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ATLANTIC COAST CONFERENCE MEDIA CONFERENCESeptember 25, 2013David CutcliffeCOACH CUTCLIFFE: I've been really pleased with our team's approach to practice this week. After a couple of disappointing losses I felt like we've been going back and worked extremely hard of Brandon Connette, tremendous leader. He's putting a lot into what we're doing and the rest of our squad seems to be following. It's another opportunity for us to keep growing. We're going to be a team that has a chance to get better every week, and we certainly need that this week. Very impressed with Troy, and I've known a lot about him, and no question that Larry Blakeney is one of the better coaches that I've been around or known for a long time, so it should be a very interesting and challenging football game. Q. I wanted to ask you about Parker Boehme. In the two weeks he's been the back‑up quarterback, you still haven't used him. I just wonder if you're hoping to be able to hold him out if the opportunity presents itself and still red‑shirt him or has it just not worked out in games? COACH CUTCLIFFE: Maybe in a perfect world we'd be able to red‑shirt him. Obviously we've been beaten twice and our best chance to win is with Brandon Connette in the ballgame. So it just hasn't been a situation that you felt good about just going and playing Parker. We've been biting and scratching and clawing right down to the wire with Brandon. So there is nothing that we've made any decision on either way or another. We're not afraid to play him, if need be. We're just trying to help him get one week better, every week.  He's got to continue that path because he's the next guy. If we go to one, it's going to be Parker. I didn't think it was necessary to get his feet wet in a situation where every snap is so important to us right now, and every snap we have, Brandon Connette is our best chance of winning the game at this point. So that's kind of what we're staying with. Q. A week ago you sounded a little optimistic about Thomas Sirk coming back at a reasonable time. Any progress on that front? COACH CUTCLIFFE: He's getting some work throwing and moving. I don't know about getting back. Still, when I ask them, they won't give me a time line, and he's certainly not well. I can see that with my naked eye, but he's actually throwing the ball really well right now. He's not taking snaps, but he's doing drills. We'll see, again, how quickly he progresses. The one thing I can tell you is we're not going to bring him back too soon. He's such a gifted athlete in regards to being able to run. He's so fast that I do not want to bring him back too soon from the achilles and compromise his speed at all. We're going to get him well, but he is getting better pretty rapidly right now. Q. I wanted to ask you what your analysis was of Pitt's offense? I know it was a track meet for both teams, but did they do anything that surprised you guys? COACH CUTCLIFFE: No, there was no surprise. I knew going in. I think Savage is extremely accurate, big, throws just a really nice ball, big offensive front. I like what Paul Chryst and them do. He's been around it a long time. It's what we used to do a lot myself back in the day. He's got a big pro‑style quarterback with a big offensive line, two outstanding receivers and a good, hard‑nosed, solid running back. They take care of the football by doing that and they have big play potential, as long as they can find a way to run the ball. Those two guys, those two receivers, Street and Boyd become a threat. We just, without the explosives, we played okay. We had 17 snaps that they gained 423 yards on. The other 62 snaps they had in the game, they gained 175 yards. So they used their ability to run it early to turn it into some big plays. Second half they played a little better, and they've got some threats and that helps them. Q. What is the emphasis for you in practice this week in terms of getting your defense to obviously improve some? COACH CUTCLIFFE: Well, I think there were a lot of little things. It wasn't just tackling. It was just being where you're supposed to be consistently, read your keys. We've got to get more people to the football. Then, obviously, the obvious one. The focus has been on avoiding giving up big plays, which was a nemesis a year ago when we started the year. We did a nice job in the first two games of playing in that regard in that manner. It wasn't horrible against Georgia Tech, and then it got horrific against Pitt. We just can't fall back in that mode. We have to play the way we're coached to play and get people to the ball. This day and time it's hard to stop people, but you just can't give up chunks of yardage. You cannot give up explosives. That is the number one priority coming into the week. Q. Easier said than done or what do you do as a coach to coach people not to give up those explosive plays? COACH CUTCLIFFE: Well, you play the scheme that called and you play the technique, it's how. You're coaching the how to not what to do. So we've got to take that to a whole other level. We drill it. It's never easy because the opponent is executing well and doing things well. You have to work like crazy at it, and you have to have a mentality defensively that you're just not going to give up the big, easy play. You know? There are some people, some quarterbacks, some offenses that can put 15, 16 play drives together successfully and then score. But there are not a lot of them. I'm not talking about bend but not break. I'm talking about we try like crazy not to bend, but you never try to break. You never give up the big one. You have to stay on top of routes when you're told and coached to stay on top of routes. Then we've got to work better at how that's going to happen in a ballgame. If it was easy, everybody would do it, but you've just got to work at it. Q. Talk about your quarterback. Where have you seen him your freshman quarterback or red‑shirt freshman replacing Boone? What have you seen so far? COACH CUTCLIFFE: Well, we have a junior, Brandon Connette, and Boone is our guy. Our red‑shirt freshman, Thomas Sirk is also out, our number two guy, with an achilles tear from the spring. So Brandon has played some, and he's continuing to get more and more comfortable back there. He had four touchdown passes, and unfortunately four interceptions. He's seeing the field. He's gaining. He's a fierce competitor and a great young man. He's always been a big part of our program. He's an outstanding athlete that's played a lot of places for us. But right now he's focusing on becoming the best quarterback he can become. He literally gets better every day in practice. Q. Talk about Troy. What do you see on film from them? COACH CUTCLIFFE: Troy is a good football team. They obviously didn't play very well in the Starkville. But Troy, if you follow football, they've got two different but outstanding quarterbacks. They're a spread offense, but they mix a lot of other problems in with it. Defensively all of Larry Blakeney's teams at Troy have been athletic, aggressive. They can run. This is a fast football team that Troy puts on the field every year, and they're no different this year. They have a lot of skill, and ability in a lot of places. It's a very difficult team to match up with speedwise. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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