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ATLANTIC COAST CONFERENCE MEDIA CONFERENCE

September 29, 2010

Jim Grobe

THE MODERATOR: Welcome to today's ACC football coaches teleconference.
We'll bring on Wake Forest head Coach Jim Grobe. We'll ask for a brief opening statement from coach and then go to questions.
Coach.
COACH GROBE: Thank you. We got whipped pretty good this past weekend by a good Florida State team down in Tallahassee. I thought we were in the game for quite a while, actually improved a little bit defensively, but couldn't get anything going offensively.
For the past couple weeks now, we haven't played very good, so we're hoping to play a little bit better this weekend.
THE MODERATOR: Questions.

Q. Jim, what is your current quarterback status?
COACH GROBE: Well, we actually are not certain right now. With Tanner Price, he'll be day to day. He did not practice yesterday. With this concussion stuff, you got to be really careful. It's possible he could get the green light by Saturday, but the issue becomes practice time. That is a problem.
The other three quarterbacks, Ted Stachitas, Brendan Cross, Sky Jones, all practiced yesterday. We'll see how that sorts out. We've got to certainly find somebody that can get our offense going a little bit.

Q. No matter who winds up starting, what are you looking for to regain that offensive spark you had the first couple of weeks?
COACH GROBE: Well, I think we did a pretty good job running the option in the first couple weeks and have not done a very good job of that the past couple weeks. I think we've played a couple pretty stout defenses these past couple weeks.
I think one of the things that has hurt us has been the inexperience at the quarterback position. Certainly with Tanner being a true freshman, he's seeing a lot of things for the first time, really has been only practicing with us since August. The other quarterbacks are very inexperienced also. They're older kids, but don't have any more game experience than Tanner Price. I think the biggest issue for us is lack of experience at the quarterback position.
The disappointing thing is that both Tanner and Ted have been injured and haven't been able to develop any kind of consistency. I think we're probably looking for somebody that can show us some consistency but also somebody that can show some durability.

Q. Coach, the past two weeks, y'all have given up more than 500 rushing yards. You're facing a team that's going to run the option exclusively. What are you going to do to improve the rushing defense for this game?
COACH GROBE: It's a problem, there's no question about that. Now we're facing maybe the best rushing team in the country this Saturday in Georgia Tech. We know it's going to be a heck of a challenge for us.
Again, it sounds a little bit like a broken record, but inexperience has really hurt us. One of the things you always want to do defensively is you want to be pretty strong in one or the other, either rush defense or pass defense. We haven't been strong either way. We've given up a lot of rush yards, but we've also given up a lot of passing yards.
I think the only thing that's going to make us better is to keep playing games. But it's tough on a coaching staff when you know the thing you need is more experience and the only way you can get it is to learn on Saturday.

Q. Jim, you saw Christian Ponder on Saturday. What about him as a passer caught your eye?
COACH GROBE: I was really impressed. We played Andrew Luck the week before. I was really impressed with him. With Christian, we felt like he and Andrew Luck are the same type kids. I thought the thing that Christian can do, especially with his feet, he runs really well out of the pocket. He made some pretty impressive throws on Saturday. A couple throws we had them in third-and-long and thought we played pretty good coverage and he just threaded the needle on a couple pretty long throws.
I think his strength certainly is being a veteran in running their offense, his best strength. But I think his arm strength is really good. Like Andrew Luck was at Stanford, he's a kid that when everything breaks down, he can beat you running with the football.

Q. Coach, not to dwell on the Florida State game, but one of their young defensive ends Brandon Jenkins has emerged this year, not just with sacks, but against the run. He came up big on the fourth and four. What jumped out at you? What did you think of him seeing him this past weekend?
COACH GROBE: We were very impressed. He's got good strength and can really run. He's got the real good foot speed. He gets off blocks really well. He has high energy and really chases the ball around.
But I think the strength, we thought all those four guys up front were really impressive. I think the real strength of any of those individuals is the group. Anybody you look at in that front four, there's nobody you would think you would like to go at. They're really talented.
What I thought was so special about them defensively, they don't need anybody to get pressure on you. They can play zone coverages or man coverages without bringing anybody other than that front four.
So we were very impressed, not only with him but with that whole defensive front.

Q. Jim, as you talk about the consistency at quarterback, obviously the inexperience, as you look back at the Skinner era, anything you would have done differently now to prepare quarterbacks or is that just kind of the cost of having a four-year guy like that?
COACH GROBE: Well, the problem that we had when we had Riley was that all of our games were close games. We very rarely, when we had that kid here, got beat by a whole bunch of points and very rarely did we ever beat anybody by a solid margin. We won some games, but they were all nail-biter type games when we couldn't take Riley out. That's been our problem.
These kids that are playing right now never had the opportunity while Riley was here to actually get in games and get some snaps like you'd be able to do with a backup quarterback because all of our games were so close.
THE MODERATOR: Coach, thanks for being with us today. Good luck this weekend. We look forward to talking to you next week.
COACH GROBE: Thank you.

End of FastScripts

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