Pat Narduzzi Press Conference: Previewing Florida State

PAT NARDUZZI: Good morning. How are we doing today? All right. Are you guys ready? Cameras ready?

All right. We had a great Sunday night meeting in here you know after an emotional Saturday afternoon and evening. But, you know, started off with my players, first thing I said as I sat here at the podium was you know apologizing to our football team and to our guys about my postgame comments, which didn’t, obviously, come out the way I intended them to come out. And sometimes that happens.

But when I looked at it over the last, really, 48 hours, 24 hours, you know, there’s nothing worse than a loss. A loss hurt. And the first thing I do is jump on the plane, and I’m watching the video on my iPad. But the loss hurts. And everybody in that locker room was hurt.

But when you feel like your players are hurt by something the head coach said, that hurts you even worse. It makes you sick to your stomach. So I didn’t get a whole lot of sleep on Saturday night. I can promise you that. But, you know, I talk (to) our guys all the time about our program goals. And I won’t get into (all) of them, which have been here since I’ve been here eight and a half seasons. (The biggest one) is relationships. It’s the number one thing we talk about all the time. And the relationships that I have with our players is critical. And that never, ever can change.

And when you don’t have a relationship with your team, you’ve got an issue. And, again, I had a great team meeting with them last night. I think they know where I’m coming from or where I was coming from. I think they get it. Relationships are everything. It’s why I coach. It’s what I do. It’s what I’ve done for years. And, you know, to me, it’s always been, you know, the players love the coaches and the coaches love the players. If you don’t have that, you’ve got issues.

So I feel really good where we are going into this week. Obviously, we closed a chapter on the game last night as well with a special teams meeting in here that we always finish with and watched some things we did on special teams or didn’t do. You know, prior to that, we watched offense and defense.

And when you look at it again it all starts with me. I wasn’t happy with the way we got prepared or the way we played. If we don’t play good, it comes back to me. So I, obviously, didn’t have the guys ready to play like I’d…