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ATLANTIC COAST CONFERENCE FOOTBALL MEDIA CONFERENCE

October 5, 2016

Dave Clawson

Greensboro, North Carolina

DAVE CLAWSON: After two weeks of being on the road, we're excited to be back home and hosting Syracuse for our second ACC game of the year. Very impressed with Syracuse; they've picked up Coach Babers' offense very quickly. The quarterback Dungey is playing at a very high level. Really like their receiving corps. They've got four or five guys that are really dangerous with the football and play the ball well in the air. Defensively they do some unique things. It's a challenge to get ready for in a week, so we're looking forward to having a great game, and we need to be prepared and should be a fun day.

Q. I was just curious, going back to your days at Bowling Green, what kind of relationship you were able to witness between Aaron Foster, your recruit, and younger brother Evan and Nick Monroe?
DAVE CLAWSON: I mean, certainly when we recruited Aaron and when I was at the home visit, you always make the joke to the younger brother, some day we'll be back to get you, and now we're playing against him. Certainly Coach Monroe was Aaron's coach, and those guys had great relationship, and I'm sure that's part of the reason that Evan committed to Bowling Green and then Syracuse when Coach Monroe moved on with them.

Q. In terms of your defense getting ready for the Syracuse offense, anything in particular that you are doing in practice this week to get ready for that Syracuse tempo?
DAVE CLAWSON: Well, you know, it's a lot like when you defend unique offensive schemes. The hard thing is simulating what they do because whether it's our offense or whether it's a scout team, we don't do it as well as they can do it. I mean, that's what they do every day all day, and certainly the tempo at which they play, the different formations they get in, the amount of formation and the boundary stuff they do, and if you are ever misaligned, they make you pay instantly. You know, the mistakes you make against the scheme are costly, so we've been trying to do as much tempo stuff as we can, and again, we've played against other offenses that go fast, but this is at warp speed. It's just as fast an offense as I've ever seen.

It's hard; it's hard to prepare for that tempo. We're putting a lot of stress on it, and we've got to make sure we're lined up and ready to play because the ball is going to be snapped every 16, 17 seconds.

Q. One way a lot of people counter that kind of offense is to keep them off the field with ball control. How well-equipped are you guys to do that at this stage in the program?
DAVE CLAWSON: Well, we're probably a little better at ball control than being explosive. You know, we've made a lot of 1st downs. Even last week we made 22, 23 1st downs. The problem was once we got to the red zone we kicked field goals and didn't score touchdowns. You know, we're probably not as built to be a quick-strike offense as much as Syracuse, but it's going to be very important that we stay on the field and we can sustain drives, but we also have to finish the drives because Syracuse is capable of scoring a lot of points, and they have scored a lot of points against everybody they've played.

You know, so it's not only a matter of staying on the field and keeping them off, but we have to finish the drives with points because just the way that Syracuse plays, there's going to be extra possessions, and to beat them you have to score points.

Q. Let's talk about that; what is not happening in the red zone that you need to see start happening?
DAVE CLAWSON: Well, we have been good in the red zone until last week, and last week we just didn't run the ball well. We had seven carries for nine yards in our red zone run game, and the other games that we played well, we were able to have balance down there and run it and stay on schedule, and against NC State we didn't run it early, and 3rd and 9, 3rd and 10 are very tough downs on the 12- and 13-yard line. They're tough anywhere but especially down there when the field shrinks and the passing lanes get tighter and you can't vertically stretch people as much just because you run out of room. So you have to be able to run the ball in those situations and have some balance, and we didn't.

Q. Looking at the Syracuse defense you'll be facing, they've given up a lot of yards, they're ranked pretty low, but how much of that is a function of some of the teams they've played have pretty powerful offenses and may warp the statistics?
DAVE CLAWSON: Yeah, I think the obvious things that warps the statistics is when you play the style of offense that Syracuse does, the defense is -- it's hard to be a good statistical defense when your offense is running plays as fast as they are and generating more possessions. So when you have that type of offense, again, the defense isn't going to post great numbers, but they have to stop drives. They have to get turnovers. They have to stop you on 3rd down. And I think their defense is well-built to do that. It's a little bit of a unique scheme. There's a lot of twisting and movement, and they can get you off schedule, and once they get you off schedule, they really get you playing left-handed.

Again, it's easy to look at their defense and say, well, geez, they're giving up yards, but I just think whenever you have that type of offense, you're never going to run an offense like that and have a defense that gives up 160 yards. Their job is to get the ball back for the offense.

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