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ATLANTIC COAST CONFERENCE MEDIA CONFERENCESeptember 15, 2010David CutcliffeTHE MODERATOR: We now welcome Duke head football coach David Cutcliffe. We'll bring on coach, ask for a brief opening statement, then go to questions. Coach. COACH CUTCLIFFE: Well, we're a morning practice team, so we've had two good work days yesterday, and I thought our best practice this morning. You hope that computes into playing well. I said at the beginning of the week, where we are right now, this early in the season, we're more concerned about Duke than we can be any opponent, that includes Alabama. We've got to find a way to become better, and better quickly, just for the purposes of our season. But we're extremely impressed as anybody is or would be with Alabama in all phases of the game. There's a lot of festivity and hoopla surrounding the ballgame up here. But I think our team has done a good job of getting its focus back on the field. That's been a good thing. THE MODERATOR: Questions for coach. Q. Coach, just wanted to ask you about your history at Alabama under Bear Bryant. I know you've spoken about him many times. Can you give a sense of your formative years there working under him and any stories that might kind of shed some light to your beginnings. COACH CUTCLIFFE: Well, actually I wasn't a GA when I was a student. I worked in the dorms. Fortunate to take advantage of the opportunity to be around the program. What a great opportunity, not just Coach Bryant but also the great staff that was there. I was a guy that knew I wanted to coach. Kind of a long story, a lot involved with that. I lost my dad. A lot of coaches were instrumental in my raising, so to speak. I took great advantage of that opportunity. I watched tape with Ken Donohue for hours on end early in the morning before I'd go to class. Took advantage of every opportunity I could to see how Coach Bryant managed the staff, managed the squad. I've got a great group of notes. Good gosh, I've got books of notes that are very dear to me that I reference a good bit still on just things Coach Bryant talked about with big games, circumstances. Just a lot of great memories on top of everything else. So this is my 26th time to coach against Alabama, which is pretty amazing in itself. But it's always a special challenge and a special feeling. Q. I heard somewhere that Shorty White is going to be at the game. COACH CUTCLIFFE: Well, he was. Coach was coming. But he has had a little surgery and isn't going to be able to make it, so he's going to have to take it in on television, which is extremely disappointing to me. He was going to be around, either try to get her Thursday night, be around all day Friday. Unfortunately, Coach White is not going to be able to make it. Q. Coach, defensively coming off that game, how do you try to improve facing the Alabama offense? COACH CUTCLIFFE: Well, number one, from an assignment standpoint, errors, mental errors, have far greater hurt us than physical errors. We have not done some things well physically at times. So you go and you work on both of those things as hard as you can do it. You can't cure it talking about it. It's about work. It's about putting our people in the best position that they can to be successful and people not making mental errors. We gave up three easy scores, one on the kicking game when the punter let the ball slip through his fingers, then two uncontested semi-trick plays where the ball was thrown down the field completely uncontested to a receiver. You can't do that against any team, as we found out. We lose to Wake Forest. But you certainly can't do that against Alabama. All I know to do is go get it done on the grass. Particularly today, I thought we reached a better level today. I'm much more confident we're going to play well as we approach Saturday. Q. Given the state of your program right now in terms of what you're trying to accomplish, does it make a lot of sense to schedule someone like Alabama? Are you better off scheduling someone a little more closer to a team you can have a chance to beat? COACH CUTCLIFFE: Well, nowadays scheduling is a very difficult thing, number one. Not to get into a whole talk about that, but people charge you a fortune. People are buying wins. Well, we're not really in a position to do that. But I love testing yourself. We're in our third year. We know we're at the beginning stages because of where we started this thing. But what a great opportunity to measure yourself and test yourself. I want our players to understand, not just by watching tape, but competing against a team like Alabama, to understand what 60 minutes of football, contesting every single play. That's what Alabama does better than everything else, every phase, kicking, defense and offense, they try to beat you on every play. I want our team to feel that, learn it. You never know, once you get on the grass with somebody, you always have a chance to win. Q. David, I cover the Giants. You're probably well aware of the Manning Bowl II this weekend in Indianapolis. COACH CUTCLIFFE: Absolutely. Q. Eli being the kind of guy he is, Easy E, growing up in New Orleans, going to school in Mississippi, how did you think he might acclimate to New York? Gets drafted to the biggest market. The pressure up here is pretty intense. What was your thought about how this guy might fit into the larger picture of the New York landscape? COACH CUTCLIFFE: I kind of chuckled that people thought he might get shook by it. Maybe more than chuckled, I would call it laugh. Eli is extremely smart, extremely smart. Easy E is extremely competitive. He's blood is boiling for this. He knows how to handle himself. You're not going to shake Eli Manning. I'm happy for both of them that they get a chance to play this game. The intensity level will be there. Eli hasn't forgotten the results of the first one, so I can promise you he will be ready. And big brother is the feeling the same things. If I didn't have such a big game with Alabama, I would pay a little