Joker Phillip's Kentucky Wildcat/Jacksonville State post game comments

Joker Phillips:  Well, our injury report, Raymond Sanders has an ankle, his right ankle, P.C. Cobble has a left shoulder and CoShik Williams went out late in the game with cramps. But we talked about wanting to see some improvement; some of the things we improved on. We threw and caught the ball better. We dropped some balls, but we did throw and catch it better. We had a couple guys that made some plays down the field. La’Rod King did a great job of attacking the football. We ran the ball, which is one of the things that when you’re a struggling football team you have to do. We’re struggling offensively, and we ran the ball for 340 yards.

A couple things that we did not improve on: We didn’t improve on our ball security; way too careless with the football. And we talked about our coverage teams, and we let the guy get outside of us on the last kickoff coverage, the one to start the fourth quarter, and hit us for a big return. And we’d been really, really good at the coverage teams.

We also put a lot of time into our return and didn’t get a lot of return yardage. Only had one opportunity to return on the kickoff return. And then the punt return, Daylen (Hall) got one chance and had to go in for a catch. There was some improvement, but we’ve got to improve even more next week.

Q. On the success of the running game being CoShik Williams or the offensive line…
Joker Phillips: It was a combination. You can’t run well as a running back unless the guys are doing their jobs up front. He was making people miss in the secondary once he got there and running through some tacklers, but they did a good job of getting him started, the offensive line did.

Q. On Martavius Neloms’ sack and fumble return for UK’s first touchdown…
Joker Phillips: Well, he got us started. One thing we needed is a play, three series offensively and turned the ball over in the second series, I think – second or third series – and we needed someone to make a play for us. We even made a play in the running game and if we didn’t turn the ball over, that would have been a huge momentum swing to our side with that big run. But then they got the momentum back immediately with the fumble. And we needed someone to make a play, and (Martavius) Neloms did. He got a sack, caused a fumble and a return for a touchdown, so that got us going.

Q. On the play of CoShik Williams…
Joker Phillips: It was really important, and I mentioned earlier in the week that CoShik (Williams) had had a really good week – really good two weeks – and it showed up. It was good to see him get some results out of his hard work because he had done a really good job all week. So it’s very important. And it was even more important once Raymond (Sanders) went down. John-John (Jonathan George) got a chance to get some carries. And it was unfortunate that he put the ball on the ground, but he got another couple of opportunities and got the ball in the endzone for us. It was very important for Shik (CoShik Williams) to have a good showing.

Q. On this win going into the final five games of the season…
Joker Phillips: Well, I mean, it definitely helps, definitely helps. I mean, it’s the second — we were trying to play this as the second season. We had two seasons; we were 2-4 in the first season, and we got to take one game at a time in this second season. We’re 1-0. We’ve got to go to work tomorrow, got to get to 2-0. We’ve got a tough SEC opponent that had an open week to prepare, but we’ve got to deal with it off the open week that we just came off of.

Q. On if he thinks his team forgot how it feels to win…
Joker Phillips: Well, you definitely try to savor that feeling, no question about that. I don’t think that our guys have forgotten how to win. I wouldn’t say that. It was just good to come away with the win, but I don’t think this team has forgotten how to win.

Q. On the victory…
Joker Phillips: It’s big. It’s big for all, and especially big for the quarterback, because he carries most of the burden when you don’t play well. Carried the ball well. Again, it’s unfortunate that he put the ball on the ground, but he’s got to protect it. We tried to get him more on the perimeter. We’ve been running him up inside, we tried to get him more on the perimeter and make some good runs and make some throws. He was 10 of 16, made some really big throws, especially the two touchdowns. You could say they were good catches, but somebody has got to throw them, so he made some really good throws for us, also. It was important for him to come out and have a good game, also.

