Charlotte 49ers College Football Pregame Quote, 09/17/2019

Great to get a win, to be back at home. I’m really proud of how our guys responded to the entire week last week. I hope we get used to being the favorite in football games while we are here and being able to deal with that expectation is important for us to execute and take care of great football teams. Anytime you play an FBS game, all of you have seen what happened in college football the past couple of weeks and it seems like the gap is shrinking. If you don’t come out and take care of your business there is no telling what will happen. So, I’m very proud of our guys for taking care of business. I thought we responded to the adversity that the game brought us and we cleaned up some things. We still have so much more growth that we need to do and just listening to these guys I think the point is getting across, that we have got to make sure that we fix us and that we have a great week of practice to continue to build towards something that is bigger than just a week, but something that we will be playing our peak football in week 12. I am proud of the effort, another great environment for us on Saturday night, great home field advantage, I appreciate the students coming out as well as our fans, they stayed late and it’s a lot of fun to go shake hands with them after games because we do appreciate it and want to continue to make this a great home field advantage.

When you got hired last year and saw this game on the schedule, what were your thoughts about having to go to Clemson on a Saturday night?

Thanks Mike (Hill, Athletic Director). I’ve played in a lot of games like this, coached in a lot of games like this and I don’t know if you can put a price tag on what it does for your program and your university. I mean this entire week whether it’s on ACCN (ACC Network) or ESPN, people are going to know about Charlotte football so it’s now up to us to put on a great brand of football on the field and be competitive, but it is a huge opportunity for us and it’s a lot of fun for me to be able to go compete against the best of the best. I think when you look at Clemson on film you don’t just see five-star athletes, but instead you see five-star athletes who are well coached, fundamentally sound, and their scheme is really good, and oh by the way they have a lot of fun playing with each other. I think that’s a lost art in college football now. They have won 18 games in a row, but it seems like they are having fun playing every single one of them. When the media wants to say, well Trevor (Lawrence) threw two interceptions or you didn’t blow them out like you could’ve, Dabo (Swinney) gets up there and says how proud he is of his team, great to get a win and those guys seem to really enjoy it. So, it’s a great opportunity and I just have so much respect for their program and I don’t know if anyone does it better than they do, were going to go see what we are all about on Saturday.

You said you’ve had multiple big games in your career as both a coach and a player, playing 3-time National Champion (FCS) Appalachian State as a player, what’s the biggest challenge you’ve faced as a coach?

Well I mean for my first couple years at Chattanooga, I felt like if teams wanted to win a National Championship they played us. We played Alabama in 2009, Auburn in 2010, and then Alabama again another time while we were there, so we played three National Champions in my seven years at Chattanooga. Last year at Austin Peay, we opened with Georgia who was I think at that point #2 in the country, so I’ve been in some big environments and learned something new every time. Last year at Austin Peay I think I blew It up too much and I think I made my guys more nervous than they needed to be. One of the aspects I’ve gone to this year is that we have so many things to fix inside this building and so it’s not about Clemson, it’s about us. I think our guys are hearing that message loud and clear, we pushed them really hard, we aren’t babying them and trying to say ‚Äúbelieve it, believe it‚Äù or ‚Äúthis is App State vs Michigan‚Äù because it’s not. This is let’s go play great football, let’s compete and make sure that we don’t sit back and wait because if we do then the game is over with and you got blown out of the water. So, let’s put together a good week of practice and work to give ourselves a chance to have success on Saturday.

Do you like the kind of attitude that Jacione (Fugate) showed? Do you like that kind of attitude amongst your players?

That’s Jacione and you don’t ever try to harness a player’s personality. I don’t think there is anything wrong with any of our players saying they want to ‚Äúshock the world‚Äù. That would be a lot of fun, we know what is at stake, it’s not anything where we are going in saying that I see holes or weaknesses here, I know we can attack here or this team is an overrated football team. This team is really, really good. There aren’t a whole lot of holes and for a guy to go say that we want to shock the world, I appreciate what his aspirations are and now he better go practice his butt off like he wants to shock the world.

Coach, you mentioned your experience in big college football atmospheres and many of your players haven’t really had that. You’ve talked about your approach going into this game and how that may change from last year against Georgia to this year as a head coach. How do you galvanize your team to stay calm and not get rattled by the environment where maybe a few things go wrong but to be able to keep them together and keep them focused?

