight of these guys will have a chance. It will depend on them... and their work ethic.

We have a couple more curtain calls before the final song. We will have to make another statement the next two-to-three weeks.

You gotta give it to Barry. His last game and he goes out on top. It's probably only fitting. He's a good football coach. I've told people, 'He's going to be in the College Football Hall of Fame.' He's done a great job at Wisconsin. His players responded.

We had our shot at them and we didn't beat them,

Ben was a little different. Sometimes you wonder about homesickness, but he's really handled it well -- a lot better than I would have if I was his age. The players have accepted him. His work ethic is outstanding.

As I told our team, this is over. We start back next Monday morning at 7 o'clock with all the guys coming back minus the seniors. But this will be a good team. We had a good year. We had an excellent year.

Down in Florida, at least we could go north and get away from it. You hear on TV where it's going to be a week or a month before maybe getting electricity. (But) you're looking at years to when this place is going to be back anywhere near what it was.

There's probably more question marks on this depth chart than we've had the last few years.

There's so much hype in recruiting now, people think once they're recruited they're going to be great players right out of the box. That doesn't happen, especially at quarterback. It takes two-to-three years of making mistakes and learning from your mistakes.

There's nobody that can count us out of getting to Atlanta and winning in Atlanta. In the past, we've been a pretty long shot, and I don't think we're a long shot. I think we're pretty much up there with everybody else. We've got the athletes to do it with, we just have to try to do it the right way and be consistent. We're in the hunt. We've as much speed and quickness as we've ever had. We have more linemen than we've ever had. We feel our program is on solid ground and improving.

There's one thing I'll say. I'd hate to play us.

Our defense played hard, we just didn't do anything with our kicking game. It let us down at times, that's my fault. We must not have worked enough on it, but we will work on it.

The more games you play, the more chance you have of playing a bad game on offense. Your defense can play good every week as long as they play hard. It's a lot easier to play defense than it is offense.

As coaches, we approach any game the same, whether it's a bowl game here or in Atlanta or New Orleans. But the thing we want to do is to make sure the guys enjoy it and have fun. It's supposed to be fun.

You've just got to do your best and don't look back. I never do. I think it made Auburn a better place. Not just football, the entire campus. I hated going through something like that, but after it's all said and done, it was maybe the best thing to ever happen to me, our coaches, this football program, and this athletic program. I don't think there's any doubt that people can look and say that Auburn is better than it was a couple of years ago.

This is not going to be our most experienced year at quarterback,

This conference tends to build with speed rather than bulk, ... It's very noticeable. If you look at the defensive stats, there are a lot of guys ranked very high.

They've all been consistent. It's hard to zero in on one receiver. It's impossible to do.

A lot of people wonder why you want a coaches challenge if every play is looked at by the officials. The problem is when you go back and look at situations where there's a question about a play. You only have 10-15 seconds for them to look at the play at hand.

There was no doubt who was going to win this football game after the first 5 or 6 minutes. Our guys came out and made a statement.

They're good players, ... but we knew if we got any kind of pressure on them at all they'd throw it up for grabs.

Academics are the No. 1 thing. It's the first thing we tell players when they come to Auburn. They are here to get a degree first and foremost. Once they understand that, they understand that football is second.

It's a great day. We knew we had a great football team, and it was a great year for us. It makes you feel good for the players because they did so much for us here. I'm glad it worked out for them.

It's not over-recruiting. Since Ole Miss, we've built our philosophy around running the football. You've got to have a running game in order to be successful in college football.

It's been a good week of practice. It was a good day off yesterday. There's a lot more enthusiasm. It's pretty hard going eight out of nine days. They needed a little rest, but tomorrow we'll go.

The next few days, he'll visit a couple teams (to) see if there's any interest that he's wanted to get back into the NFL. We'd love for David to stay. He's done a great job for us, but I don't want anybody on my staff that doesn't have aspirations of a future in whatever they want to do. He did a good job for us.

That is football. You have got to execute and tonight the kicking game wasn't there for us. They ran that punt back, we made a mistake but that's part of it.

I've got a subscription to Golf Digest. I may ask them to vote us No. 1, ... We're 13-0. We should be national champions. There's no doubt about it.

It was a good day of practice. It was the last practice in any pads; tomorrow we will just be in helmets. All of the game plan is in. Everybody is ready to go. It was a fun day, but we're winding it down, and tomorrow we'll get in more of a game-type mood.

It was a good victory for us, ... It wasn't one of our best games, but we had some great individual performances.

It was a good practice today. We concentrated more on throwing the football. Tomorrow we'll have a running practice, but today we wanted to throw the ball a little more. There was good enthusiasm. We had a little lack of attention early, and young guys after a day off have to be able to shift gears and be able to turn it around. That's the reason you play spring ball.

It was a good practice. Guys are showing a lot of enthusiasm. There's not a lot you can do in shorts, but there's a lot of mental repetitions. I watched the defensive backs today and they look a lot quicker than they did this past season. There are a lot of new faces we're looking at with that position. There will be a lot of competition with those guys this spring. Tomorrow we'll start easing into contact. Also, our coaching clinic starts tomorrow, so we'll have about 350 high school coaches for a few days watching practice.

It's very vital with the 85-scholarship limit that you do have walk-ons that participate on your special teams because they are so important. That's an area where they can come out and contribute. There's not a team in this conference that doesn't have walk-ons that participate that make a difference during the season. I think that's what's great about football.

It will probably never happen again. It will be my luck.

It won't have anything to do with conferences. It'll have to do with the players on the field. How they play.

They couldn't get anything going on offense, but their defense gave us a fit.

They learned what it was like to lose and get back up. This year was about consistency, and I thought we started playing well mid-way through the year and just got better and better as the season went on.

They've had a few ups and downs, been consistent, found a way to win. It's been one of those years for Barry also where he's had to replace a lot of guys and get his football team back to try to compete with what they had last year. So we're two very comparable teams.

Their quarterback did a great job getting the ball downfield. That's the best offense we've seen.

Their defensive front is the best we've seen,

I had no clue. Just take one of them out and put them in there.

If you get what you think is a really bad call and the guy upstairs refuses to call for a review, at least you would have one in your pocket you could use. If you're right, you get to keep it. If you're wrong, then it's gone.

I just wanted to win by one, ... That's all that counts. If you have to win with style points, you might as well throw out all the systems.

In the second half, we regrouped and our intensity took over. You can only stay 3 to 4 feet off the ground so long. They were sky high.

In the second half, we regrouped and our intensity took over, ... You can only stay 3 to 4 feet off the ground so long. They were sky high.

The guy that's kind of an unsung hero is Anthony Mix. He's a big target and the quarterbacks have loved to throw to him over the years.

You've got to have a mobile quarterback against a front like theirs. When they blitz up the middle on 4th and 12, Jason has the presence to get outside and throw sidearm to get the first down. A young guy wouldn't know to do that.

You've got to have a mobile quarterback against a front like theirs, ... When they blitz up the middle on 4th and 12, Jason has the presence to get outside and throw sidearm to get the first down. A young guy wouldn't know to do that.

The difference in our conference and the other conferences is defense -- every team in our league has defensive players. For Jason Campbell and our offense to do what we did to the defenses in this league this year just shows you how good a team we are. We're a well-balanced team that hasn't taken a week off all year.