North Carolina Tar Heels College Football Pregame Quote, 09/02/2019

Obviously, very pleased with the win. We messed up a lot of things. There are so many things we can do better as coaches to try to help the guys put themselves in better positions, but I did feel like the confidence they showed in the fourth quarter is something we really needed. To come back in the fourth quarter is something that will really help our football team because it helps them buy in to who we are as coaches. We kept telling them, ‚ÄòBe in great shape and win the fourth quarter.’ And when you do that in a close ball game, it reinforces the 10 months that we’ve been preparing these guys for that game. I was really excited that we looked like we were in really good condition, considering the heat. We had a couple of guys with cramps, but not 10 or 15 and the cramps were manageable. Nobody had to stay out of the game because of cramps. So, I do think our medical staff and our strength coaches as well as our nutritionists did a tremendous job of preparing us for the heat at 3:30 in the afternoon on opening day. That’s hard to do. The other thing that happened was you question your offensive line’s toughness when you get here and they did a really good job, with the backs we have, running the ball in the fourth quarter. I thought that was the difference in the ballgame. We had 90-plus-yard drives twice, keeping South Carolina’s defense on the field, not allowing their offense to have the ball. We had the ball a lot more than they did; I think it was 76-61 (in plays). We had the time of possession a lot more than they did. So, all of those things were a real positive for us. And South Carolina is a good team. I think we’ll see them do well throughout the year. We won the turnover battle, which is really important. If you win the turnover battle and you win the rushing game, most of the time you’re going to end up doing well. Way too many penalties. We worked on it so hard. Every day we’ve had ACC officials at every practice and still we had too many. So, we’ve got to go back and start over in that area and just continue to talk about it and preach. We had three sacks, but we had opportunities for six or seven and missed tackles on the quarterback. So, that’s another area we can really improve. We didn’t have that many mental mistakes, so for our first ballgame, I thought our coaches did a great job of making sure we were getting in the right place and doing the right stuff. The 270 yards are the fewest that have been allowed by a UNC defense since [2016]. So, after early where we missed a lot of tackles, I felt like our defense stepped up and did a tremendous job and I thought both offensive and defensive staffs did a good job of adjusting at halftime. Entirely too many mistakes in the kicking game on coverage, which put us in a position where we lost field position about 10 or 15 yards, and that really hurt us during the ballgame. Thank goodness our offense was able to take the ball and drive so far. We haven’t started 2-0 since 2014. We’ve got a really strong test with Miami this weekend. Their talent will be more like Clemson than anybody else in this league. They’re very, very talented. They’ve had two weeks to prepare, so they’ll be fresh. They’ll be mad because they lost a tight one to Florida. So, we’ll have our hands full, but looking forward to a packed house and a rowdy crowd here and a lot of fun on Saturday night.

On if it was a challenge trying to get the players to put Saturday’s game to bed:

Is, not was. We had a victory meal last night. We were really hard on them in the videos and showed them we won the game, but here are all the things that could’ve kept us from winning the game, as coaches and players. At the end of the victory meal, we told them, ‚ÄòReally enjoy South Carolina until you go to bed. And then when you get up tomorrow, you’re totally focused on Miami.’ I’ve got the radio show tonight, which is why I do it on Monday. I don’t like to talk about South Carolina all day on Monday because it’s gone and you’re already working on Miami. But I will, because I’ll get asked about it. But after today, that’s why this is their day off. We’ll be totally Miami in the morning.

On Sam Howell’s performance:

I thought Sam [Howell] did a tremendous job. He’s got so much composure. He walked out there and got a delay of game on the first play of the game and he didn’t even flinch. I thought Phil [Longo] did a good job with him. He said, ‚ÄòOK, first-and-15. Here we go.’ But he got hit, he made plays with his feet. He’s got such great touch on the deep ball. The catch by Dyami Brown is one of the best I’ve ever seen. I couldn’t see it from the sideline. I guess I got busy with whether to go for two or kick, so I didn’t see the replay. But when I got home and turned on ESPN and saw it was the play of the day, what a great catch? That wasn’t a good catch. That was a great catch. And then Beau Corrales, to jump up with his height and length on the goal line. Sam has got really good touch on the deep ball. I still think he’s most impressive when he’s out of the pocket and he’s running toward the line of scrimmage. He’s fast enough to make yards, strong enough to break tackles. But when people come up, he’s got that really good awareness to throw the ball downfield, like he did to Antoine Green; he just didn’t have his feet under him enough to get it to him, but that’s a touchdown throw. And I think he’ll be so much better this week than he was last week. But he has great composure; not much bothers him. The way y’all see him is the way we see him every day. You ask him questions and he just answers them. It’s not mind any of this whatsoever.

