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ATLANTIC COAST CONFERENCE FOOTBALL MEDIA CONFERENCE

April 19, 2018

Dave Clawson

Greensboro, North Carolina

DAVE CLAWSON: Thanks for having me on. Thought we had a very productive spring. We have a number of players back from a year ago, but we also had to have some key replacements of not a lot of seniors, but a lot of guys, a number of guys who are very productive football players for us. So spring is always about improvement with your individual players and developing your schemes to fit your personnel, and I thought we came a long ways in practices from 1 to 15.

So now the summer phase of our program will get going here shortly, and there are a lot of strides we need to make, but feel very good about our football team coming out of spring.

Q. Good morning. Coming out of spring, how is your running back situation looking? Obviously, Beal had a nice game recently?
DAVE CLAWSON: He did. I think coming out of spring, I think running back has a chance to be one of our real personnel strengths next year. Matt Colburn had a really productive, and a really good 2017 for us, and he's back for his senior year.

Cade Carney is starting to get healthy again and is a really good player and does a lot of good things for us, not just as a back but on special teams. But like I mentioned earlier, spring's about improvement and watching Christian Beal come on is really exciting.

Christian had a really good spring. We wanted to give him a lot of carries and see how he could handle the workload, and he did a nice job for us, and he will definitely factor in there for us and be a guy that plays.

Q. I know Christian got banged up a little bit in the spring game. I'm not sure if you had an update on that at all, but what is his status in terms of health?
DAVE CLAWSON: Yeah, he was fine. He was at our Tuesday practice and practiced. So he had a bruise and he was -- we knew about an hour after practice that he was fine. Then, like I said, he was lifting on Monday, and he practiced on Tuesday, so there's nothing holding him back as we head into the summer.

Q. So you can give us into the quarterback situation. Some of the people would look at the numbers and the scrimmages in the spring game, and say well, the younger guys put up bigger numbers than Kendall. How do you evaluate that, and what is the nature of the scrimmage when QBs maybe aren't live particularly if he doesn't necessarily showcase Kendall's strength as a quarterback all the time, as much as a game-day situation might?
DAVE CLAWSON: Well, I mean, as we leave spring, Kendall is one, Jamie Newman is two, and Sam Hartman is three. I think the gap between all of those guys probably got tight through the spring. Kendall had a really good spring. Just the spring game was erratic. The scrimmage the week before, he was 12 of 18, and the practice we had on Tuesday after the spring game, he was really sharp. I mean, he probably hit 90% of his passes there.

But I also think in a spring game in a scrimmage that the quarterbacks aren't live, certainly with Kendall and even Jamie, that neutralizes their ability to run a little bit. So, again, it's an area that we've got to get more consistent at, certainly in terms of accuracy and efficiency.

John Wolford had a really good 2017 for us. We've got four months here before we start training camp in August. Kendall and Jamie and Sam got to get together with our receivers, and there are just a million reps those guys got to get in on their own. That was one of the challenges was that John Wolford had so many reps throwing to Greg Dortch or Scotty Washington or Cam Serigne, that I just think some of the things we had were timing issues, that the only way to make those better is through repetition.

Those guys are going to have to get on their own in the summer and work at it, and we expect to be a lot better at that when we start camp in August.

Q. I know you just mentioned Jamie Newman, and I wanted to expand a little bit more on his spring practice and what he's looked like so far coming through the spring?
DAVE CLAWSON: He's improving. Jamie certainly has all the measurables. He's 6'4", he's 230 pounds. He has a really strong arm. The one challenge with quarterback is just the big decision is always who do you give the reps to? Because we had John and Kendall for really the last three years, the last two years Jamie hasn't been able to get a lot of reps. This spring he got loaded up on reps, and he finally got a lot of work. You could see the light come on with so many different things that we did.

So he really improved, he has a better feeling for the offense. He's got some outstanding, physical traits, but he's just got to keep working hard and keep learning the offense, and get down the timing of our throws and get some of the reads down in our RPO game. But the arrow is definitely up.

He was certainly one of the more improved players in our program this spring, and I would say the gap between him and Kendall has probably tightened. But I would say Kendall is still one and Jamie is still two.

Q. Then as far as running back Cade Carney, just what can you say? I know the team elects their captain. He's a lone junior. What can you say about his growth and his leadership as he's going into the season?
DAVE CLAWSON: I mean, Cade has been outstanding for us since day one. Cade came in here with a maturity that is rare. He came here as a mid-year guy, so he really came here his senior year of high school. From day one just does things right. He's very confident, because he does things right and his confidence, it's allowed him to emerge as a leader for us earlier than most. He's a true junior that just got elected captain, which is very hard and very rare.

So I think Cade has really strong leadership qualities, and the players respect him. They respect his work ethic. They respect how he plays the game. His toughness, his physicalness. Off the field in our summer workouts, he's always been one of our leaders in terms of setting the tone for what we do. Certainly we're proud of Cade, but he's also, you know, going to be a really good leader for us, not just this year but the following year.

Q. I wondered if spring ball has a different energy when you're coming off a couple of bowl wins as opposed to coming off a 3 and 9 earlier this decade?
DAVE CLAWSON: I mean, I think there's no question when you're winning, and you come off of a bowl win, there's always a little bit more bounce and a little bit more confidence to players' steps.

But we always try to emphasize that every year is a new year, it's a new team. No matter what you did the year before or the year before, for the following year, nothing is guaranteed, and the program can slip very quickly. So we just try to reinforce the things that we've done to have the last couple of years, and to make sure that we don't lose that edge and how we practice and the workouts, and the day-in, day-out demands that it requires to be competitive in this conference is not easy. If you ever lose that, the thing will slip back very quickly.

So I think there is a confidence level in our program and with our players that maybe we didn't have two years ago or even a year ago. But by the same token, it never, ever becomes easy. I think our players understand that. The other goal is we want to get better. We want to be able to compete for the ACC championship. To do that, you have to beat some really good teams. Some of those guys we haven't beaten yet. So we still have a lot of work to do.

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