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ATLANTIC COAST CONFERENCE FOOTBALL MEDIA CONFERENCE

August 31, 2016

Dave Clawson

Greensboro, North Carolina

COACH CLAWSON: We're very excited to open the season tomorrow night, at home. I thought we had a very good, productive camp. Again, we've made good strides. We're looking forward to play the first game tomorrow night.

Q. What is your approach going to be with your quarterbacks this week?
COACH CLAWSON: John Wolford will start the game, but we're going to make sure we play Kendall Hinton. We're going to play both of them. We've got a plan in place of what we're going to do, how we're going to use them both.

Q. Did you go with John based on August or last season? What led to your decision there?
COACH CLAWSON: Just the whole body of work. John has a little more experience, understands the offense probably a little bit better. It was very nip-and-tuck. It was a good problem. A lot of times people say, If you have two, you have none. In this case we have two quarterbacks that were playing at a very high level. We didn't think it was fair to either one of them to make it all or nothing.

John will start, but Kendall was certainly playing at a level and was competitive all through camp, and we feel he deserves to play, as well.

Q. Two years ago you were playing true freshmen on the offensive line. Last year a couple of redshirt freshmen played a lot. It's tough for young guys. Can you talk about the development of that position, the fact that you're growing maturity there and how much impact it will have.
COACH CLAWSON: It should have a big impact. Last year was the year we started three freshmen on the O-line. In this league, with the D-lines we face, that's a tough proposition for those guys.

To their credit, they continued to compete, get better. They didn't get discouraged. Now they have another off-season of lifting, spring football, another camp. We're developing some continuity.

The good thing is, a year ago we were starting redshirt freshmen. This year our really good redshirt freshmen are now backups. We're still developing depth there. But it was a position that in some ways we almost started from scratch, other than Josh Harris, Ty Hayworth. That's a position that probably takes the longest to develop.

We don't get a lot of readymade offensive linemen here. A lot we have to redshirt and develop. From our first recruiting class, we now have three of them that are starting for us. We think those guys are good players, along with Ty and Josh.

Q. How does the maturity impact your ability to run the ball, which has been a problem at times?
COACH CLAWSON: Well, I think part of it is to be good on the offensive line I think there's almost minimum strength levels you have to have. Quite frankly, we weren't at those minimums. We had guys that were playing before they should have and they probably weren't strong enough to play. But we had nobody else to play, we had no choice.

Now those guys are strong. They're much better in the weight room. That strength is functional strength, whether it becomes how you punch on a pass pro, or how you move your hips on a run block, all those things. They're now strong enough to sustain it and to do that for a longer time because their conditioning levels are better.

Q. Tulane with Willie Fritz in his first season there, what can you say about this season opener for you, the talent on the other side, how you're looking at it?
COACH CLAWSON: I mean, for us it's year three. We feel we're going to be a much-improved team. That's easy to say. Tomorrow night is our first opportunity to prove that.

In terms of Tulane, they've hired a head coach who has won everywhere he's been. This is his fifth head job. Everywhere he's been he's won. They'll be a well-coached, well-prepared football team. This is a guy who knows what he's doing. He's proven that over and over again. His 24th year as a head coach. From Central Missouri, to Sam Houston, to Georgia Southern, he's found a way to make it work.

Tulane has talent. If you look at their roster, they've got some older players, they've got I think 146 combined starts on defense, a defensive tackle that will probably be drafted. They have four runningbacks that could probably play anywhere in the country. They're very, very talented.

With what he does, I'm sure those guys will be a very good fit.

Q. As far as your side, you speak on having to play guys a little bit early or having to deal with that young team. But the experience that they get going into this season is going to pay off dividends. What can you say about some of the guys that weren't ready a year or two ago that have shown you leadership this year?
COACH CLAWSON: If you look at our roster, last year we were a freshman-dominated team. We had more freshmen than any other class. This year we've become a sophomore-dominated team. We have 17 sophomores that will play significantly. For us a lot of those guys played a year ago as freshmen. We probably have the most experienced sophomore class in the country. So they've played. They've had to prepare for games for a whole year. I think they knew a year ago where we struggled, what the deficiencies were. We've had a year to work on it.

We're very excited that we feel we have a team that will be much better prepared and ready, not just from a strength and skill standpoint, but also from a preparation standpoint, that they have a much better idea of what it takes to prepare for a football game than they did a year ago. In fairness to them, they'd never had to do it before.

Q. Sometimes when a player like Cam Serigne is on teams that haven't to this point produced records that have been all that good, he's nationally overlooked. In your eyes, how good is this guy? Do you think he is among the country's best tight ends?
COACH CLAWSON: Yeah, but certainly I'm biased. I get to work with the guy every day. I think what Cam has done is he came here and he was more kind of a receiver that played tight end. He was a little undersized. He's worked extremely hard. He's now over 250 pounds. He's really become an improved blocker as he's gotten stronger.

Tight ends are hard to find nowadays. It used to be everybody ran a pro style offense, even teams that ran the wing T, everybody had a tight end. Now that more and more teams are running spread systems, that tight end that can do all the things you need to do in today's modern offense. That's being an in-line guy, put your hand in the dirt, drive-block people, line up as a wing, really be an H back, then line up in a slot and be a receiver. It's a very unique skill set.

Fortunately for us we have somebody that can do all three of those things.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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