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ATLANTIC COAST CONFERENCE MEDIA CONFERENCE

September 22, 2010

Jim Grobe

THE MODERATOR: We welcome Jim Grobe, the head coach of Wake Forest. Coach, a brief opening statement and then questions.
COACH GROBE: Thank you, Mike. Obviously, was very disappointed in our performance this past week. We got our tail ends worn out by Stanford football team that, I think's a pretty good football team. I don't think we handled the trip to the west coast very well.
When they got a lead, I don't think we responded very well. So we've got a lot of things that we need to work on, and we didn't play very well as a football team offense or defense or in the kicking game. But at the outset, I have to say that I think Stanford's a pretty good football team.

Q. So are you just starting from scratch on defense now? How do you approach things after the last two weeks?
COACH GROBE: Yeah, no, we're not starting from scratch. We're just trying to cut some things out. I think we're trying to find out what our kids are capable of handling mentally more than anything else. At Wake Forest we've got smart kids, but I think sometimes we take that to the nth degree as coaches and feel like our kids are smart enough to handle a lot of defense, and the same way offensively. We've got the same issues offense.
I think sometimes we ask our guys to think too much, and they tend to play slower when they're not thinking fast. So I think our challenge is to be careful from week to week how much we ask our guys to do.
We've got a huge playbook on both offense and defense. A lot of the things that have been good to us in the past are things that we've dragged here into the future, and it may have been good for some other teams, but it may not be good for this team.
So I think our challenge as coaches is to not only coach the kids better, but to be careful that what we're asking them to do are things that they can handle. In some cases we've talked about it before, but we've got some young players that don't handle change very well. We didn't, obviously, handle that trip very well last weekend. But we also don't handle asking them to think too much.
How thin we need to be probably won't be determined for a while because you hate to do nothing but one base look on defense. But at the same time, if you do too much, you make so many mental mistakes that you give up easy points.
That is kind of the dilemma we've got. It's not starting over from scratch. It's just trying to decide who we are and what we're capable of handling mentally.

Q. Of course you're heading down to another tough environment at Florida State. I don't know how many guys you've got left on the roster who were part of -- you went down there a couple of times and won in Tallahassee. What do you think about the way this group will respond to a trip down there?
COACH GROBE: Well, I don't feel good about it based on how we responded at Stanford. And told our players if you thought Stanford in any way was a tough place to play, then multiply that by ten going down to Tallahassee. It's on one hand it's fun, it's an exciting environment to be in. It's one of the great places for college football, but at the same time you've got to be pretty focused.
We did not have much focus last week at Stanford. So the challenge is much greater taking the Noles on down there. And I think we've got some kids that have been down there when we've won, but, you know, our issue is how many kids we've got that really have very little game experience. Not just playing on the road or at home, but just playing period.
We've got a lot of guys that are first year starters, guys that are just starting to learn what it's like to have to go out and perform when it counts. That's our biggest challenge. We know the challenge going to play in Tallahassee's monumental. But for us right now we've just got to try to get our kids -- each kid take some personal responsibility to do his job and not worry about the rest.

Q. I just want to know how Joe Tereshinski came to join your staff. I have a feeling, a very good guess through family ties, but can you just explain how you got him and what you think of his future in the business?
COACH GROBE: Well, it starts, Rob, with family ties, no question. His younger brother, John, played tight end for us. And his dad works with the football staff at Georgia, and Brad Lambert and the dad, Joe Tereshinski are really good friends.
So Joe's a guy that came highly recommended. He's a guy that, you know, we felt like really wanted to be a football game. We're trying to look for graduate assistants, and his name kept popping up as somebody who was interested.
So with the Tereshinski name, we know they're tough as pine nuts, and we know they love football. So the whole family's a football family. We felt like we couldn't go wrong with Joe, and he's turned out to be everything we thought he would be and maybe even a little bit more.
We've actually turned over the tight ends to Joe, and we just don't do that with graduate assistants. But he's so good and does such a nice job that he's basically got our tight ends by himself and coaches those guys on the field as a graduate assistant.

