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COLLEGE FOOTBALL PLAYOFF SEMIFINAL AT THE CAPITAL ONE ORANGE BOWL: CLEMSON VS OKLAHOMADecember 28, 2015Cordrea TankersleyMiami Gardens, Florida Q. I'm sure you haven't felt like sort of the second in command there of the cornerbacks, but Mackensie obviously gets a lot of attention nationally. You've had a tremendous year. Have you kind of felt like you've flown under the radar at all or do you like that role? CORDREA TANKERSLEY: I do embrace that role. I just want to go out there and compete and help my team. I knew all along that I'd have to go about my business, but it really wasn't about that, it was just going out there and helping my team, just going out and making sure I'm making the team better. Q. Obviously you look at just the target numbers and quarterbacks all tend to throw his way a ton. Have you enjoyed -- CORDREA TANKERSLEY: I welcome it. I love it, actually. He had so much stress put on him his freshman year, so I'm out there to take up the slack. He's done a great job, he's a great player, so who wouldn't want to go his way. I would pick on me, too. But it's something I embrace. It's something that Coach V prepares me for, something my teammates challenge me, and I just want to go out there and help the team. Q. Is the entertaining thing about Mackensie is he does not shy away from talking about how good he is, but on those occasions in which he does talk to us -- CORDREA TANKERSLEY: He has no filter. He at times got the game, and that's something he's great at. He backs it up pretty well. I'm the opposite. I just want to go out there and just play ball. But he's done so much for this program, you have to respect him. So him being a great player, I just want to join him. I'm not going to do the trash talking, though. Q. As a secondary or as a team, how much are you guys focused on stopping Sterling Shepard? CORDREA TANKERSLEY: I mean, he's one of the big keys to their offense, but we want to stop their entire offense. We have great players, have a great quarterback, great running back, so we just want to go out there and pretty much stop all they can do, including Sterling Shepard, but he's such an explosive player that you cannot -- he can't go unnoticed on film. Q. Have you seen anything on film that you think you can exploit? CORDREA TANKERSLEY: I mean, I think there's a lot of things I think we can try to slow down. Like I said, they have a great, explosive offense. You're not going to be able to try to stop everything, but you can just try your best to slow them down. They're just so good. Q. How much can you take away from last year's game or does Baker Mayfield make them a completely different team than we saw last year? CORDREA TANKERSLEY: I believe he does. That was a really good team last year, but I think he adds that extra heightness to him. He's a great competitor. He runs really well, throws the ball really well, so he just has the overall package that you look for in a quarterback, and he's made the people around him better. Q. Is there a quarterback that you've seen this year or last year that's similar in style or athleticism to him? Is it Deshaun maybe? CORDREA TANKERSLEY: I think Deshaun is really the only one that compares to each other. Both of them are explosive, great players. You can pick your poison with either one of them. You can't go wrong. I just feel like Deshaun makes our team better, and he makes their team better, and you can win with either one of them. Q. How gratifying has it been for the defense this year that there was so much turnover from last year and everybody kind of said, oh, well, they're going to be rebuilding? I'm sure you guys didn't ever look at it that way, but has it been fun to kind of -- CORDREA TANKERSLEY: We lost a lot of starters from last year to the NFL, coming from the No. 1 defense in the country, so I feel like we prepared well. Coach Swinney always wants to prepare his backups. He don't want to have no drop-off. So I feel like coming into this year, just moving from last year to this year just with different faces. But we had a lot of good leadership on that team, as we do now. I think he prepared us really well. Q. That's one of those things that Coach V has talked about is I've got to have trust and faith in my No. 2s because they're going to be my No. 1s eventually. CORDREA TANKERSLEY: Exactly. He stressed that a lot, so when we go to second string, he installs it as if he's coaching the first team. There's no drop-off. He spends the second-team corner just like the first-team corner. There's no excuses. Q. Which one of the No. 2s on your team do you think in a year or two is going to be a star? CORDREA TANKERSLEY: We have like Mark Fields, Adrian Baker. Those two are ones that stand out in my mind that are going to be really good football players. Then we have some up -- like Kaleb Chalmers. He's going to be really, really good, as well. We have a lot of people that can step up and help us in the near future. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
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