Insight from White

Some insight on the mind-set of the team from tight end Aron White:

On the offensive struggles...
“It’s very frustrating. With the team we have this year, we’re always a couple plays away from the performances we’ve prepared for. We could come out and put any team away, but we self-destruct sometimes. It sucks, but there’s not a whole lot you can do other than work hard day in and day out in practice and hope we come out on Saturday and perform the way we’ve been practicing. These are things we don’t do in practice, but for whatever reason in a game we’ll throw the ball wrong here, have a fumble there or jump offsides. We’ve just been killing ourselves. We’re a better team than our record shows right now, that’s for sure.”

On playing from behind so often...
“Any time you’re in a game the situation you’re in at the time is going to affect your playcalling and the way the guys perform. Any time you’re coming from behind, that not a place you want to be even thought that’s kind of been our thing this year. We’ve been the team that’s fought back, even though we weren’t able to seal the deal in a lot of them. I definitely feel like if we’d had another score here or there or if the game had been a little closer, it might have changed the way the plays were called or the plays that were called against us – put the pressure on them a little bit more. Besides when it was 14-10, I feel like they were playing a little bit more pressure-free than we would have liked them to be. I feel like we were always in the game until about halfway through the fourth quarter, we were always a score or two away, and we had our chances to make the plays. We just made too many mistakes. We killed ourselves, that’s for sure. My hat’s off to them because they’re a great team, but I don’t feel that they’re unbeatable by any means. I feel like if we’d have come and had a little more focus, we could have came out with a ‘W’.”

On whether Joe Cox deserves the blame...
“I feel like a lot of the times when Joe gets intercepted, it’s not necessarily him making a poor decision or a bad throw, it’s just guys not being on the same page. You look at the one that he threw where he was trying to throw it out of bounds, he had a little too much pressure on him and got hit. That’s happened to him a couple of times. It’s not always Joe’s fault when he throws an interception. I know a lot of people get down on Joe, but I feel like I have faith in him and a lot of the guys have faith in him. Every time Logan gets in the game, I’m pretty happy for him. Obviously that was my high school quarterback, so I’m pretty close with him. And if that’s what the coaches decide to do we’re going to be behind Logan 100 percent of the way, too. But whatever the coaches feel is right to do, our team is going to support that.”

On Brandon Spikes' dirty play...
“It’s a really heated game. When you’re out there on the field in a Georgia-Florida game, it’s hard to control yourself all the time. I think Brandon Spikes is obviously a tremendous talent, a tremendous player. Obviously sometimes tempers flare like that but I don’t feel like it was anything too malicious or he’s a bad player. I just think sometimes people let their emotions get the best of them out there on the field.”

On team unity...
“It’s frustrating sometimes with the season going the way it has been but I feel like our team is sticking together. We’re not a team that’s going to fall apart when things go bad. I think we’ve proven that throughout the season so far. Hopefully we can band together and put faith in each other and turn the season around.”

On Georgia's four losses...
“The first loss against Oklahoma State hit us hard. It sucks to come out and lose the first game of the season, but we didn’t think that by any means that was going to define our season. We came out and played hard, and when we lost that close one to LSU, I don’t think the blame fell on anybody. I think that was one we let slip away as a team. We had a lot of different things go wrong that weren’t major but a whole lot of minor things and we let a heartbreaker get away from us. Then Tennessee came out and got after us pretty well. I feel like they handed us our worst loss of the season. They came out and just dominated that game. This Florida game, it felt like we were there the whole time and kind of gave it away. That’s probably why this game hurts the most. It was a chance for us to come out and prove to everybody that we’re not a .500 team, we’re not a team that we’re scared of anybody. To win a game against the No. 1 team in the country would have changed a lot of people’s mind. To let that opportunity slip by, not because somebody’s better than you in our opinion, but because we did too much to hurt ourselves, that hurts a lot.”

On A.J. Green handling so much attention from defenses...
“I don’t feel like he’s a guy who lets his emotions get the best of him. He’s a pretty calm guy but it’s got to be frustrating to get so many double teams and have people rolling their coverage to you all the time. But he’s a guy that no matter what the coverage is, if you put the ball in his hands, he’s going to go up and make the play.”

On the approach to the rest of the season...
“Right now I think all our focus has to be on Tennessee Tech, and I think that’s something that will be echoed across the team. We can’t overlook the rest of our season or think that it’s down the drain or anything like that. We have four games left in this season, and hopefully a bowl after that. We have to keep our heads in the right place and focus on the season. But at the same time we have a lot of young guys coming back, I’m sure we have a good recruiting class coming in. You can’t help but say hopefully things will be better next year, and with this rivalry, I think a lot of young guys are going to take this loss pretty hard. We had a lot of young guys play, and it’s something we want everybody to remember and carry with us until we play Florida again.”