On the offense on the final drive

I think our players did a really good job of — it's not going the way you want it to and it looks this way. They just buckled down and played Michigan football. Really grinded it out on the ground. Was really proud of how the O-line started to come off the ball and we went to 18 in the red zone and did a really good job of making a play, was a great throw by Davis. I think these guys did a really good job all night with their connections. Colston had 8 catches for 87 yards and a touchdown and I thought Davis did a really good job of putting the football where it was supposed to be. The one pick. We told our guys on the sideline, at some point you've gotta play defense, too, and you gotta go get the ball in the post. I thought he did a great job of controlling the offense and I thought 18 did a great job as well.

On the decision of choosing Davis Warren as the starting QB

Just training camp. Him and Alex had a really good training camp but ultimately he won the job the last week, really. He was consistent, took care of the football, made plays against that defense you saw out there. For us, it was a guy who — they played hard for both players but he ultimately took the job and won it. That made the decision easier for us.

On the final defensive series in the fourth quarter

I thought our defense was playing hard. Sometimes you get a little too emotional and we gotta keep our composure with some things that were going on but we ended up getting the pick with Will at the end, which was awesome. It was just a lot of back-and-forth. They're a good football team, too, not taking anything away from them. At the end of the day, our defense, especially our D-line, these guys up front, they kept the pressure on the O-line and kept them backed up when throwing the ball. They did a really good job just making sure we got the ball back.

On Kalel Mullings and Donovan Edwards

I thought Kalel was running extremely hard. You look at the stats, 15 carries for 92 yards, he averaged 6.1 a carry. That's pretty good. He had three kick returns for 74 yards, 168 all-purpose yards. Pretty good performance by Kalel. The O-line, it takes time. I've said it before, you're not going to be the same product you are in week two, they'll be better next week. It'll take time for them to gel and they needed that last drive to really get that feel, feel what it feels like to be together and grind through a game. It's gonna help them.

On his night and his pregame emotions

I've held it back for a couple of these guys and take snaps from Davis so I got no snaps left in me and I got no plan on trying to return, I have no eligibility. That's just who I am. Wear my emotions on my sleeve so I just expressed it. I was so excited just to watch our boys play. When you're in training camp and you're in spring ball, you're doing all of this and you get the opportunity to be out there, you only get eight opportunities this year in front of our home crowd to play. I was going to be excited and hopefully putting some juice in them and they play hard.

On whether he thought the product was what he thought or were there growing pains

We're always going to strive to be perfect. Defense played really good but there are things they want to get better at. Offense, we had our ups and downs. We're going to try and get better. There's not really a time where everyone thinks they've reached the pinnacle of where we need to be, because if you do that, you've already lost. For us, in all the phases, special teams as well, you continue to strive to be better.

On whether he sees Kalel Mullings as a lead running back

We think we have two guys that are starters. We'll play both of them, keep playing them. You're going to need both of them for the long haul of the season. We'll just keep playing both of them.

On the playcalling

It's football and it's not always going to be perfect. There's going to be ups and downs. I thought the coordinators did a great job. We gotta execute the play calls on the offense and defense. Play calls, I thought, were good. Just gotta continue to execute at a high level.

On the lack of receptions from the receivers and whether they want to get them more involved

We always want to be balanced but, hey, sometimes if you leave them open, they get the ball. Davis goes through his reads like he needs to and throw it to the guy he thinks was open so that's what we're going to do. That's how we play. Maybe next game he might catch 10, he might catch 2. For us, we're just going to try and put people in a position to make plays and they'll make plays.

On the biggest improvements he'd like to see for the Texas game

Everything. We're not going to say that we want one piece of our game to be better. We're going to strive for perfection, we chase excellence. Everything. We're going to try to get better on offense in all phases, defense in all phases. I thought we were really good on defense but we're going to try and improve on that. Special teams as well.

On the play action game

It was really just up to one guy here, one guy there. Things that we'll fix and we'll get better at.

On the opportunity to be the first African American coach to win a national championship

We gotta win next week first. I don't think about myself. I just think about these guys. I just want to be successful for our program, for these guys. Yeah, that's the goal to win a national title but, really, it's about the players who are sitting here and in that locker room.

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