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ATLANTIC COAST CONFERENCE FOOTBALL MEDIA CONFERENCE

October 11, 2017

Dave Clawson

Greensboro, North Carolina

DAVE CLAWSON: Yeah, played an excellent, excellent Clemson team last Saturday, and they jumped on us early and got out to a 14-0 lead, and I thought our kids battled back and competed and went hard to the end but just Clemson is too good of a team to spot 14 points. They're really as good as advertised. Across the board, they're fundamentally sound, they play hard, and they're an excellent football team.

But the bye week is coming at a good time for us, halfway through the season, and we practiced yesterday and today. We're giving our players the next few days off for fall break, and we'll bring them back Sunday and begin a difficult preparation for Georgia Tech.

Q. Justin Fuente of Virginia Tech is in the same situation, off week right in the middle of the season. In your case, do you have specifics that you want to hone in on, or are you looking more to fine-tune things, or sort of what approach do you take when you've got this time here?
DAVE CLAWSON: Well, I think each bye week is a little bit different in terms of where it is in the season, who your next opponent is. A lot of times we've taken bye weeks to kind of look at the first half of the year and review what we're doing well, what we're not doing well, things we need to work on. It's a little different this year with our bye week coming before Georgia Tech, and because of their unique style of offense and what they do, we've devoted probably a little bit more time to them this week than we normally would in a bye week if you played a team that ran a more traditional offensive system. We have done some fundamental work. We've done some stuff that it's wake versus wake and tried to improve things that maybe we haven't done well in the first half of the year, but we've also taken a little bit of time with these practices to just help prepare ourselves for the option and the things that Georgia Tech does that are very unique, especially, like I said, on the offensive side of the ball.

Q. Will this break give John Wolford a chance to heal up some and possibly be ready to play by Georgia Tech?
DAVE CLAWSON: Well, he was ready to play against Clemson. He was cleared to play, and he practiced yesterday and threw the ball. It was just -- John was probably at about 80 percent, and we just made a decision that we thought Kendall Hinton at 100 percent would give us a better chance to win the game with John at 80, and we did not want John to take another hit that possibly would keep him out for longer.

Again, John was able to play. He was cleared to play. We just made a coaching decision that we thought would give us the best chance to win. John will be able to play against Georgia Tech. Like I said, he practiced yesterday and threw the ball and felt good, and hopefully giving him this extra time will let him get closer to 100 percent for Georgia Tech.

Q. Certainly as you said John has proven himself worthy of getting the starts the rest of the season, but Kendall did play pretty well. Is there any thought of trying to get him a few snaps or a series here and there as the season progresses, or does it kind of revert back to the way that you guys started the season and how you were handling the QB situation?
DAVE CLAWSON: Well, again, I think it all depends on the health of our quarterbacks. You know, we're in a situation that we have two guys that we feel good about, two guys that are both capable of playing and we think winning with, and a lot of it has been the case the last two years has a lot to do with their health. If either of them isn't close to 100 percent, the other one probably gives us the best option. Certainly with the level John was playing at the first five weeks of the season, and we hope he's healthy and can get back to that level, and if that's the case we'll roll with it, but if he's not healthy, we have a great second option, and again, Kendall did play well, and all the things that Kendall does well athletically and some of the plays he made with his arm and his feet were on display, and again, we're fortunate that we have two guys that we feel can run the offense and win games for us.

Q. I know you're not a fan of moral victories by any stretch of the imagination, but given the way that your team competed against both Florida State and Clemson, do you view those two games as sort of an indication of progress, that hey, we're playing with the elite of the elite and playing them close, or does that not kind of come into the vernacular of how you evaluate a game?
DAVE CLAWSON: No. Again, our players are smart. There are no moral victories. We don't ever come away from a game that we lost and said we did what we needed to do. There are encouraging signs in those games that we certainly felt in those two games that we matched up better physically than we ever had in the past. You know, we had never, ever had even I don't think 200 yards of offense against Clemson in the first three years, and you know, they're excellent on defense, and we certainly didn't go up and down the field, and they made stops, but we also moved the ball better than we have in the past. There were encouraging signs on offense and encouraging signs on defense. At times it wasn't the physical mismatch up front that those games at times had been, and again, you can't walk away from those games saying we've closed the gap, but we did feel maybe we held up better on the line play than we had in the past against both of those teams, which again, you can say those things to your players; they know. We've just got to continue to get better, and in this conference, there's no easy weeks. I mean, you look at the last six games, and every team, if you don't show up and play at a high level, you're not going to win, and I think our players have learned that in back to back weeks against Clemson and Florida State, is that you've got to show up and bring your A game and play at a high level, be emotionally ready, and if you don't do that in this conference against anybody you play, you're not going to have a chance of having success.

We're not happy with the last two weeks, but I think we learned a lot, and hopefully we'll apply that to the second half of the year.

Q. With the bye this week and Georgia Tech next week, is this helpful that you guys have played a team like Army the last couple years in terms of the preparation for Georgia Tech?
DAVE CLAWSON: Yeah, it's helpful that our players have had to defend the double slot triple option. It's probably also helpful to Georgia Tech that they can watch that film and see how we defended it. You know, again, I think it does help that our kids know the assignments and things like that. Now, having said that, we have three new coaches on defense, so it's not as if we have the same defensive staff we had a year ago, and okay, you're going to take this blueprint. This is the first time that these guys have worked together.

Part of this offense is just the skill level you have to defend, and Georgia Tech is playing extremely well on offense right now. I mean, they really -- the quarterback, the offensive line is really physical and impressive. They're throwing the ball well. You know, you can schematically maybe think you have guys in the right place, but you've still got to tackle them. And Paul knows his offense inside out. He's seen every way it's defended, and they're always a very, very difficult challenge to prepare for, and part of it is just his ability to make adjustments in the game. He knows it so well, and when he sees something and what you're doing, he has an answer. We've just got to make sure our kids can play fast and react and tackle good people and get off of good blockers.

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