On Chazz Surratt’s performance:

I looked him up last night at dinner and just hugged his neck and said, ‚ÄòYou were a quarterback this time last year. You’d never played in a game at linebacker.’ He played all day. He didn’t get tired; he’s in great shape. I think he’s got a chance to be a tremendous player and I think he actually has a chance, if he progresses, to be a pro linebacker because he runs so fast and he’s 230 pounds. He overran some things early because he was so hyped, as you can imagine. His head was swirling out there on the first series, but I was so impressed by the way he played and how hard he played. He comes 10 or 12 yards to his left once and bats the ball down on a curl route that a lot of linebackers can’t get to. He will only get better and better. In fact, this week we’ve got to figure out, with Dominique [Ross] and Jeremiah Gemmel and him, who do we put in and how do we rotate them. So, that’s a good problem to have that we didn’t have last week. And then our first series our healthy defensive back, Trey [Morrison], comes out and we’re sitting there and poor Storm Duck, who has never been in a game, is over there. We said, ‚ÄòOK, Storm, go have fun, bud.’ He looked at us like, ‚ÄòYou’re kidding.’ I said, ‚ÄòNo, you’ve got it. There’s no choice. You are a freshman.’ And he played really well. And I was impressed with the play of Greg Ross. He had some tough plays last year and people picked on him some, but he made some really good plays Saturday against good players. So, all of them stepped up with a lot of confidence. And the front line is good. They played really well.

On coaching after a win versus a loss:

You can coach them so much harder after a win, especially a team that in its past has struggled and didn’t have a lot of confidence. Now, we’ll coach them hard tomorrow. It’ll be really hard. It’ll be like we lost. And they understand that. I told them, ‚ÄòLet’s enjoy it, but we could’ve played so much better.’ And it’s funny all games that with the difference in preseason tackling now, fewer people are tackling as much because of targeting, because of concussions, because of injuries and lack of depth. It’s hard to get your great players in scrimmages a lot. We had a scrimmage in the spring where we lost three players. Even Urban Meyer when he came to practice said, ‚ÄòYou’re tackling in your scrimmage?’ And I said, ‚ÄòYeah, we’ve got to tackle. We don’t have any choice.’ But you’re seeing in first quarters so many people missing tackles. Even by the second quarter, they’re getting better and by the second half they’re a lot better, just because it’s the first time since we don’t have preseason that they get to have a really live situation. And kicking games are that way, too, because you don’t do them live in practice. You do them live, but you don’t tackle. So, sometimes it’s just not as good. That’s why there’s so much more improvement in college football from the first game to the second.

On Sam Howell taking hits:

The No. 1 thing is he needs to learn to get down. We’ll show him some Kyler Murray tape. He’s more like Sam Ehlinger at Texas. He wants to run over everybody. He’s tough, but he’s not going to do that. So, ‚ÄòGet down. Get your yardage and slide.’ Coach [Phil] Longo will be teaching him to slide today, I’m sure, but that will help some. We didn’t have that many designed runs for him. They have two great pass rushers who will be draft choices. So, I thought our offensive line did a really good job, but still, we’re not as good in third-down-and-long in protecting as we are first-down play action throws and being physical. So, we still have some work to do in that area.

On coaching his staff on staying positive:

I’ve really had to coach them because when things are bad, you’ve got to pick them up. These guys are 18-, 19-, 20-, 21 year-old-guys and they’ve got to learn to handle adversity in their lives. We all have it. We have it every day with our families, with our children, with our jobs. And one of the responsibilities we have as coaches is to take our players and teach them when things are bad. We said, really and truly, when you’ve got something that is going wrong, what a great opportunity to fix it and get better. So, we say adversity is just an opportunity for a positive. Here’s Dre [Bly] at the end of the game when we screwed some stuff up, he’s going, ‚ÄòAh, man.’ I said, ‚ÄòNo. You grow up and you be positive and go out there and get a stop. That’s your job, not to sit here and be down.’ That’s just who we are. And thank goodness we have a positive staff. It’s funny, I told the players, ‚ÄòIf you practice hard every day at game speed, when you get to the game, it shouldn’t matter. You’ll be a little anxious, but you shouldn’t be nervous because you’ve already been here, you’ve already done these things time and time again.’ Same thing with coaches. Coaches should not coach differently on game day than they do every day at practice. The second day of spring practice should’ve been like they coached this weekend. That’s what I’ve told them. ‚ÄòIf you’re standing around with your hands in your pocket coaching in spring, you’re going to shock your players when you jump out there and you’re so animated on game day. You’ve got to be that way every day.’ And that’s my job to coach everybody.

