ARLINGTON, Texas — Auburn defeated Oregon, 27-21 in the AdvoCare Classic at AT&T Stadium Saturday.

Below is a full transcript of Oregon coach Mario Cristobal’s postgame press conference.

MARIO CRISTOBAL

Certainly grateful for the opportunity to be on such a big stage on this national spotlight and proud of the effort, the toughness, the resiliency of our guys. Certainly like to have a few things back. And a tough one, a real tough one. Real tough moments in that locker room right now. But, at the same time, a tremendous amount of guys that are encouraged about the potential of our football team, the caliber of team that we can be. And, you know, we landed. It’s time to get on to business and get ready for next week.

Q. Can you tell us what happened with the two timeouts when Justin [Herbert] got hurt and what happened there with that situation and fourth down call?

CRISTOBAL: Yeah, the wrong personnel was in. And when we got the personnel straightened out, they weren’t quite sure as to who was going to do what.

But we don't blame them. We take it as a coaching staff. That's on us. We had a few guys that obviously were down for the game, and then a couple guys that had a cramped up during the game. So we were trying to make the pieces work for a certain play. And I'd rather be safe than sorry in that situation and use the timeout and give us a chance to run it. But it didn't work out.

Q. Mario, how do you feel about how your defense played? It seemed like, in the first half and even third quarter, they were holding Auburn; obviously, the field goal attempts. And then it seemed they got worn down. How did you see that?

CRISTOBAL: I thought they did a great job all night. I think we had our chance in the red zone, as they did as well. You know, we had a chance to score a touchdown. But, you know, if a guy drops a ball, I say we have to coach it better. If we miss a field goal, I say we have to coach the field goal kicker better. So you’re never going to see me up here pointing fingers. We didn’t capitalize in the red zone. We stopped them in the red zone as well. But, overall, I thought the defense played with a lot of energy and made a lot of great plays.

Q. So much talk, even going back to last year, about the identity of this offense and running and power running, second half, 13 rushing yards, first downs, 6-1 pass. Do you feel like you’ve lost a little bit of that run-first identity? As good at that front seven was, do you feel like you lost a little of that identity in the second half?

CRISTOBAL: I thought we were moving along pretty well in the first half. A lot of those plays are RPOs. So if they’re designed runs with tags on them, so if they are playing a certain coverage or if we are outnumbered, the ball is going to come out. But it wasn’t a matter of the run not being called; it was the defensive look dictated the ball being spit out there. So it ends up being more plays in the pass call than the run call.

Q. On that last touchdown when Auburn scored, it looked like [Verone] McKinley was out there one on one with the receiver. Clearly, Auburn saw that. Why was he in that situation?

CRISTOBAL: He was part of the package that was in at the time. I don’t know if we were in a nickel or a dime, but he’s played really well for us, he’s done a good job. And, you know, guy made a really good play on him.

Q. A couple game management questions here. Your second-to-last possession from around the four-minute mark to 2:30 mark, you consistently snapped the ball with good amounts of time remaining on the clock. Do you have any regrets in terms of managing the game and not draining those seconds?

CRISTOBAL: Well, we tried to get the play in at about 17, being that we’d snapped the ball around 5, 6. But we also felt that we were going to have to score, and we felt like we had to get in a rhythm. We didn’t feel that it would be a matter of taking the air out of the clock, or the air out of the ball, I should say. We felt we were going to have to take a risk.

Q. What is your game management process? Do you have someone up in the sky helping you? I think back to Stanford last year, where you had missed opportunities where you could have won a game like tonight

CRISTOBAL: No, very different scenario. There were 13 seconds on the clock that we would have had to punt and chose not to pun and chose to go for it on second and 2, just like two teams did that week as well. Very different scenario.

Q. Do you have someone helping you game management? How does that mechanism work here?

CRISTOBAL: No, we have a chart that we go by in terms of the clock itself and how much time we can burn or how much time the other team can burn as it relates to timeouts, as it relates to whether there’s an injury, a stoppage of play, or a clock is continuing to run.

Q. In the first half after the long punt return and there was a fumble near the goal line that they returned back, I guess, what happened in the exchange there?

CRISTOBAL: Missed cue right there. The mesh between the quarterback and the running back got too tight. They bumped into each other, and the ball came out.

Q. You were out without a lot of your wide receivers tonight. Juwan [Johnson], it sounded like he was going to play. What happened there, and what was the impact of the loss?

