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ATLANTIC COAST CONFERENCE FOOTBALL MEDIA CONFERENCE

October 26, 2016

David Cutcliffe

Greensboro, North Carolina

DAVID CUTCLIFFE: I'm just now trying to finish up watching practice tape, back in the swing of a game week after being open, playing on a Friday and then being open. Our team has approached this -- and it's obvious they know they've got a big challenge. This is a really good Georgia Tech team. They're a balanced team, a team that's playing well in all three phases, and they have really good players in all three phases. So a huge challenge for our team. I think our people understand that.

With that, I'll take questions.

Q. I'm curious how playing Army earlier this season helped your team prepare, if at all, for Georgia Tech this weekend.
DAVID CUTCLIFFE: Well, I think one of the things it does that helps us is actually our scout team is not having to run the offense for the first time this season. So there's a little carryover. There are some similarities in the offense. The fact that we've played against it gives our defensive players some familiarity, because this wasn't practice, we had a game against Army.

But Army, in all due respect, is not even close to what Georgia Tech is from a weapons standpoint offensively. I think our players do realize that. They watch the tape, and they see that. So it's really hard to simulate the speed that Georgia Tech has on offense.

Q. Syracuse gets a play off every 20 seconds, one of the faster offenses in the country, games a little bit longer just because of more snaps, more incompletions. What are your thoughts on those longer games just nationally, and will you do anything to prepare differently for the longer games?
DAVID CUTCLIFFE: Yeah, I think that it's something that is being looked at very closely. Certainly we all know television dictates certain things, and they're only going to want time slots to go for so long, but that's the unimportant part of the equation.

I think the rules people and a lot of coaches continue to look at it just on injury opportunities, player safety. I don't want to see drastic changes to the game. I do think there will be some coming.

If we've got a team trying to play faster than we want to play, you do what you can to try to slow them down. But it's certainly fun to watch their energy and what they're doing. It is strategic, and obviously it's worked for Coach Babers wherever he's been. Strategically I think it's a good part of the plan.

We don't go as fast as they do. At times we have, but I do think, again, from a player safety standpoint, it is something that we all need to look at and study.

Q. At Air Force they've experimented with eating closer to kick time because they anticipate the game is going to last longer. Have you seen that at all or done that yourself?
DAVID CUTCLIFFE: No, not really. You know, I don't know that you -- as you start getting into a game, the length of time of the game with a coach is not as critical as it is with maybe the administration or television. Again, the number of snaps when you get into -- as I was studying Syracuse against Louisville, it's amazing the number of snaps they took on offense in that game, and Louisville, as well.

Then you start worrying about just, again, the number of exposures a player has to injury.

Q. You guys have had success against Georgia Tech the last couple of years after a bit of a losing streak there; what kinds of things that you've done can you try and replicate to try and get another win this weekend?
DAVID CUTCLIFFE: I think we've gotten better. We're a better football team than we've been is the big part of having an opportunity to beat a Georgia Tech program that's just been consistently a winner. I think each of these games are unique when you play Georgia Tech and you know that Coach Johnson is good at managing a game or running his offense and knowing his answers as anybody that we've ever coached against.

You kind of just have to understand and feel what that game is going to feel like, and you've got to be patient. You've got to take advantage of every opportunity you may or may not get, but you'd better take advantage of the ones you do get, and that's kind of how -- we've been fortunate enough that we've had to hang on, and we've been fortunate enough to be able to just eke out enough points and stay on the field offensively is part of it, but that's not easily done. Their defense is really good right now, and it's continued to get better under Ted Roof. Big challenge this week.

Q. You mentioned 3rd down, and that was an area where you guys did have more success against Louisville than maybe in previous games. What were you able to do against Louisville to have that 3rd down success, and how do you try and carry that over on Saturday?
DAVID CUTCLIFFE: You know, we certainly worked hard at it in the open date. Louisville going into that game, their defense had a 24 percent success rate. They'd only given up 24 percent of the 3rd downs they'd faced, and that was frightening, and I think we hit it at 50 percent.

I just thought we did a good job -- I think our players understood what we had to do, and if we couldn't stay on the field, we had no chance. And so we worked really hard. We were very definitive and communicated well. That's actually what I'm looking at right now. I took a break to come do this teleconference, and we worked very hard this morning. It doesn't mean it's going to work or not work, but you'd better be diligent in your work and preparation.

Georgia Tech does a lot of different things on 3rd down, so you're just trying to grasp all of it and put your players in a position if they execute they've got a chance. That's all you can do.

Q. Knowing that you're facing two offenses that were similar this season, how much time did y'all spend in the off-season kind of working on defending the option in spring and in the non-ball stuff in the summer that you could do?
DAVID CUTCLIFFE: Yeah, well, we do it every spring, and we do it in camp. Since we've been here, we have played Navy I think maybe three times, Army four times, Georgia Tech every year. We've seen the offense a lot. We knew coming in, the guys I initially hired were guys that came out of the NFL, and so we had to do a lot of research and work and study coming into the league, and knowing that we had the other two academies on our schedule.

We've always done that. I think it's important for us, and we have a separate playbook and we can get enough reps -- it also helps train your scout team to make them a little bit better in running this offense. It's something we've done every year we've been here.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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