On if the running back group is still the best position group:

Yes. Absolutely. I was really impressed by the way our front seven stopped the run, especially without [Dominique] Ross. I thought without Ross and Jonathan Smith, we had no experience at linebacker, and the guys did a good job of holding those guys to I think 128 yards rushing. I said I was disappointed because we could’ve had a lot of sacks that we missed, but I feel like the running backs are still our best group. I’m not sure anybody has got three who are as good as these three. I thought Robert Gillespie did a masterful job of keeping all of them in the game. Antonio [Williams] didn’t play as much the first three quarters. Right at the end of the third and the start of the fourth, we put him in and his fresh legs were obvious and he was hard to tackle. Any of those guys can be in the game at any time. The other thing is they took care of the ball. Sam [Howell] has got to take care of the ball better. He had it on the ground twice. Other than that, we didn’t have a ball on the ground. Protection of the ball is so key in this sport. It just makes a huge difference.

On the running back workload going forward:

I think it will change. We’ve got [Antonio] Williams, [Javonte] Williams and [Michael] Carter, which sounds like a law firm. We used to have [Curtis] Johnson and [Leon] Johnson, which obviously sounded like something different. But with these three guys, we want it to be the firm. We want them to all three carry the ball. What we did with Johnson and Johnson is they started five plays each and they would just rotate. Then, if one of them had the hot hand, we left him in the game. That happened some Saturday. All three of them at times were hot. Michael Carter is really good in space. He’s as good as anybody. And he’s really fast and he’s tough up inside, but you get him on the corner. Our receivers and tight ends did an outstanding job blocking downfield on our flares and sweeps and such. But fourth-quarter running, if you get a guy who is as fresh as Antonio and he’s in there, everybody looks slow but him. He just jumped off that goal line and I said, ‚ÄòGood stuff.’ And he did it the whole fourth quarter.

On Antonio Williams’ workload:

When you’ve got three, it doesn’t matter because all three of them can do everything that the others can do. And coaches have a tremendous amount of pressure on them during the games. If you make a poor decision, if you put the wrong guy in the game, you can lose your job, not only the game. And the coaches understand that. What I told the players yesterday in the team meeting is, ‚ÄòIf you didn’t play in the game and you thought you were going to, it simply means you haven’t built enough trust in your coach. He wanted to play you and he meant to play you, but when you get right in the middle of the battle of the game, you look up and look over there and say, ‚ÄúNot yet. I’m not there yet.‚Äù Because you’ve got to have total trust in a player to put him in.’ And Robert [Gillispie] has total trust in those three backs.

On Javonte Williams’ physicality, gaining 80 yards after contact:

Yes, [Javonte Williams] has got the unusual ability; he’s got the power of a 220-pound guy; he’s got the speed of anybody ‚Äî [his 40-yard dash is] probably 4.40 ‚Äî and he’s got really good hands and he’s been a good ball-security guy. So, I think he is a big-time player and he looked like it. You get him on that flare pass with blockers out in front of him, I wouldn’t want to tackle him coming downhill. He’s a really good player.

On the decision to put Brian Anderson at center late in the game:

We’re trying really hard to develop depth because these are long seasons now. Twelve games is a long time and hopefully you’ve got some more so if we see somebody that’s been on the field we feel like too long ‚Äî we put Billy Ross in some ‚Äî we’re trying to get that White [second] group to be good enough that it doesn’t matter. Just put them in and put them in any time you want. Hopefully, we’ll get to a point at some time where we would put them all in. We did the same thing on defense ‚Äî there were a couple of times where the White defense came in and they had three-and-outs with the front guys. We didn’t have white linebackers enough ready to play so they couldn’t come out, but that’s what that’s about. We trust our guys. Stacy [Searels] said Nick [Polino] was worn down a little bit because he’d never played center. He’s got that monster over him every play so it was just to get some fresh legs in the game late.

On White Team player performances on the field:

