	products recent interviews FastScripts archive about ASAP Sports

Our Clients:

Browse by Sport

Find us on

Subscribe to RSS

Click to go to
Asaptext.com

View our
e-Brochure

ATLANTIC COAST CONFERENCE FOOTBALL MEDIA CONFERENCE

November 15, 2017

Dave Clawson

Greensboro, North Carolina

COACH CLAWSON: Looking forward to get back home again after two weeks on the road. Really proud of our football team last week for what happened, what we did up at Syracuse, and any time you can win on the road and come-from-behind in the second half and fourth quarter in this conference, it's very hard to do.

So proud of our guys, but we have a great challenge this week with an excellent North Carolina State football team. They are proficient in every area. They are extremely talented on their defensive front. They start nine seniors on defense.

On offense, a very good offensive line, an excellent quarterback who is a great decision maker and lots of big-time skilled players. You know, Hines is electric; Samuels; all their skilled kids: Lewis, Meyers, Harmon, they are just really, really good.

Dave has done a great job there, and this is the best team that he's had and they have had some great wins this year. So this will be a tough game for us.

Q. You out outscored Syracuse in the second half, 40-5. Have you ever coached a game like that and just what can you say about the effort of your team to do something as big as that in the second half of play?
COACH CLAWSON: You know, I've certainly been a part of second-half comebacks and fourth-quarter comebacks. Just our kids played really well and we were fortunate. At times, we maybe left a guy open if they missed, and you know, just we had to get a few stops. That was the key. And just the way we play and the way Syracuse plays, that 30 minutes is usually, is really more than a half a football with the tempo of both offenses.

So you know, we knew we would have an opportunity to come back if we could just get some defensive stops, and fortunately we did that. So it was, like I said, a very rewarding game, and we made some big plays on third down when we had to in the red zone.

It was a really good team win. Because people will obviously point to the offense when you score that many points, but the key to the game was our defense gave up 38 first-half points and then only three points in the second half, and that's hard to do. When you give up that many points in the half, it's easy for kids to get discouraged and frustrated and our kids showed a lot of resiliency and found a way to make stops.

Q. The quarterback, Wolford, he's talented obviously in his time in college but he seems to at least through my eyes being play for comfortable than he's ever played. Would that be a fair assessment to say?
COACH CLAWSON: It is. You know, I think a lot of it has to do that we are improved on the offensive line. You know, it's hard to get comfortable as a quarterback when you don't get time, and you're not running the football. If people can tee off on you and you can't protect and you don't get open, it's hard for anybody to play the position.

John's improved but I think a lot of the improvement has happened because we've improved around him. Our line is playing better. Our receivers are improved. We're running the football better and that allows the quarterback to function a lot better when people don't know what you're doing and where you're doing it from.

Q. You mentioned the team at NC State, bringing in obviously Bradley Chubb as the headliner. Where have you seen his biggest development from the last time you guys played him to now?
COACH CLAWSON: Oh, I think he's more of a complete player in every way. I remember him as a freshman, being a contributor and as a sophomore, we couldn't block him as a pass rusher. Now just his ability to chase players down, he has the ability to speed rush you, bullrush you. He's got good counter-moves. He's very stout against the run game.

Even though he gets off of down blocks and those things really well, and he's even a big contributor on special teams. You have to factor for him when you're punting the football and your PAT field goal unit. He's just become a complete player, and you know, what makes it even more difficult when you play NC State is sometimes you may play against an elite tackle and you can cheat against him.

There's a lot of guys on NC State's defensive line, if it wasn't for Chubb, those guys would be the featured guy, and that's who we would be talking about. Jones and Hill as tackle are excellent players. Street and Roseboro at the other end are both -- all those kids are outstanding players in their own right, and Chubb is obviously the headliner.

But you know, if Chubb wasn't on NC State's team, people would say, "How are you going to block Roseboro or how are you going to block Street?" That's what makes going against NC State so tough is there's not one person on the that front, that you can say, hey, you don't have to worry about him. They are all very disruptive players.

Q. Wanted to get your perspective on someone who faced Syracuse's no-huddle offense on Saturday, and you run a lot of that stuff, too and you run similar tempo. Just maybe how tough it is to face that and prepare for that as a defense.
COACH CLAWSON: I mean, it's very difficult. We do a fair amount of that so we get to practice against it but certainly the way Syracuse does it is even more unique.

No. 1, it's a challenge just getting lined up and then you've got to be able to play your assignment which we did not do a good job of in the first half against them. You know, some of it was just base calls. They just have to scramble to get lined up, and sometimes kids don't process the call.

Then you have all the different rule-breakers that Syracuse presents to you with, you know, unbalanced stuff and you know, formation into the boundary and all the different ways that they get to empty. Those all present different checks and rule breakers for your defense.

Now you add the skill level of Ishmael and Phillips and Strickland and Moe Neal and their quarterback. There's so many plays that Syracuse gets. They get so many plays because people aren't lined up, and the tempo of that offense makes it very difficult. And even if you do get lined up, you have matchup issues. So they are very hard to go against, and you know, it took our guys a good 30, 35 minutes before we could even settle our feet in and play anything that resembled defense.

Q. Tough question of the day is: Do you have enough points to carry over for this week after getting 63 on Syracuse?
COACH CLAWSON: Well, we've just got to go out there and execute the offense. We hope it's not a tactic that's emptied. We hope we can generate some more plays and block, somewhat block, NC State's front so we have a chance to get a little bit of time to throw the ball and have some runs.

NC State's defense is very good and presents a great challenge.

Q. Talk about their quarterback. You talked about Samuels and Chubb but nobody talked about Finley, the quarterback. Seems like he's ready for the next level.
COACH CLAWSON: Trust me, in our offense, we are talking about Finley. Finley is excellent. Really smart, great decision maker. Can make every throw. He's more athletic than probably people give him credit for. He does make some big plays with his feet. He's extremely well-coached. He knows where to go with the football, and he's hard to fool and he's playing at a really high level.

I mean, we think NC State does a fantastic job on offense. We have never really been able to slow them down in my time here, and Finley is a really good player that can make every throw.

Q. Seems like over the last decade or so, Wake Forest has given NC State sort of the most trouble when the games are played in Winston-Salem. Just wondering what kind of atmosphere that you're hoping for from your home crowd?
COACH CLAWSON: Well, we think we'll have a great atmosphere. Ticket sales are tracking very good right now which usually happens with our in-state games.

I don't look at the last ten years. I mean, the last time NC State played here, it was 28-0 after the first quarter. So what happened in, whatever, 2007 or 2009, I think has very little impact on this game. You know, the last two years that we've got off to a poor start and NC State has gotten off to a great start in this game. Even after that, we settled in. We were just too far behind to really get back in the game.

Dave has done a great job of getting his team ready to play us every year and we've got to be prepared from the very first snap, or this won't be a football game.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

ASAP Sports, Inc. | T: 1.212 385 0297