Q. On if he told Morgan Newton if he doesn’t have an open receiver to tuck the ball and run it…
Joker Phillips: Definitely, definitely, definitely. The thing that has to happen at quarterback, things have got to happen fast. Is he open? Is he open? No, let’s go. “Let’s go” means get the ball out of my hand or pull it down and run it. We can’t have minus-yardage plays, and he did a good job of managing the game as far as not taking those minus-yardage plays.

Q. On the play and improvements of the offensive line…
Joker Phillips: Those guys have been playing better every week. That was the group that was getting better. It didn’t show because we weren’t making any plays on the perimeter. Weren’t making the right cuts sometimes. We took some sacks. But those guys have been the group that’s been improving the most. They’ve been improving ever since those guys
had a chance to play together. And they’ve been together for about three to four weeks now, and it was big for those guys, for us to rush for 340 yards because it usually means that they’ve done a good job. So they will understand that.

Q. On Kentucky’s two turnovers…
Joker Phillips: I told you, protect the football. We’ve got to protect the football. You can’t get the ball down on the 2-yard line, or actually the first one, we can’t have a huge run and have a chance to get the momentum on our side and put the ball on the ground. I mean, you can’t be going into a situation where you’re trying to put the game away, get to the 2-yard line and put the ball on the ground.
Our defense did a good job of taking the ball away, and then we gave it back. We fumbled twice, and we gave up two. You can’t do that. You especially can’t do it in these next games that we’ve got coming up and have an opportunity to win.

Q. On the play of La’Rod King…
Joker Phillips: Well, I like the way he attacked the football. I’ve seen Coach Martin and those guys out there running the defenders on him, and that’s the thing we hadn’t been doing. We hadn’t been aggressively attacking the football. You’re going to be covered, and we said, this is open, OK. You want the quarterback to throw the ball to you. That’s open. Especially when you’re 6’4″, you’ve got a 5’9″ receiver, defensive back on you, and it was good to see La’Rod (King0 go and attack the football aggressively. He’s a basketball player, and he’s got to go get a rebound. That’s what that was. That’s what those are. We are throwing the ball up and go and attack the ball and get a rebound for us. That’s what he did.

Q. Is this the kind of performance that will make guys loosen up a little bit, play relaxed?
Joker Phillips: Yeah, I mean, we had guys out there doing that, relaxing and just playing — Morgan (Newton) was one of them. He was one of them, and you need your quarterback to be one of those guys who relaxes and plays.
In the end, it’s still a game. It’s still a game, and our guys have to play it like that. You can’t get all uptight and put pressure on yourself. You’ve just got to go play, relax and go play.

Q. On what he learned from his football team…
Joker Phillips: You know, I think they’re definitely listening. We talked about Jax (Jacksonville) State and how this is a dangerous football team, a really dangerous football team. Last year down 21 in the first quarter, this team came back and beat an SEC opponent. Our guys, it would have been easy for this football team after the kickoff return for them to come back, make a couple more plays and us turn the ball over and have them come back and win. But our football team accepted the challenge. They remembered what we’d been talking about all week, and accepted the challenge and put this team away.

Q. On Luke McDermott’s interception…
Joker Phillips: It’s better than Winston (Guy). (Laughter) Winston, we had the defensive lineman catch the ball, Winston dropped two interceptions. (Luke) McDermott is a guy that’s a ball hog. He’s always around the ball. He probably plays — with the type of teams that we’ve been playing, he hasn’t gotten as many snaps. We haven’t played as many teams that are so-called spread that try to get the ball on the perimeter. We’ve played teams that try to run downhill at you, so that equals Donte Rumph, equals P.C. Cobble. And he hasn’t had as many snaps, but the snaps that he does get, he plays them as aggressively as he does when he’s the starter. So I’m proud of him. And again, that was another huge play for us to finish the game.

Q. On the crowd…
Joker Phillips: I’m proud of the guys, the people who came today. Those guys are — the people that were at the catwalk were huge, were excited to be there, and our team was excited to play for them. So just happy that those guys came.

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