One of the things I think I’ve learned from this is sometimes you can get so overwhelmed with how can I schematically create an advantage for us and you get a little outside your realm, whether it’s trick plays, or new formations and then you put a lot of new stuff on them with about 81,000 people yelling at them and it’s nighttime. Dabo (Swinney) just rubbed the rock and is running down the hill at you. Now their thinking about, what was this signal, where was I supposed to be lined up, what is this motion? So I think you’ve got to be careful what you put on them early and you have to create tangible goals, something that you can bring them over to the sideline and say ‚Äúsee I told you,‚Äù it doesn’t have to be things like let’s win the first quarter of the game but things like, getting them to punt the football to us at some point in the game or at some point in time wide receivers finish three big blocks or let’s not have any negative yardage plays on the first drive. Things that we feel like we can obtain and then you start building on it and then you start watching their confidence grow. A big thing about these games is the game gets extended when a big special team play happens and for us we have given up a special teams touchdown the first three weeks so we can’t allow that to happen. We want to try to stay in there as long as we can and the one thing we cannot do is leave and say, ‚Äúwe didn’t play hard and we didn’t compete, we better compete‚Äù and I think our guys are ready for that.

You’ve got a fairly experienced team, and last year they went up to Tennessee and they competed, can they build off of that?

Absolutely, now this is a completely different animal and a different place, the one thing that is not hard to convince our team and to convince our staff is how good Clemson is, that’s not hard, nobody is overlooking how talented they are. To me, we have a really great experience to put some really great things on film and continue to build the brand of this football team. We need to control what we can control. There is going to be times that they have 5-star athletes and they are going to make plays on you, but what I want to see is how are we going to respond. Do we quit? Do we respond? How much energy are we playing with, put something on film where you go and beat one of the best players in college football and make a highlight film on Saturday. Yes, I think you can draw on aspects like that but also you are going to say we have the chance to really test ourselves on Saturday and grow as a football team.

What is your relationship, if any, with Dabo Swinney?

So I’ll give you a great story, the first time I got a chance to talk to Dabo, I was in Alabama recruiting and I got a call from a Clemson area code, this guy says ‚ÄúHey this is Dabo Swinney‚Äù and I’m thinking ‚Äúthis could be Kenny who called me, all of my friends at home‚Äù and he starts talking and I’m thinking to myself ‚Äúman this guy does a great impersonation of Dabo‚Äù and he continues on and starts talking about one of his GA’s (Graduate Assistants) and I’m like ‚ÄúThis is actually Dabo Swinney on the phone‚Äù, and we continue talking and he’s talking about one of his Graduate Assistants that wanted to come work with us at Austin Peay, and we finish the conversation and I say ‚Äúcan I ask you something‚Äù, he says sure go ahead and I told him ‚ÄúThank you for what you’ve done for this profession and the hope you’ve given me that you can do it your way and still be successful‚Äù. I feel like anyone like Dabo Swinney who is on top of the profession and people want to be like Dabo, they want to treat their players the right way, they want to develop great relationships and that it’s about something greater than football and it makes this a greater profession. But I was 0-11 at the time so I think he really appreciated my input, so I get off the phone and I immediately call my wife, and I said, ‚Äúhey Emily, you’ll never guess who just called me.‚Äù And she says who? So I replied Dabo Swinney, and she says ‚ÄúThis is disgusting, I can hear the smile on your face‚Äù and I just have so much respect for how he runs his program and how he treats his players, I’ve talked a lot this week about the two guys that are on top, you have Nick Saban and Dabo Swinney, Nick Saban loses coaches every year and still gets back to the National Championship consistently, Dabo Swinney doesn’t lose a coach at all and creates consistency and has a program that lasts and has won the National Championship game. So, there is not one particular way to do it, but I really like the way Dabo does it. He’s been great to me, anytime I have a question he is able to give great insight and he lives it. I went to the FCA event here and I sat in row Z, and I heard everyone talk about how many Clemson, North Carolina and South Carolina fans there are, but nobody wanted to talk about Charlotte fans, but if he had a church here I would be there every Sunday, and most importantly he just lives it. I’ve been most impressed by his wide outs and how they block, they are great athletes, Tee Higgins and Amari Rodgers are great players, but they are unselfish and that’s his program and we are definitely trying to do some things to emulate that.

Coach, from a game plan standpoint, when you face them do you look to take the run away? What do you do when you try to game plan against that offense?

You hope that Trevor (Lawrence) is off, either that or you hope he just takes the week off, one of the two. They don’t have a weakness, I don’t just say that, I know that, I’m not just trying to blow smoke but he can make any play he wants to. I’m watching a play the other day against Texas A&M and most guys in college football are not able to throw the field hole shot, but Trevor (Lawrence) throws it 40-yards downfield on a frozen rope to a guy in about a two-foot window to a 6’4‚Äù guy who throws his arms up and toe taps the sideline. I’m sure Mike Elko (DC at Texas A&M) didn’t think he would throw that ball but he did. He’s going to be the #1 pick in the draft a year from now and he’s got some really good wide receivers who have so much confidence that he’s going to put the ball where he needs to and those 50/50 balls are now more like 90/10 balls. And oh, by the way, they are going to hand the ball off to a 210-pound running back that runs a 4.3. They are different than Alabama, they are going to pound you and have bigger backs, