"You have to come to grips with the reality of failure, which is what our team experienced this year. You need to be honest with your team. We did not coach the way we needed to this year. John Madden told me that after his Raider team won the Super Bowl they didn't even make the playoffs the next season because they thought it would just carry over. We thought there would just be a carry-over effect from last year's team instead of starting over."

"The thing that is sticks in my mind is (2000 senior fullback) James Wofford. He never asked for anything and he gave everything. He had a devotion to this team, as did (2000 senior offensive tackle) John Greer. This year, we missed that devotion. We got caught up in that everything was going to be automatically the same as before. This team worked hard, they wanted to be successful but ultimately didn't have the leadership and devotion. We got off to a tough start at Arkansas and I don't think we ever found a way to make the key plays like last year. We found ways to drop the ball, to get the penalty."

ON NEXT SEASON:

"We have a lot of talent on this team but we have a lot of problems as well. We have to move on to fixing those for next year. Our team needs to find some receivers that are playmakers. We found a potential star in Dominique Dorsey. It is just tragic that he hasn't gotten to play more (because of injuries). We have to expand the use of him next year. He must be in the game more. We need help in the secondary to be a little more physical. We expect to have a good team next year. We got punched in the gut this season and you have to address the things that make you stagger."

"We have to start over with the quarterback position and bring these two people to the full potential. Kurt showed me that he will be a good player. He made some errors but the look in his eye shows that he has a chance to be a real winner at the position."