Q. To follow up on the defense, what are you asking the defensive players to do better against Florida State?
COACH GROBE: Well, the thing that happened to us the other night, Mark, we turned some people loose in coverage. We actually in some zone coverages played them a little bit more man-to-man type stuff. Got too focused on one receiver. I think that's the problem you get into when you're mixing a lot of different coverages. Especially with younger guys. They tend to not really focus on the call, they focus more on the guy that's lined up across from him.
I think at times, you know, we didn't play good gap control up front. We had some checks. Ask one thing that Stanford does a really nice job they give you a million different sets, a lot of motions and shifts. And I think what happened was we really had a lot of game plan in and we put it in in a very short amount of time. We had a really short week because we had to go out to the west coast on Thursday. And I think our coaches spent a lot of hours. We probably worked as hard as the coaching staff last week to put a game plan together that we thought would help us.
But I think probably what we did is shot ourselves in the foot because we put in a lot of things. And with all their different formations and shifts and trades and motions we just blew a lot of assignments.
So I think the things that we had, we thought were pretty good, but if you don't handle those things mentally and in some cases honestly, Mark, we handled it mentally. We got lined up. We got lined up and knew what to do, but then we didn't play real full speed like we normally do because I think we were spending too much time thinking and not enough time getting to the football.

Q. How do you see your quarterback situation? What's going to happen this week? How much are the two guys going to play? And has Ted's injury since he got to Wake Forest hindered his progress towards his obvious goal of being the starting quarterback at Wake Forest?
COACH GROBE: I tell you, we'll start the freshman Saturday Tanner Price will be the guy.
He's a young guy, he's only been here for August practices, and, you know, in the first three games of the season. So he's really young and he's going to get better as he goes. I expect Ted to play Saturday, but I will tell you that Ted's injuries have been an issue. Not his fault.
He got his shoulder knocked down and the state championship game his senior year in high school. And they fixed that. When he got to us, he still had some issues, so they still had to go in and do some more stuff.
I think he's pretty much healthy from his shoulder injury, but then in spring practice, he missed most of spring bra with a pulled hamstring, then had a great first drive in the Duke game. Really had more than one good drive, but hurt the back of his non-throwing hand. He got a pretty severe bruise there. We were afraid at the time that he had broken his hand.
As it turned out it was just a deep bruise and a lot of swelling and pretty sore. He felt like he was going to have problems handling the football in the second half of the Duke game.
So what happens as a coach, at times the injuries don't affect the performance very much. I thought he was healthy for the Stanford game. But the thoughts that injuries are a problem. I wouldn't say Ted is injury prone, but that's been so far up until now, he's been banged up quite a bit.
So I think that's a concern for a coach. Especially with your quarterback that you might spend a whole week getting a guy ready to play, and then when he gets banged up in the game, you've wasted a lot of reps trying to get the guy ready to go.
So we've got to keep working with him and hopefully he can stay healthy. Some of it is just bad luck. The game against Duke he just happened to be carrying the football in his left-hand and got hit on the back of his hand. His hand swelled up so bad he didn't feel like he could handle the football in the second half. We didn't think we can keep him healthy, but I expect him to play Saturday.

Q. Given the ACC performance in non-conference games, is the league behind the other BCS conferences or is this a cyclical pattern that will work itself out in time?
COACH GROBE: We haven't played well early, I don't think there is any question. It's just so hard to tell. You'll have a better feel once the season's over where the ACC ranks. Last year we stumped our toe a little bit early, by the end of the year I think everybody felt like it was a pretty strong conference. I feel that way again.
I just feel like so much goes into who you play, where you play, are you at home? Are you on the road? You just have a lot of things that go into early success in the season; so it's probably going to take a while before we figure out where we are.
Certainly for us we're really disappointed in the way we played this past weekend at Stanford. So I would say that, you know, we haven't started out very fast, but the key is whether you finish strong or not.

Q. It has been seven of these games have been on the road among all the conference schools. Are these games that are going to be returned? Will you get Stanford back at your place sometime?
COACH GROBE: We had Stanford at our place last year. We beat them here at home last year, and then lost to them this past weekend on the road. So we split with them, and it seemed to be the home team had the advantage. And I think that's a big thing early in the year. Our guys, honestly, Paul hyperventilated out at Stanford. Our young players just pushed the panic button early and never recovered. And that's a problem early in the year.
If you've got a real veteran football team and you go on the road early in the year, it's not that big a deal. But if you've got a lot of youngsters that you're playing, and most of us are playing freshman and sophomores that you have to count on. And early in the year, that's when they tend to spaz out a little bit because they don't have the focus the older players have. So that is one point that's a good one. Early in the year, a lot of your non-conference games early. A big thing is certainly who you play. How strong is the team you're playing and where are you playing them? At your place or on the road? That makes a big difference early in the year.

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