CRISTOBAL: Juwan [Johnson] tweaked his muscle, soft tissue injury, towards the latter part of the week. So him and obviously you knew about [Brenden] Schooler and Mycah [Pittman]. But Juwan was something that happened late in the week. We thought he was going to be ready go; he wasn’t. And we held Cam McCormick out because he wasn’t ready.

Q. Coach, being thin, you had a you had Johnny Johnson tonight, who played well. After all, he's been through last year to now. Can you talk about his progression?

CRISTOBAL: He’s gone a great job. Johnny [Johnson] has gotten better. He’s a hard worker, tremendous work ethic, a lot of pride. And he’s a craftsman. He’s done a great job, just having a great offseason. And it spilled over to a nice performance tonight.

Q. Mario, your offensive line, their defensive line was the battle heading into this one, the big three. Don’t get any tackles for loss. Don’t get any sacks. Yet, as far as bug chunk plays passing wise, just the 47-yarder was early and two more 20-yarders. Did you want to take more deep shots? Were they just not there, or did you miss some opportunities there?

CRISTOBAL: Yeah, we tried to take some more. We got in six and sevenman protection. We tried to take some shots that were covered. Justin [Hebert] took off with a couple, also got sacked on a couple. Checked the ball down once as well.

So we were trying to take some deep shots. They were playing a lot of man coverage, and you have to when they do so, right? Because you're outnumbered, which is also part of the reason where the passing numbers get a little bit skewed with the run numbers, because, in the RPO game, sometimes those balls got to be spit out there.

Q. Was that just, like, a knee knock there with Justin [Hebert]?

CRISTOBAL: It was.

Q. Was there confusion based on whether or not he could come in after that timeout or not?

CRISTOBAL: There was for a second, and then we knew he couldn’t. But he just he happened to get back in there, and we had to pull him out. So I was more concerned about the play being executed the right way and having everybody on the same page as it related to the four per page, and then the personnel grouping as opposed to just the fact that it was Tyler [Shough]. Tyler knows how to run that play and he could do a good job with it.

Q. Would it have been the same play if Justin [Hebert] was in?

CRISTOBAL: Maybe.

Q. Coach, you talked a little bit about how it was tough in the locker room afterwards. Obviously, you've got a whole week to now prep for the next game. But, moving forward, how much do you lean on your veterans to get past a tough loss?

CRISTOBAL: Yeah, you have to. That’s the first thing everyone is saying. You know, can we count on each other? Of course we can. Because it’s tough. You you hurt a ton from a loss, but you also learn the most from your losses. And you just hate feeling those consequences. But, yes, we count on our leaders 100%, and we expect them tomorrow to bounce back and get ready to go for Nevada.

Q. First quarter, you guys had almost 200 yards of offense. Just what was not clicking in the next three quarters that prevented your offense to work so well, run game and pass game?

CRISTOBAL: Yeah, they did a nice job in man coverage pressing out some of the stuff. I felt we got behind the sticks. We were in rhythm, getting some good chunks on first down. Getting second and 5, third and short, or sometimes avoiding third down altogether. I felt we got behind the sticks. Had a penalty once, got us first and 15. Just got off the schedule. We were doing a really good job in the first quarter and a little bit in the second quarter, and then, besides the one drive in the third quarter, we got behind the sticks.

Q. You preached all fall camp about the physicality and the physical nature of this team and how you wanted them to play. They went toe-to-toe with a great SEC team in the Auburn team. Are you pleased with besides the score, are you pleased with how they performed tonight?

CRISTOBAL: Well, I mean, not with the score, like you just mentioned. We felt we could. We felt we could play physically with anybody on our schedule. We have a great schedule. We play a lot of physical teams. So we prepped for Auburn, we prepped for the entire season. But I think we knew that, after our first couple plays, our guys were going to feel confident in the fact that they could hang and play with anybody.

Q. What was the toughest thing to prepare for when it came to their defensive line?

CRISTOBAL: Well, I mean, they're really disruptive. You know where they're going to line up, for the most part. Just have to be able to block them. So you have to create angles. You have to create situations to put those linebackers in run/pass conflicts. But because you have to spend so much time on those downed linemen, linebackers are free to make plays more often than not. And we felt that they had two young linebackers, but two really good players.

So that's where the balance was, trying to make sure you spend enough time on those big guys, don't want them to destroy the game plan. At the same time, make sure you get to your assignments to have a successful run or pass game.