Yeah, I think so. We tried to be so simple in an opener anyway that you don’t want a bunch of mistakes. So we didn’t have a lot of mental errors and then secondly, you’ve got a rookie quarterback and you’ve got linebackers that’ve never played. So just like on their touchdown pass down the seam to the tight end, Myles [Dorn] was over there trying to get the young ones lined up and he just didn’t quite get back in time. It looked like a bust ‚Äî it wasn’t, he was coaching and they snapped the ball before he could get back over in the middle. So that’s why I was so proud of these guys that nobody’s pointing fingers when they throw the touchdown pass. We explain exactly what happened and we move on. That’s it ‚Äî forget it and go to the next play. But hopefully, we’ll be ready to play more guys this week than we were last week because some of them went in the game and like Storm Duck did a really good job. And you don’t know. [Cam’Ron] Kelly didn’t get to practice for 10 days so he was on some special teams, but he wasn’t ready to play as a safety. And really proud of the two safeties ‚Äî Myles Dorn and Myles Wolfolk played so well. Myles Dorn missed some tackles early and they were in space against really good players so we got to slow him down a little bit. We were too excited. The defensive coaches were jumping. Poor [Jeremiah] Gemmel and [Chazz] Surratt because they missed a tackle ‚Äî both of them ‚Äî right in the middle of the hole and I think it’s because they were too excited. They overran it and they need to slow it down and take their breaths, so after they got through getting chewed out, I went over and said ‚ÄòI think you’re doing great. Slow down. Slow. Down. You’ve never even been out there so forget all that.’

On turnover belt:

Yeah, we didn’t have it and some guy made a belt for Dre [Bly] for his Hall of Fame for college. And Dre and he got together and they thought this would be a great idea so about 10 days ago, they said, ‚ÄòWhat about this belt we’ve got for turnovers?’ And I said, ‚ÄòI don’t care.’ If the kids need to have fun, let them have fun. So it shows up on Friday. I’d never seen it, then I look at it, I put it on, put it over my shoulder, try to see how it looks and I said, ‚ÄòIf it’ll get us some turnovers.’ And then during the game ‚Äî it’s kind of funny ‚Äî I kept saying to the defense, ‚ÄòI don’t know why we got this belt. I mean it’s just sitting back there guys. Will somebody at least pick it up or do something?’ And I haven’t seen it yet, but I guess the first time [Myles Wolfolk] didn’t do much with it and the second time he held it up and was proud of it. So one thing we’ve got to remember is these are young people that need to have fun. And coaches have tremendous on them and players have tremendous pressure on them. I wanted to come back to have fun and I want the kids to have fun. The dance that I did is pretty embarrassing. I didn’t know that there would be video on it either but tried to find it all and buy my way out of it, but I think it’s too far out there. But we were telling our stories in the team meeting. So two players a team meeting and a staff member or a coach would get up and tell their life story, and it was really emotional to see what some of these guys have been through. And everybody would talk about their hardships and who they most admired during their lives and just things. And we also, because they were so excited when we’d have meetings and you’ve got them now 6:30 in the morning, we started a dance contest. And Dre’s in charge of the dance contest so he would get players up. He’d make them get up and then he’d get coaches up and he’d said ‚ÄòCoach Galloway!’ and the whole team would start ‚ÄòLonnie! Lonnie!’ so the coaches had to get up. Well, one morning they started ‚ÄòMack! Mack!’ and I said, ‚ÄòNah. I’m the boss, I’m not dancing.’ And then they said, ‚ÄòCome on Coach, you need to dance for us,’ and I said, ‚ÄòNo, I don’t dance.’ And then I said ‚Äî I made a real mistake in my life ‚Äî I said, ‚ÄòBeat South Carolina, then I’ll dance.’ And as I’m walking in the dressing room, they could’ve cared less about anything else except ‚ÄòDance! Dance!’ I said, ‚ÄòYeah, I get it.’ So needless to say, that’s the first time I’d thought about that since I’d made my promise. Next time, I may cut my hair or something. I am not going to dance.

On his dance moves:

I would call them very awkward. And I don’t dance and I’d never thought about it so all I did was what I’ve seen the kids do in their dances. I tried to do a few of those things and that was it. And by the way, there wasn’t music so it really wasn’t fair. If I’d have had my music‚Ķ We were playing Oklahoma State [during my time at Texas] in mid-to-late 2000’s and I thought we were going to be flat for the game ‚Äî it was in Stillwater ‚Äî and that’s when ‚ÄòSoulja Boy’ was hot. Everybody was doing the ‚ÄòSoulja Boy’ dance so I came up with this great idea for pregame. What I would do is put my coaching outfit on, but I’d cut it down the middle where they couldn’t see it and I was going to yell at them about not being ready to play; and then I was going to rip my shirt off and have the camouflage and I did the Soulja Boy dance. I mean I actually worked on it, I practiced it. I was pretty good. We were down 35-14 at the end of the quarter so that’s when I said, ‚ÄòNo. More. Dances.’ It didn’t work, and then we did win 38-35.

On how many people commented on his dance:

Oh I think there were six to seven hundred text messages Saturday night and all of them said, ‚ÄòGreat win. Mmm, don’t know about the dance.’

