Senior center Jordan Johnson said there were a lot of important lessons learned in the 35-34 loss at Pitt.
During his appearance at Monday's press conference, he repeated what Josh Heupel had told them earlier - that just one play in any point during the game could have made the difference.
"Coach Heupel always tell us it's a series of one plays," Johnson said. "It's always that one play that could us gotten over the breaking point of winning the game. Literally losing by one point, it just goes to show we really don't know which one play during the game could have been the turning point. There were a lot of plays that could have had us on the positive side of the game. Always trying to be 1-0 in each individual play and that would have gotten us the W."
After doing a great job of protecting freshman quarterback Dillon Gabriel during the first three games, the offensive line struggled against Pitt. Gabriel was sacked six times and hit on three more occasions.
"As an offensive line, we talk about extreme ownership especially when it comes to protecting the quarterback," Johnson said. "We know we didn't live up to that standard this week. We're going to watch the film and get better."
Johnson said they weren't surprised by Pitt's frequent blitzing.
"I think our scheme for picking up their blitz was perfect, but our execution didn't show well," Johnson said. "We schemed them up, we just didn't execute properly."
While the mantra has always been going 1-0 every week, Johnson admitted the feeling of invincibility is gone.
"It keeps us humble," he said. "When you win every game for the past couple years, naturally you're going to have that sense of accomplishment, that 'we got it.' Knowing that we lost, we know we've got to get back to the drawing board, start over fresh and create a new streak."
Johnson said the "Monday rule" is now in effect. They'll review the previous week's game, talk about things they did well and areas to improve, then the focus shifts to the upcoming game. UCF hosts UConn on Saturday at 7 p.m.
"E-Mitch (Eric Mitchell) said it," Johnson said. "The rest of these teams are gonna feel us."
