Tennessee - 31, Florida - 11
Q. It was a rivalry game coming into the Swamp. How surprising was the first half to you, both offensively and defensively, in terms of maybe the effort and the execution?
DEVIN MOORE: Yeah, I was very surprised. There were some things we've got to get cleaned up for sure. I feel like we weren't out there playing to the full extent of our effort. And that's something we've got to get cleaned up at halftime and get guys back in line with.
Q. As a locker room, you guys on this kind of tough skid, one of the worst losses to this rival team for a while. How do you guys just stay together in this last week? How do you guys just make sure you don't mentally check out and just want to make it to the light at the end of the tunnel?
DEVIN MOORE: Yeah, we put in so many hours together, you know, from winter workouts to spring practice, to summer offseason OTAs, to fall camp. It's some tough times. There's a lot of ups and downs throughout, being a college football player, and being held to such a high standard like this at the University of Florida.
I've bled, I've cried, I've sweat with these guys. That just means the world to me and all the other guys in the locker room.
So just the motive is just to keep going. You know, it's the standard here at the University of Florida, especially the guys leaving, including myself. We're playing for each other. Those guys in the locker room don't want us to go out on a bad note. And that's definitely the motivation, and to continue to keep chipping wood, continue to keep going, show up every day. I know the guys in that locker room have my back for sure.
Q. When Urban gives you guys a pep talk and you're back in the Swamp and national TV and everything, what's the level of it like disappointment when you come out and it kind of goes that way so quickly?
DEVIN MOORE: Yeah, that's a high level of disappointment. But we control what we can control. Get back in the locker room and on the sideline and make the adjustments we need to make. Guys gotta play with more effort.
Just the little things. It's always the little things that add up to the big things.
It was definitely disappointing, but it was important to focus on what we could do better at the time. And just continue to get better as the game went on.
Q. Florida State helps, right? Your final opponent, that helps to kind of energize you guys?
DEVIN MOORE: Oh, yeah, for sure. We kind of look at every game like the other, every game, juiced up, ready to go play. Because like I said before, this is the last one for the seniors. Tonight was the second to last one. Last night game for the seniors.
We are playing for our brothers and we're playing for the program. The fans still show up, consecutive sell-outs and they still believe in us. So every time we're going to show up and try and win the game, for sure.
Q. Cormani McClain going down, how tough was it to watch for a guy who kind of broke out this year getting a lot more playing time?
DEVIN MOORE: Yeah, it's incredibly tough to watch. I have experience with injuries, and just seeing him go down, man, that broke my heart. Because I have seen the guy, extra means, extra hours in the weight room just doing all the extra little things so he can make the plays on Saturday like he does. It breaks my heart anytime one of my brothers go down for sure.
Q. This is probably building off of one of your previous answers but I'm not even sure we'll get to talk to you again at some point now that you're almost done here, but what's your parting message to the players who are going to be experiencing this change just after all you've seen here the four years you've been here?
DEVIN MOORE: Yeah, I'd definitely say just college football as a whole right now, the amount of things that the University of Florida has done for me and my brothers, we owe the world to the university. So every time it's something to do with the football, something to do off the field involving the patch, playing for the patch. Give your all. That's all I've got to say really, because it changed my life, it changed a bunch of people's life in the locker room. It's a standard to the university and we've got to uphold it.
Q. When you see a player like Jayden Woods as a leader how do you see him stepping up and see those other young guys stepping up when others are going down?
DEVIN MOORE: Woods, you know he's a freak. I'm sure somebody in the media has said that before -- I've kind of seen it somewhere, you know, but I'm here to add on to it. He's a animal off that edge and just seeing his progression throughout the season is amazing to watch. You know he's going to be a guy next year who's going to cause havoc in the SEC for sure.
Q. You knew kind of going into the game that Aguilar is going to be to be hard to handle. I think he completed 11 of 13 in the first half. What made him particularly affective in finding open guys, do you think?
DEVIN MOORE: Just moving in the pocket, I say that's definitely one of them. And just his ability to throw on the run and just be accurate with the football. I feel like he was pretty accurate tonight.
They have a tough offense to stop. They spread you out, run you, run it, run it, run it. And then they'll come with a pass, too. So you've got to play both sides of the play, honest.
FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports