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One-on-One Bowden says field position killed Seminoles
Paul Crane: For Bobby Bowden, once again it's close, but no cigar. Coach, how disappointing is this one? Bobby Bowden: Disappointed because we looked so futile in so many ways. You can't just say we looked bad because [OU's] defense played super. What you ... had was a defensive struggle in this ballgame, where your defense was superb and theirs was superb and it looked like nobody was going to win it. They had a field goal and a field goal. Six points, that's not enough. We're averaging, what, 42 a game? But we simply couldn't get anything going offensively, and again it was a defensive struggle. I think the thing that probably killed us was field position. Every time we got the ball, we're sitting back on our 1-yard line or 3 or 5 or something like that, and it's just impossible. People don't drive 95 yards for touchdowns. We backed them up one time and they couldn't come off, either. They might have maybe moved it 20 yards and couldn't move it on out, and we can't, either. Field position might have led to a lot of our terrible look.
Crane: It also seemed Oklahoma had an answer for almost everything you tried to do offensively. Bowden: Well, they did. First thing they did, they shut our running down flat. You look at that ballgame over and over and over -- I'm talking about nearly every time -- Oklahoma had second and 4. We always had second and 10. We did nothing on first down. They did something on first down. Second and long is not a good way to get your offense cranked up. Crane: I know you knew they were good. Are they better than you thought they were? Bowden: They're much better than I thought. They're well coached. They do a tremendous job coaching. Their offense was much tougher than I thought, although our defense did an excellent job against them. All we needed was a touchdown and an extra point. Here's a team averaging 42 points a game and we can't get a touchdown and an extra point. Now a lot of that had to do with them, the way they played, but, gee whiz, we're capable of doing better than that. We couldn't get any big plays going. Crane: Coach, how much did the team miss Snoop Minnis in this game? Bowden: Probably missed him a lot more than I thought we would. I really felt like someone else would step in there and take up the slack, but we needed some plays and we didn't get them and maybe he could have made a lot of difference. We just won't ever know the answer to that.
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