|
|||
|
|||
|
 |
|
|
ATLANTIC COAST CONFERENCE MEDIA CONFERENCENovember 14, 2012Randy EdsallRANDY EDSALL: Well, Florida State is a team that's playing extremely well in all three phases, very deserving of their ranking that they're at. When you look at their defense, it's a defense that's outstanding, top defense in the country. And then offensively very solid in all positions. So we'll have a tremendous challenge ahead of us on Saturday. Q. What have things been like for a senior like Kenny Tate trying to regain his health coming off the injury? RANDY EDSALL: Well, I have the utmost respect for Kenneth in terms of what he's had to go through to get himself‑‑ when he got hurt last year and then the rehab process that he's gone through and then coming back this year and out there playing. I think the thing is he's playing well. I don't think he's still 100 percent, but he's out there competing and doing everything he can to help his team win. The game of football is very important to him. But he's a guy that can make plays for you and he's somebody that, like I said, I have the utmost respect for and want him to go out in this last game here at Byrd Stadium and play to the best of his ability and help us hopefully get a win. But again, I think Kenny has been through a lot, but Kenny is not one to complain. He's a guy that just wants to go out there and try to be the best he can be each and every day. Q. With the awful quarterback injury luck y'all have had and moving Shawn to quarterback, what percentage of your playbook would you say you're able to run with him given the limited install time you've had? RANDY EDSALL: Well, it's probably less than 50 percent that you have in, and again, it's one of those situations where you have to have that delicate balance of having too much or not enough in in order to give yourself enough opportunities to score enough points to help your team win. But also you don't want to overload the kid. Again, same thing with protections and things along those lines. So it's one of those things that we're doing, the things that we feel can help us generate points, but yet also making sure that it's the right amount in order to be able to execute it the way it needs to be executed. Q. As a guy who's kind of made his name defensively and I guess you're ranked second in the conference in defense right now, what do you make of some of these scores you see out there, for instance, the 68‑50 North Carolina‑Georgia Tech game? RANDY EDSALL: Well, I think the thing is this: What you have to understand and what people have to understand is when you're playing these teams that are playing the no‑huddle, hurry‑up offense all the time, and if you get two teams that are doing that, you're going to‑‑ you're probably going to have high scoring because you're just making the game longer and you're creating more plays during the game. And then again, I think that one of the things is if you're involved with teams like that and sometimes maybe defensively you don't get to work on the fundamentals and the techniques that you need to work on in order to play the kind of defense that you hope to play. And I think there's a delicate balance there, too. The thing that's also‑‑ it's funny because you know, everybody talks about player safety. Well, we did some things in the college game with the 40, 25‑second clock but you start running all those plays, now you get back into the player safety issue. But I just think it's the hurry‑ups and then also that sometimes people don't get a chance to work on the fundamentals and techniques because of these types of offenses that they have to go with, and plus there's more kids nowadays that want to play offense because of all the throwing and everything else. Q. Is there less coaching from play to play because of the substitution issues? RANDY EDSALL: Yeah, when you get a team that's no‑huddle, you're not coaching on the fly, that's for sure. Even in practice, if you want to simulate the speed which you're going to see from an offense, you're slowing your practice down and maybe not preparing your guys the way they should be for that game. So there's a lot of issues that are involved there, but what you have to do is you just have to find a way to conduct your practice time to get done what you need to get done. Q. I wanted to ask you, this season obviously was on the verge of being a breakthrough season with a lot of young guys, and it's been kind of derailed by the quarterback injuries and other places. I just wonder how your young guys that were having breakthrough years and are still individually are handling the losing streak and the reasons behind it. Is morale easy to keep up? Is it tough to keep up? RANDY EDSALL: Well, I think that‑‑ I thought yesterday we had one of our better practices, the energy, the enthusiasm that we had out there and even the execution was pretty good. You know, the big thing is you worry about what you can control. You know, you just try to stay steady all the time. But everybody is disappointed. Nobody likes to lose. But again, there's some times that you're going to go out and give it everything that you have and you're going to end up on the wrong side of the ledger. But you just try to keep these kids to understand that, hey, every day it's your responsibility to go out and get better, and for us to get better as a team, and there's issues that happen. We can't control that, but what we can control is how hard we work and how well we prepare and understand that you owe it to yourself, you owe it to the University, you owe it to your teammates to do that. But yeah, our guys, they're disappointed that we haven't won in a couple weeks, but the one thing is they haven't‑‑ you go out and watch the practice yesterday and you wouldn't see that it was a team that's struggled through some of the things that we've had to struggle with this year. Q. Is there a sense that with so many young players playing such key roles that you guys have laid the foundation, even if it's not going to pay off for a Bowl or championship this year, that you've laid the foundation to be a competitive team at the top level in the ACC in the next year or two? RANDY EDSALL: Well, I feel good about what we're doing, and then the foundation that's been laid, and you take a look at the talent level that we've brought in and will continue to bring in here, and again, it's my job as the head coach just to continue to stress that, again, about the process that we're going through. I thought we were on the right track, and then again, we've had some‑‑ we had some situations that arose that kind of didn't allow us to keep going the way we were. But we make our adjustments and we go and we do the best we can with what we have, and that's what we're going to do. I think we're well on the way to doing the things that we want to do, and sometimes there's things out of your control. But I really like the direction we're going. I really like the effort and the enthusiasm we're getting from all our players, seniors, juniors, sophomores, freshmen, red shirt freshmen, I'm really excited about today and hitting the practice field and really excited about this week and really excited about what's going to continue to happen here. Q. As far as speed of practice, have you been encouraged with what you've seen this week from Diggs, Brown and Cheeseboro, and has Craddock been able to maintain his top spot at kicking? RANDY EDSALL: Well, again, we were out there again yesterday. We'll continue to evaluate all those guys and see where we're at, and I'll have a better idea tomorrow once we get through practice with everything that they've done. Q. In order to stay in this game as opposed to last week with Clemson, basically another high‑powered team, what do you need to do to keep the score down so you can stay in the game? RANDY EDSALL: It's just like any week. It doesn't matter who you play. You've got to go out and each guy has to do his job. You've got to put a game plan together that's going to allow them to take away the things that those teams do and go out and play with tremendous enthusiasm and passion and execute. They're a very tough football team to defend with the weapons they have. But this is no different than any other week. If you don't do the basics and you don't do the fundamentals and you don't execute, it's going to be tough to beat anybody. So again, that's our formula is just to go out and play as hard as we can one play at a time and execute the game plan, be a good fundamental and technical team and disciplined team and look to create turnovers. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
About ASAP Sports •
FastScripts Archive •
Recent Interviews •
Captioning •
Upcoming Events •
Contact Us
FastScripts | Events Covered | Our Clients | Other Services | ASAP in the News | Site Map | Job Opportunities | Links |
|
ASAP Sports, Inc. | T: 1.212 385 0297
|