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ATLANTIC COAST CONFERENCE FOOTBALL MEDIA CONFERENCE

October 11, 2017

Bronco Mendenhall

Greensboro, North Carolina

BRONCO MENDENHALL: We're getting ready for really phase two of the college football season. I think I'll be speaking on behalf of all the coaches, a lot of the newness, a lot of the excitement and the real work has kind of begun of managing school and managing seasons and managing injuries and managing all the different things in players' and coaches' lives.

We're anxious to continue to learn and grow and build our program and look forward to our upcoming game this week. So I'll take questions.

Q. Good morning, Coach. Last year, you guys were below 100th nationally in third down offense and defense. This year, you're top 15 in both. How have you guys improved that metric so much?
BRONCO MENDENHALL: Well, I'd love to just give a simple answer and a very specific answer, but I think really the answer is just time and maturity. More time with our players, more maturity of our players, which just means we've had more of a chance to practice with an increased knowledge of who we have and how to use them.

So I think the players are responding really well, but we're also -- and I think we've done a better job of, again, putting the right players in the right spot at the right time and the right configurations with more practice.

So to this point, I think that's been the difference.

Q. And have you found yourself, especially on offense, in more third and reasonable distances?
BRONCO MENDENHALL: We have, and I think that's affected and has kind of been branding our style of play this year, where we're doing a really nice job with time of possession which also reflects third and manageable. When you're good on third down or having success on third down and manageable situations, you're able to hold on to the ball, which is really powerful especially if you score. It still has an impact even you don't because you can change field position and control the momentum of the game. But when you add scoring as well, that usually leads to successful football teams and programs.

Q. Good morning, Coach. I'm curious, obviously, I know they're dealing with a ton of injuries and have been replacing some key players anyway from last year's team. I know you're pretty far into the season, but is there still an element of mystery in a team like Carolina, because you get the sense that maybe they're still figuring themselves out?
BRONCO MENDENHALL: Certainly. I think that's the case with every team, some more than others because of either younger players emerging, injuries with replacements, style of play possibly being altered because of that. But just to be clear, North Carolina is a talented football team. They're a capable football team. And they played a tough schedule and they're relatively young and have had some injuries.

None of that means they're not capable or can't have a good year or can't win any game that they play from here on out and so, again, we think this will be a very challenging game, will be a very difficult game, a very impactful game.

But we're still learning about ourselves as well. So I think this time of the season, the discovery and self-understanding is still going on.

Q. A year ago, obviously, they won the game, but you guys won the time of possession battle, and I think they ran less than 70 plays against you.
When you face an offense that wants to be up tempo like that, how much pressure does it put on your offense to sustain drives and hold the football?

BRONCO MENDENHALL: It's just a reality. I wouldn't say it's pressure, but it just is an expectation. It seems like, man, almost everyone we've played so far this year is up tempo. So this is just the next team.

I think we have a good, solid plan of understanding how to defend it, how to manage the game against it. And I've have had success in our time as a coaching staff, but it's going to come down to execution, regardless of how good the plan is. But this is just the next team that wants to be up tempo.

Going back to our time at BYU, we were an up-tempo team and at one point I think had run the third most plays in the country one season. We have a familiarity with that. It just comes down to execution and the players doing what they're supposed to do, when they're supposed to do it, how they're supposed to do it, and consistently doing that the entire game. That allows you to manage a team or a program or an opponent that loves to play fast.

Q. Bronco, I was surprised when I looked back to see that you gave up four interceptions for touchdowns last year. Given the low number of turnovers you've had this year, do you think last week was any kind of reminder to how quickly things can turn around?
BRONCO MENDENHALL: Oh, yeah. It's a reminder to all of us, especially when the quality of competition increases, which Duke defensively, again, as I mentioned, I thought was very good and really well prepared.

That shows that, and not only do you have to be really cognizant and mindful that the ball is everything, but it also shows the effect it can have on your team and a specific game when you make a decision to turn the ball over.

I do think it is a decision, based on risk on a given play. And when you make those calculated risks of possible gain versus return, and if it's a high yield potential for the defense, those are balls that better not be thrown because, again, last week, two went for touchdowns. One was called back, thankfully. Fortunately for us, we had one for a touchdown which mitigated the damage.

We were mindful of that a year ago and certainly against ACC opponents, that consistency has to be what it has been the majority of this year with the exception of that game.

Q. Hi, Bronco. [Indiscernible] you sometimes see a jump in record. I know that you had that at BYU and you've seen it around the country with coaches in their second year. What would you kind of attribute that to the most for you guys now, that improvement in performance so far?
BRONCO MENDENHALL: The real -- the simple answer for me is understanding of our current launch point, which means that it took me an entire year not only to understand our current team, understand our current program, understand, really, some of the unique strengths and challenges that are specific to our university and our program, but also a clear understanding of what the conference looks like and what the surroundings and what our opponents look like.

And I'd love to say that I was faster than that, but our entire staff, working as hard as we could, from the minute we got here, it took an entire year to really understand where we were launching from. And all we've tried to do is apply all of that knowledge now in a more comprehensive and effective and efficient way into year two, which has helped us start fast. Whether we continue or not, you know, that remains to be seen.

At Brigham Young, when we took over there, we scraped out a 6-5 first year from a program that had three losing seasons. This program has had nine or ten -- or nine of the last ten, so those roots were deeper.

In year two at BYU, we jumped to 11-2. This would be probably realistically a year or two behind any capability to do something like that. However, the progress we've shown is really based on understanding and education of what the job really is so then we can frame more appropriately all of our schematic and cultural emphasis, as necessary, to have a breakthrough.

Still remains to be seen if that's what's happening, but at least we're off to a good start.

Q. So, basically, instead of assessing, you can just be more aggressive with things instead of assessing the landscape is what you're saying?
BRONCO MENDENHALL: Not necessarily aggressive, but more accurate, meaning use the right players in the right manner at the right time versus the right opponent. A lot of that was projection in year one. There wasn't anything soft or passive about it. We just weren't as accurate as a staff in understanding who our players were, what they can and can't do against who they can and can't have success against.

Also, we needed to build capacity of fundamentals and within our scheme at the same time. So we were aggressive and we were passionate to win and hard working. We just weren't nearly as accurate in how we were using our players, hour we were using our schemes. But certainly, our players weren't prepared very well in terms of their habits with what we're currently doing schematically.

There wasn't enough practice and not enough sustainability of repetition to really have those habits hold through the course of our first year.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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