On Cam’Ron Kelly being ready to play safety or corner:

Yes, [Cam’Ron Kelly] will play safety‚Ķ We were so afraid last week that if Myles [Dorn] or Myles [Wolfolk] had something happen, even with a targeting call now, you lose all of your experience at safety. That was tough for us, but D.J. Ford played well. That’s the first time he’s played a lot. He really played well so I thought all the guys back there did a good job and in fact, [Bryan] Edwards I think caught one ball and we were really afraid of him coming into the game.

On whether he was worried about Myles Dorn after a close-call hit:

No. No, it was in here. I thought it was a really clean lick.

On the excitement surrounding the game’s finish given last season’s fourth-quarter struggles:

We couldn’t have scripted it any better. I mean, they’ve lost enough games late like that over just stuff that our coaches didn’t panic, our players didn’t panic and I thought we couldn’t have scripted it any better. It was the perfect way to finish. Just do your job. Don’t look at the scoreboard, don’t worry about it. Even Coach [Phil] Longo, we had talked in pregame about being careful with Sam [Howell]. Well, we had some things in around the goal line and we didn’t execute them very well so it looked way too conservative. Phil opened it up with him late second quarter and second half so it was just a process. The first time all of us have been on the field all together, players and coaches, and there’s nothing better for your confidence than to have a tough game that you mess things up and still win. Because it shows them you don’t have to play perfect in college football. It’s not a perfect game. You’ve got young people that make mistakes and the ones that make the fewer mistakes are the ones that wins the game.

On what impresses him about Miami:

The first thing you look at is their defense. Their an old-timey Miami defense. Maybe the best set of linebackers in the country; if not, they’re in that group. Those two guys are all over the field and I called one of their games about every year for the last three years and we’ve got Coach [Stacy] Searels on our staff who’s coached there the last three years as our offensive line coach. And when you look at those guys, they’re so impressive. They’ve got really good pass rushers on the edge. I mean, they’re so talented from top to bottom. Bandy’s one of the best corners I’ve seen. He’s very, very impressive. Offensively, their back’s good, their receivers are good. Their tight ends ‚Äî you look at [Brevin] Jordan in space, he is so good. Jeff Thomas and K.J. Osborn are their guys that can fly so I got the turf in here for fast teams. I hope that it works for us this weekend because they’re really fast.

On what staff sits in the box:

There were a few upstairs, but they wanted to be downstairs. And Phil [Longo] has always called plays from downstairs and so has Jay [Bateman] ‚Äî he’s called defenses. So, they just feel more comfortable down there and I like them being down their if they feel good because they get to talk to the players one-on-one. Tommy Thigpen went up and Jay worked with linebackers and safeties, and other than that it was usually young guys up. But Phil and Jay have been doing this a long time and I thought they both managed the game really, really well. You’re talking about Jay having to call defenses with young corners and inexperienced and young linebackers, and you’re talking about Phil having to play with a freshman quarterback and a lot of young ones at different places. So, I was really, really impressed with both and really proud of them Saturday. I was proud that we hired both of them, proud they’re both here. I thought their adjustments at halftime were really good, too, and neither one of them are panic guys. Jay’s a little more emotional on the sideline because defense is different than offense. Offensive guys talk, defensive guys scream. Used to say we should have them in pregame in different rooms ‚Äî defensive guys are screaming, playing loud music and throwing things against the wall and offensive guys are sitting and thinking ‚Äî but it’s just a different mentality.

On if he’s tracking hurricane forecasts:

Yes, we’ve been ‚Äî and I’m glad you brought it up ‚Äî for more reasons than just our football game. We had a home in the Bahamas right there at Marsh Harbor in Baker’s Bay and that’s where it came through so thoughts and prayers for all of the folks that are there. I haven’t had a chance to look at the damage yet, but it sounds like a horrible storm and someone asked me this morning what would we do about that storm. I got other Hurricanes to worry about, but Bubba [Cunningham] and his staff will obviously follow that and it’s one of the reasons I wanted turf too because we get a lot of rain. We get some tropical depressions that come in and I don’t want to play on a bad field. I want to play on a good field.

On whether any congratulatory messages stood out to him after the win:

No. Eric Church was on the sideline. He was the first one to come and hug me, and he grabbed me from behind. I don’t know what that was about on the field and Eric was having a good time, but I think that all the coaches that’ve been in it, I’ve been in it so long. I know so many people and they’re all so proud for you and that doesn’t mean they don’t like Will and they don’t want South Carolina to win. I think the biggest thing is that for us to go from where we were to where we are right now, it just speaks to a lot of people being happy for us and I still haven’t answered them all. I’ve have to apologize to 300 of the 600 to 700 that I haven’t gotten back to yet.