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COLLEGE FOOTBALL PLAYOFF SEMIFINAL AT THE CAPITAL ONE ORANGE BOWL: CLEMSON VS OKLAHOMA

December 27, 2015

Charles Tapper

Miami Gardens, Florida

Q. It's a team game, but how much personal satisfaction do you think Coach Mike Stoops has in the turnaround in the defense from last year to this year?
CHARLES TAPPER: I think it's a lot of purpose. I think it's still a team thing. None of us really are bragging about personal achievements. I mean, we didn't even know if Striker won the All-American, but we didn't find out that we were all -- it's not like we were striving for that. That's just something that happened to us being a part of a great defense. I think Coach Mike is the same way. I think he's out there just calling the plays, and just hoping that his -- I guess you can say his sons or his younger guys are out there making plays.

Q. Zach said that a lot of people behind computers write negative stuff about him, Ahmad said he has a new girlfriend. How have you seen Coach Mike's change this year on the field?
CHARLES TAPPER: I don't think he's changed at all. He's a passionate guy. He's passionate about what he does. When you're outside looking in, it's kind of crazy that you see him cussing us out, making fun of us, but you've got to understand you've got to take what's coming out of the message. He loves you, and if he wasn't doing it so hard, that means he's not passionate about what he does. Different people do it different ways, but that's just Coach Mike, and we understand that. We understand that we've got to take the message out of what he's trying to say and we've got to understand that he really loves us and he's just passionate about what he does.

Q. What approach do you guys take to stop Deshaun Watson?
CHARLES TAPPER: We don't really go into this the same way we go against any team in the Big 12 because like in the Big 12 we see those kind of offenses with those kind of quarterbacks all the time. You have Trevone Boykin, you have Baker Mayfield, guys like that you see them all the time, so we didn't really change any game plans, make up any special things because we see those type of mobile quarterbacks. If you're running zone read, which is a hard play to defend, who can scramble at any time, call a QB draw or a QB carry, those are things that are hard to deal with.

Q. You mentioned a lot of quarterbacks. Does he remind you of one of the guys that you've faced this year?
CHARLES TAPPER: I would definitely say that he's in his own lane. He's really shown that he's in his own lane. He's great at what he does, especially at the sophomore level. The closest guy to him is Baker. I feel like Baker is a little different, but this guy, Deshaun Watson, he's like a running back at the quarterback position.

Q. Have you gone against Baker in practice?
CHARLES TAPPER: Oh, we've been seeing Baker a lot. When you see Bake it's not fun because you can't tackle him, you can't make those little diving tackles. You've got to try to tag him. So trying to tag Bake is almost impossible because he's so quick, and his shiftiness, it's like, man, come on, let me tag you so we can end this play. He's a competitor, so every play he's trying to win. We've been seeing a lot of him. I know one time I slapped him so hard, I said, man, you're going to feel this slap.

Q. When is the first time that he really impressed you, either in practice or a game?
CHARLES TAPPER: Oh, last year on scout team when he was destroying us. We had probably the best scout team with him and DGB. It was like dynamite. Those two could go play at any time but they're on scout team. The scout team, we can kind of rough them up a little bit, but it was still hard to rough them up because we couldn't catch them. We were trying our hardest to try to catch him, but he was still shaking us. He was still scrambling around on scout, making amazing plays. Coach Mike was still coaching us up, like tag him. When we saw him on scout team, we knew he was going to be something special.

Q. Because of how Deshaun runs you'd call him a running back. Do you put someone like Jordan Evans or Dom on him or do you do something special?
CHARLES TAPPER: No, we play him the exact same. We use the front seven to stop him. I mean, we've been stopping the run almost every game, so if he tries to run the ball we're going to apply the pressure and get after him and hit him up a little bit, make him reconsider running that ball.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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