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ATLANTIC COAST CONFERENCE MEDIA CONFERENCEOctober 17, 2012Mike LondonCOACH LONDON: Definitely getting ready for a Wake Forest team that. By the way, it is an open date for us prior to this game. Coach Grobe and his Wake Forest team is a very well‑coached team that I'm quite sure is looking for answers and a balance to what direction they go, as well. So this is a very important game for us. It's a home game; it's another conference game. And there are some things that we have to continue to keep working on to put ourselves in a position to win, get back in the winning column. So it will be a very good test for us and one that we are looking forward to. Q. Obviously a lot of talk this week about Eli Harold, Chris Brathwaite as well. Are they candidates to start this week or do you think you'll go with the status quo? COACH LONDON: Well, they are candidates to play more. So not about the starting part of it; about getting them more reps. It paid off; you talk about going into the last game, about playing more players defensively, and I think it paid off to where they had energy and they went in and they provided some opportunities, some play making skills and abilities for us. So definitely have a few guys like that that provides somewhat of a spark on defense and to give more opportunities to play. So you'll see more playing time. Q. You talked about the possibility of getting more starters on special teams, and Jim Groh was talking about it earlier they gives I guess his punt team the first dibs on the players in the first choice‑‑ the coaches who coach a specific unit always want the starters and other units may not get the starters because they are playing on some other units. How many units could a guy play on and who gets‑‑ does one of the units get first choice of players on your squad? COACH LONDON: Well, you look at special teams and you look at the four full phases of it: Kick, kickoff return, punt, punt return. Obviously field goal block is a function of the defense while they are on the field. Field goal, extra point is a function of the offense when they are on. And what you try to do is you try to get those players that particularly they are in the coverage aspect of it, you know, kickoff and punt, where they have to go down and tackle potential ball carries, you try to get as many defensive players as you can, because that's what they do. They open field tackle and they set the edge and they do things that are more similar to them playing a defensive position. And then, also, you want to be cognizant of the fact that maybe a young player that you had decided to play, because he exhibits maybe a run‑and‑hit skill, that you may put him on one of those teams as far as a kickoff or the punt team. On the other side, the skill level of guys that are on kickoff return, could be returners, could be the fullbacks that have some sort of offensive skill‑set to them, and also the punt return team. I guess what you see is you see some teams require a starter to be on one of those four phases. You see some teams that have perhaps maybe two starters on one of the four phases, and it's different. You see a team that has their second team defense and perhaps the punt team where now they go out and they have to protect and they have to get downfield. So it's kind of based on the philosophy, you might have some depth issues like we have‑‑ or you might like I said try to get young players in the game playing time by trying to get them to be four‑phased players. When you look at our team, you see a few starters here and there dotted on maybe one phase team of it and with some young guys, red‑shirt freshmen, or true sophomores backing them up. But I think one of the things we talked about was for us, because of where we are, trying to get an older guy, maybe another guy another phase of the special teams, and then get into the substitution part of it for on the field scrimmage plays like Eli and Chris Brathwaite and other guys; maybe LaRoy Reynolds is on the kickoff cover team, and he gets his rest when ‑‑ regular scrimmage plays, and while you had the opportunity for like I said some of the younger players to play. So, it's different. It depends on the your personnel and how you use them and what type of schemes you use. Q. Your thought coming off the extra week, is a big advantage X's and O's‑wise or is it just about getting guys some rest? COACH LONDON: I think it's a little bit of both. I think coming off an open week, teams usually don't change the core of what they are and who they are, but it does allow for maybe perhaps some extra study of the opposing team, extra formations, different plays that haven't been seen. But by the films that we have on a particular team, it does allow for players to have an extra week to get healthy. I believe there are a couple players that were suspended prior to, I believe the Maryland game, that are back for our game after serving their suspension. So that open week has a lot of different windows that it opens for players to get healthy where you look at what you're doing. When we have our open week here, we'll do some things getting back to the basics of things but also getting players that have been out for a while, hopefully to get them healed. It does provide, I think, a little bit of an opportunity for a team to rest, get players back and to look at their schemes and how they may attack their next upcoming opponent because of things that they may or may not have seen in the previous games. Q. How frustrating has the quarterback position and inconsistency there been for you this year? COACH LONDON: You know, we want all the players that are playing on our team to do well. It's just a level of understanding that we are looking for big things from that position. As everyone knows, the quarterback takes 100% of the snaps and for various different issues and reasons, we have not been operating at an efficient level to help us, but again, the two guys, Michael Rocco and Phil Sims are competitors, are young men that are learning, striving to learn the game and to get us back on track. We can talk about all the negatives, but again, as you all know, dealing with college kids and their ability to break through mentally, to break through physically, all it takes is a game or several years, where there's some success. Our job and goal right now is to create those scenarios for those guys, whether it's Mike or Phil to have success on the field. Q. How does that evaluation go from here on out from your perspective through the second half of the season in terms of how you want to use those guys? COACH LONDON: It's the same in terms of taking care of the ball, making sure that you're running the plays that are more suitable for the style of quarterback that's in there, whether it's Michael or Phil; understanding that everyone is evaluated and it's not the threat of looking over your shoulder one way or the other. But we have to understand that production and moving the team is something that's always going to be the forefront of what's important to us. And so everyone has to produce and have to give us a chance to win and give us a chance to compete. It's what we do when you're winning games, it's what you do when you're losing games; it's just about making sure you try to maintain the standard and opportunity for your team to win based on individual's performances. Q. I'm sure you'll be surprised to know that the one‑gap and two‑gap defensive conceptconfuses me. But regarding Wake's defense, they play a 3‑4; how similar is what you saw last week from Maryland‑‑ Maryland describes its defense as a hybrid 3‑4; are these two defenses pretty similar? COACH LONDON: Quick lesson. Two‑gap means you head up one guy, put head on head, toes on toes and when that offensive guy fires out on you, you basically have the A‑gap, and I'm talking about maybe a nose tackle to both sides, to the left and to the right. And that's basically what a two‑gapper is, by controlling the offensive guy's shoulder pads. But when you look at Wake Forest, they line up more of a traditional nose tackle on the center, defensive tackles on the offensive tackles and two stand‑up outside linebackers. Maryland did the same, but they also sometimes played a three‑technique and brought an outside linebacker up over the tight end, so their's is a little different. I think the thing that you see with Wake Forest is, I don't think they sit in specifically two‑gap, but what they do is they slant and angle and they create other opportunities for linebackers to come off the edge or safeties to come off the edge; and they are moving all the time and it makes your blocking schemes, makes it more of a challenge to block different types of looks. So it's a 3‑4 by alignment, but post‑snap, they do a lot of things, a lot of movement and a lot of things to try to confuse you. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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