Clemson Tigers College Football Pregame Quote, 12/28/2022

On facing Tennessee in the Orange Bowl:

K.J. HENRY: Myself, I was excited, number one. The last time I was at the Orange Bowl was when I was like eight or nine. My dad was coaching at Wake Forest; Wake Forest played Louisville. So I’ve been down here as a kid, and it was my favorite bowl I’ve ever been to the whole time he was at Wake Forest. So I was excited to come back. But then as you know, being a player on this team and a competitor, I’m just excited to play (with) probably one of the most, if not the most electric offense in all of college football. They have great talent in all phases. It’s just a great challenge. They’ve done a lot of exceptional things this year. (Clemson head coach Dabo) Swinney has done a great job as far as some of the younger guys. Two years from now, this will be a playoff game, so really just understanding that’s the mindset that we need to go into this thing on top of the fact that it’s a New Year’s Six bowl. It’s a great opportunity to finish the season strong. So it’s so easy to get excited for this one, but those are the things that first came to mind.

On how he got his team ready for this game:

K.J. HENRY: This time of the year, it’s not too hard. We’re 14 games in and guys know what they have to do. When you have such a long break, you want to make sure that the energy is up still. Some of the younger guys need the attention to detail. You come down to a new location so you have to make sure everybody’s still going through their routine to get ready for a game, and then just staying locked in on the details. They’ve had a lot of time to prepare for us and we’ve had a lot of time to prepare for them. So there shouldn’t be a lot of mistakes being made at this point in the preparation process. Those are the kind of things that we’re trying to figure out and hone in on as we finish up, but it’s been great.

On if he made a decision on next year:

K.J. HENRY: No, I haven’t. I have not. There’s a great group coming back and I could be a part of that. I’ve been elbowing some of these guys around here and Coach has been teasing them all but we have some decisions to make. If everybody on the offense were to swing this thing back and a lot of the guys who’re supposed to go out on the defense were to come back, it could be a very special year next year. So we’ll see.