bit more attention to it. But I haven't had a chance to talk to either one of them yet. I talked to Archie. Just a little bit of texts and that's it. Q. Do you have one story or anecdote that maybe sticks out about Eli, something away from the field that you remember? Is it hard to believe he's been the longest tenured member of the Giants? Seems like yesterday he was getting drafted out of Ole Miss. COACH CUTCLIFFE: Yes, time has flown. You know, he's got that place in New York, loves New York. Also certainly loves Oxford. He and Abby have a great relationship. What I remember about Eli, Eli can work and focus and do anything. Give you an idea of just the person he is. Eli had a great condo right on the square in Oxford. You kind of have to understand the importance of the square. He and Abby would take my youngest daughter Emily, we got a bonus baby, Emily is only 10 now, but when she was little, he loved to have Emily down at his condo for the Christmas parade. That was sincere. Eli sincerely is a nice, nice person, then he can return around and be the most intense competitor. He just doesn't display it. That's one of the things you like quickly about Eli. Eli is not about show. It doesn't bother him, that's why I love when other people think of him. That could be the greatest gift a human can have. I view that as true humility. Q. Coach, I wanted to ask you about the scout team preparing for a team like Alabama. They're there to teach your offense, defense what the other team is going to do. What problems does it present when it's not so much scheme as extraordinary talent? Who is pretending to be Richardson or Ingram for your scout team and how difficult is that to simulate and teach? COACH CUTCLIFFE: They're so big, I almost put Ron Middleton back there running the ball. You know, what we do is we rotate our backs for that very reason. We always swap our 2's at least a period. We spent the whole time working against our 2 offense and defense. Kind of a unique circumstance where it was a little more physical than what you would normally get at practice. I hope that carries through to the speed of the game on Saturday. A few bumps and bruises that came from this this week. We also had live work where we had yesterday and today, tackling to the ground, good players. We went some 1's versus 1's live. I said all along, we're going to get a few people hurt, and I can't do anything about that. Obviously it's something that we've got to do badly. But it's a good point you're making. You want good pictures in your mind. We pride ourselves on our scout teams doing a great job. We're a little thin right now due to injury and just our numbers. I've never really had a program where we had so few players as what we do at Duke. That's somewhat a continuous challenge. Q. This is the 26th time you played Alabama. Do you know your record against them? COACH CUTCLIFFE: You know what, I should. I knew I was going to get asked that after that I said that. I know the first four years I was at Tennessee, we won. I do know that in the six years in Oxford, I was 2-4 against them. We beat them twice of the three times we played in Oxford. 2-4 there. We had some other runs. I'm going to say overall I probably had 10 to 12 victories. So it's near .500 but probably on the short side, as most people are with Alabama. Q. There at Duke when you were coming in, it obviously being known as a big basketball school, what is the key to change the culture and turning that program around? COACH CUTCLIFFE: Well, that's the million dollar question. I spent a lot of my time year-round doing just that. But the very first thing you had to do was address the squad, the intensity level, the expectations, the year-round effort in the weight room, just every little detail. Then you had the fans that you wanted to kind of change the culture. The students, we had to change the culture. We had to change the culture of the prospects, the way they think of us, the seriousness of football here. It's coming. As frustrating as our game was last week, and it's one of the most frustrating I've had in my entire career, not just since I've been at Duke, as frustrating as that one was, we know we continue to move forward. We have good young players. The only way I know to change a culture is all of these things equal winning. We got to go win on the grass. We're capable of winning some football games. Soon we're going to be capable of winning a bunch of football games. With our quarterback, we're going to win a bunch of our football games, our sophomore quarterback. We just have to shore up the kicking game, which is real close. We're trying to redshirt a whole bunch of defensive players that aren't quite ready but are going to be really good. Just a little bit of a growing pain in that regard. Q. How marked was the difference coming from the SEC? COACH CUTCLIFFE: Well, 'daylight and dark' wouldn't even do it. This was far different than anything that you can fathom as a person that was in Mobile and covers Southeastern Conference football. It had been asleep for a long time here. Just a lot of little issues day after day after day in every facet that we did on how everything operated, everything. When I say 'everything,' I mean everything. It was from the equipment room to the strength and conditioning to our secretaries to how our practice facility was dealt with, getting the grass like you want it, getting things cleaned up, picked up. I had players out picking up trash. I'm getting to be an old man, but I still got a lot of 'go' in me. I'm loving doing every bit of that. I really have embraced this challenge. I love it when people say you can't do something. That just kind of fuels my fire because that's really kind of my whole life. Haven't had a lot of reasons to do what I've done, but I've done them. We'll get that done here. THE MODERATOR: Coach, thanks for being with us. Good luck this weekend. We'll talk to you next Wednesday. COACH CUTCLIFFE: Thanks. End of FastScripts |
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