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ATLANTIC COAST CONFERENCE FOOTBALL MEDIA CONFERENCEOctober 24, 2018David CutcliffeGreensboro, North Carolina THE MODERATOR: We are now joined by Duke head coach David Cutcliffe. Coach, if you could please give us an opening statement, then we'll open it up for questions. DAVID CUTCLIFFE: We know we got our work cut out for us. This is a Pitt team that has maybe played the toughest schedule in the country, played well in our conference, for sure. They should have beaten Notre Dame in their last game. We know we're going to have to go to Heinz Field and play our best football to have any opportunity to be successful. With that, I'll take questions. Q. I was noticing teams are going for it on fourth down more. The numbers are up across the country. This is something you seem like has been a strategy for your team. You seem to have been pretty aggressive on fourth down for years. Do you feel like the cat is out of the bag a little bit, that when you face teams, they're taking this strategy that you've used? Are you seeing this around the country? DAVID CUTCLIFFE: Yeah, I think there's a couple of things that have happened. Certainly we've done it a long, long time. Done all the math on it, studied it. I just felt like years and years ago that the success rate was better than people thought. It also made third down more effective for you, which we need to do a better job of that ourselves right now. There are a lot of companies out there, analytic companies, that have aggressively pursued clients. I think a lot of people are listening to them, looking at the math, figuring it out. So I think it is a matter of the cat's out of the bag. Q. I'm sure you studied the Pitt-Notre Dame game. Pitt lost its best middle linebacker for that game, but seemed to play their best defensive game of the season despite that. What do you think was the root of why they played so well on defense? DAVID CUTCLIFFE: They've got good players as second teamers, backups. One of the things Pat has always done is played a lot of people on defense. They've stepped up. They have some experience where they stepped up. They played very well. They did lose an outstanding football player. We have great respect for him having played against him in the past. It's an unfortunate part of football. But I think they played with purpose against Notre Dame. As you know, you watched the game like I did, they had a great opportunity to win the game. Actually a shame they didn't win the game. Q. What do you see this week you have to get better in from last week? Seems like you had to play catch-up after being down 14-0. DAVID CUTCLIFFE: We didn't play well early. Didn't play well throughout the ballgame. There were a multitude of things, ranging in the kicking game, defense and offense. I think maybe the biggest part of it was some of the fundamentals you have to have. That's my responsibility. We didn't tackle well. We didn't block especially well at all. Virginia played much better than us in the area of special teams. We had critical penalties. We turned the ball over and they didn't. So that's pretty much a recipe for playing very poorly. We have to change all of that to have any chance at Pittsburgh. Q. Talk about Pittsburgh's offense. They have a quarterback in Pickett, a running game that can rush. DAVID CUTCLIFFE: I think Pickett is a good young quarterback, he's mobile. Their two backs are outstanding. Offensive line has been consistent. Last year they rushed for over 300 yards against us. Hopefully our players are well aware of that. Again, it starts with fitting gaps and tackling well, just fundamental football. If you give them a chance, they will turn runs into explosives. But I think both of their backs, Ellison and Hall, are just outstanding. THE MODERATOR: Coach Cutcliffe, thank you. DAVID CUTCLIFFE: Thank you. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
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