Q. Mario, you understood the enormity of this game from a perception standpoint. You can't control what the conversation will now be nationally. But to how deflating this can be, you talked about how tough it is in the locker room. How do you prevent this loss from being a loss that can beat you twice, because Nevada did manage to come back in a big way against Purdue last night. And your guys are going to hear all week you can't control it but they're going to hear nationally that the Pac12 is out of the play of again off of one game. How do you fight that and prevent it from beating you twice?

CRISTOBAL: A couple of things. I think our guys all recognize our goals are still in front of us.

Number two, I think we all recognize Nevada is a really good football team.

And the third thing is, our guys we have a really good group of leaders, and our program is built from the inside out. We don’t hocus pocus it. We don’t build it on a poor foundation. We build it on the right stuff. So when situations like this hit, that you’re prepared to bounce back and move forward.

Q. Mario, Justin [Hebert] made a throw across the field to Spencer Webb in the first half. I guess, what was your reaction to that throw?

CRISTOBAL: Well, the protection broke down a little bit. And those guys were kind of stacking each other in the tight red and then into the end zone. Justin rolled out and he just he knows Spencer [Webb] has got really good hands and is a big guy. So he threw it up, and, obviously, a huge play, made a lot out of a somewhat busted play.

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TROY DYE, LB

What do you do after a loss like this?

“You just have to get back. You have to rely on your leaders. Work on your craft. You have to get back to what you work on. You have to do what you do. You watched this game. You saw what happened. We just have to get better.”

What is your overall feel for how the defense preformed?

"We played our asses off and played balls to the wall. We did what we needed to do for 60 minutes. Like I said earlier in the week,if we did that,hopefully we came out with a W. We had that output but it didn’t work out that way. We have to play harder next time and turn those turnovers into touchdowns.”

What do you think of the way Mase Funa played?

“He stepped up big time. He did a great jobout there. All the young guys came out and did a good job. Everyone came out ready to play and the freshmen did their job.”

How do you not let this loss beat you twice?

“You definitely can’t let a loss like this beat you twice. You just have to bounce back. Hopefully, we can bounce back this week and get better. They (Nevada) is a tough team. We have to bounce back. They are riding really high. We have to put this behind us. They don’t care about how we feel. They don’t care about our loss. They are going to want to play as hard as they can,and we have to do that as well."

JUSTIN HERBERT, QB

How would you some up the missed opportunities you had tonight?

“Yea, we had a lot of opportunities to execute and we didn’t do what we wanted to do, and we kind of shot ourselves in the foot a couple times. But I thought the defense played really well,and I know what type of team we have going forward”.

What would you say was the difference between the first quarter compared to the last three? You had almost 200 yards of offense and 130 over the next three quarters. What was the struggle for the offense there?

“We just didn’t execute. I think first quarter we came out fired up and excited but unfortunately,we didn’t play as well in those last three quarters”

What happened in that exchange there with CJ( Verdell) at the five-or six-yard line?

“I dropped it, and someone picked it up and we tried our best to get back and our defense ended up making a stop in the red zone”.

Did you think you were eligible after the timeout when you left for that injury?

“I thought I was; I thought the timeout would fix it and allow me to come back in,but those are the rules and we were close and almost got it."

What was that sequence like?

“I thought the timeout would fix it, and unfortunately it didn’t. They made a great play and stopped us. It’s unfortunate it didn’t go our way.”

CALVIN THROCKMORTON, OL

What was the difference for you guys in the second half or maybe just after that first quarter when you seemed to be moving the ball really well and then it was just kind of a struggle there on after?

“I think again, it comes back to those details that, you know, if there’s one thing in the play that’s a miscue, then the play is not going to be effective. So again, correcting those little mistakes and making sure we’re on point for next week.”

What was the room like with this being the first game of the year and knowing you have to come back next week?

“Yeah, we know that this doesn’t define our season but even though it’s the first game, and it’s kind of a gut check, we know what kind of team we can be and we saw the flashes in the game. So, it’s all about just coming together and staying together and making sure that we’re on point.”

You guys did a good job of probably keeping out the offseason noise, but it was like nine months of build up to this game, so what is it kind of like to have it done with now and with the way it played out?

“I think obviously we’re disappointed with the outcome, but I know we’re going to come back even stronger next week and for the rest of the season. I know that’s the kind of team we are and so I’m excited to see where we can continue to build and develop.”