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ATLANTIC COAST CONFERENCE FOOTBALL MEDIA CONFERENCE

September 5, 2018

Dave Clawson

Greensboro, North Carolina

DAVE CLAWSON: We're excited to be 1-0. I think any time you can go on the road and win a game, it's a good week. We did a lot of things well, but we made a ton of mistakes, and losing the turnover margin, coming up empty in the red zone twice, giving up some big plays in the pass game, and when you can do that and still find a way to win -- I was really proud of our ability to come back in the fourth quarter with a true freshman quarterback on the road.

It's good to get that one under our belt, and this week we host Towson, and that's a conference that I coached in for many years. They're extremely well-coached. I've known their head coach, Coach Ambrose, for over 20 years, and they have good players. So it's week 2, it's our home opener, and we're excited to be at home.

Q. I'm curious, we hear all the time the notion that teams make their biggest improvement from week 1 to week 2? Do you believe in that? What's your take on that topic?
DAVE CLAWSON: Well, yeah, I think you do. I think a lot of times you really don't know where you're good and where you need work until you go out and play a game, especially if you've got a younger team. I think sometimes if you have an older team, that might not necessarily be the case, but I think for our quarterback who's a true freshman, he did some really good things. Any time you throw for 370, 380, you did some things well, but there's also some plays we missed and some chances we took that we probably shouldn't have taken. There's a lot of things that we need to clean up that when you're out there keeping score for the first time show up. There's a lot of times kids that -- once again, on a game, they sometimes lose their mind a little bit in terms of their eyes aren't in the right place or they don't communicate the checks. Now that we have a game under our belt, I would hope it gets a lot better.

Q. And there's a million different ways to construct a schedule; do you like having a little bit of a challenge, a little bit of a test in the opener? Would you rather wait before your players experience that? What's your thought there?
DAVE CLAWSON: Oh, I mean, I don't really care. The schedule is the schedule. There's not that much control that I have over it. I knew Tulane would be a good team, and I knew going on the road would make it more challenging. We won the game, so I'm glad we had a challenge. If we were 0-1, then maybe I would wish we started out a different way. It was a tough game, it was a physical game. It was hot, it was humid, our kids were tired. We had some kids play 100 snaps that had never played for us before. We had a couple of injuries, and we had a player ejected, and all of a sudden you're a quarter into the game, and guys that you didn't think would be playing for you are now playing 100 plays.

So we learned a lot from that. I think that experience will benefit us, and that would have benefitted us regardless of who we played game 1. So again, we're very fortunate that we found a way to win. I thought it was a really gutty effort. Any time you can win a road game, especially coming from behind, and we were behind in the fourth quarter and then it was tied and now you're in overtime, and we found a way to win. So there was a lot of good things in terms of the effort and determination and intangibles, but in terms of playing clean football, there's a lot of work we need to do. We watched the tape and showed that to the players, and hopefully that will be improved this week.

Q. Talk about your time in the Colonial Athletic Conference when you were down at Richmond for a couple years. Talk about coaching that league and what you like about the Colonial Athletic Conference now?
DAVE CLAWSON: Well, I think it's the best FCS conference in the country. I coached in all three of the legs. When I first got to Villanova it was the Yankee Conference, and then it became the A-10, and when I was at Richmond it switched over to the CAA, but it's really good football. You know, there's kind of a group of schools there that there really isn't -- until Temple left the Big East, there was not really a Group of Five footprint there. Now there's ODU and Temple, but back when I was in the league, if you weren't a Power Five player, those players were ending up in the CAA. Between Brian Westbrook and Brian Finneran and Lawrence Sidbury and Tim Hightower, I mean, there were some great, great players in that conference, and when we were there, it seemed like if you won that league, you had a great chance to win the National Championship. I still think it's a great conference.

The one benefit that the FCS schools have now is they can take transfers and they're immediately eligible, so just watching the tape, it's still really good football. I probably have a little bit more of an appreciation for it just because between my time at Villanova and Richmond, I spent a number of years in that league.

Q. Talk about Coach Ambrose for Towson and what he does for that University.
DAVE CLAWSON: Well, first of all, he's an alum. He played there. That's his school. I just have always really been impressed with Rob, his offensive acumen. You know, there was a couple years when I first got to Fordham as the head coach, and I've coached against Towson, I think, more than any other school as a head coach, but Rob was the coordinator there under Gordy Combs, and one year they led the Patriot League in passing, and they graduated a few receivers and some other players, and the next year they come back and lead the whole league in rushing. I always remembered that with Rob just because I thought that showed how much flexibility he had as a coach, that he's a complete football coach, he knows the pass game, the run game, the protections, he adjusts to his personnel well. He's not one of these guys that's set in stone that's going to do the same thing every year. He's multiple enough that he can adjust to his personnel, and when you watch them on film, they're doing the same things.

He, I think, does a great job of utilizing his players' talents.

Q. Could you talk about your development of the wide receiver Sage Surratt and him being the ACC rookie of the week.
DAVE CLAWSON: Yeah, I mean, Sage, we were able to redshirt him a year ago, which was great for his development. He got in the weight room, he was on the scout team, going against our starting DB's, and sometimes when you redshirt a player and they perform well against your starting defense, you know that those are the kids that are going to make the transition well. He really kind of went into the year, we thought, as our third outside receiver, along with Scotty Washington and Alex Bachman, and then when Scotty Washington hurt his shoulder, Sage stepped up. We were very confident about him going in. He would have played a lot even if Scotty was healthy. But just competitive, excellent ball skills, just a good kid and a hard worker, and made some incredible catches. We're excited that -- I really think just not Sage but our whole wide receiver position has really developed, and we have some depth there, and obviously with Greg Dortch and Alex Bachman and now Sage and once we get Scotty Washington back, hopefully in the next week or two, we'll have a little bit more depth there, as well.

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