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ATLANTIC COAST CONFERENCE FOOTBALL MEDIA CONFERENCE

September 28, 2016

Bronco Mendenhall

Greensboro, North Carolina

BRONCO MENDENHALL: Excited to continue to improve as a football team and to have something tangible to show for it in the win-loss column. It's always good for morale, and it's always good just to have a benchmark to show the improvement that's being made. I think we've improved each of the four weeks and working really hard -- that's why I'm running up the stairs and putting in a little extra time, to continue to push the envelope on how fast we can accelerate the continue the development of our program. Really impressed with our quarterback, how he's playing and how he's performing, and anxious to see where our season goes from here.

I'll take questions at this point.

Q. You mentioned on Monday that Kurt had really earned the admiration of his coaches and teammates by how he had taken every rep in practice last week despite considerable pain. Has he been able to do the same this week?
BRONCO MENDENHALL: He has been able to do the same, and the team now just expects that, that status quo, for really any player. So it's always great to have an example, especially at a position like quarterback where someone is beat up or is in pain and just continues on and doesn't miss a beat in terms of their preparation. So I think it's really accelerated our culture of what injuries look like and what you can do with them and what your preparation -- and what the expectations are of our team when you have one in terms of your preparation.

Q. And then I think you guys gave up nine sacks in the first two games and only one in the last two. What has been the key to that progress? Has it been Kurt and the line just getting themselves in the right protection in between plays, or the technique up front? What has fueled that progress?
BRONCO MENDENHALL: Yeah, it's a combination of a lot of things. First, there's been a slight personnel shift just in terms of different players playing next to each other. The second is matching the players that we're distributing the ball to and the type of plays we're giving them the ball. The more well-suited we put the right players in the right positions at the right time, the more quickly and accurately the ball can be delivered with the existing protection, and so we're getting clear about who deserves the ball and in what situations and on what type of routes, with protection that matches it and the decision making of the quarterback.

So really that whole collective is what's contributed to that total going down the past two games.

Q. Duke leads the ACC with those 17 sacks; what do you see from them in terms of blitz package and how that will challenge that offensive line?
BRONCO MENDENHALL: Yeah, they have some really nice ideas and clearly have put in a lot of time into understanding what teams do protection wise, how to attack it, and then they have some good players that they highlight and feature coming after the quarterback. You always look to make sure that your base principles can hold up. If they don't, it makes for a long week of trying to design and innovate and come up with new ways to protect. But if your base protections hold up, then you find what matches best, and you just work on executing and executing.

But I think they're cerebral, they're innovative, and they do a really nice job of understanding protections and attacking at the appropriate time, so credit to their coaching staff.

Q. You talked to us Monday about visiting with Coach Cutcliffe, and obviously he's so involved offensively there, but they have a new coordinator and new quarterback, you guys have a new coaching staff. Did you go back much to last year or were you far enough in the season that you were just breaking down Duke 2016?
BRONCO MENDENHALL: Mostly 2016. There have been a few reference points prior to, just to validate an idea or two or a direction or two, but really once you get into the four-game mark, especially when you have a new quarterback and new coordinators or staff change, it starts to emerge what direction a team is going. And then any time you go further than that, it's just to validate or point or maybe a specific idea.

Q. You mentioned the other day having been to Duke. I assume Coach Cutcliffe invited you to come there and observe. What's the background on that?
BRONCO MENDENHALL: Well, I was the coach at Brigham Young at the time, and I was looking for programs that had similar academic standards or unique situations with coaches that I thought were thriving, and I serve on the AFCA board of directors, and Coach Cutcliffe sits to one side of me and Pat Fitzgerald sits to the other, and both of them have strong academic institutions. I think they've done quite a lot with the unique circumstances that they have, and I thought that they were very similar to what I was dealing with at BYU.

In one of our board meetings, I asked them both if they would be open to me coming to visit, and they both said they were, and so I made a trip and visited both on the same week.

Q. And did you watch them practice or just basically look at how they ran the program?
BRONCO MENDENHALL: Yeah, it was in the summertime if I remember or in maybe late summer or early summer where the workouts were voluntary or discretionary, and so what I really just did is had a chance to sit down with both coaches and just have a nice dialogue about program design and different challenges that I was facing and maybe they were facing, and we just had a nice conversation of sorting through unique challenges that we were facing.

Q. A lot of players earlier this week talked about the emotion that they felt after the first game and kind of what a relief it was, and I'm wondering if you've seen that, I guess, morale boost extend into practice this week at all.
BRONCO MENDENHALL: Man, our practices and how the team has prepared, I've really been impressed with from the beginning, even though it didn't lead to great execution, and that's improving as we go. But I think there's -- I wouldn't say necessarily it's affected morale. I think it's affected resolve, and just that it's -- they're going harder longer and sustaining their focus longer and maintaining their concentration longer. And so I think -- and maybe that would classify as morale, but that's what I've noticed is they're playing and practicing cleaner and executing at a higher level for a longer amount of time, for longer stretches and more consistently.

The effort was there before, but there's kind of a different resolve in terms of the actual playing of football in terms of the execution.

Q. Were you surprised to see that they had that extra level of effort or resolve in them still?
BRONCO MENDENHALL: You know, I think that really nothing this team does surprises me because it just -- man, they're such great kids. I think possibly the reason that resolve is showing is because the game called for that, where we got up and then Central Michigan fought back, and then we had to kind of dig even deeper, and to break through in that particular game, to have a victory. So I think they've recognized that that can translate into their preparation and practice, as well, so that's the way I've assessed it is they got a tangible result from showing resiliency and resolve, so it's becoming more who they are on a daily basis.

Q. Talk about the three keys you guys have to do this week to beat a Duke team that's coming off a big win over Notre Dame.
BRONCO MENDENHALL: Yeah, I'm not sure I can break it down into a number of keys, but what I will say is when you're playing good football teams that field position matters, turnovers matter and points matter, and so making sure that we're on the positive end of those three things usually reflects well on you and your program regardless of who you play and where you play. So that's the way I would answer that.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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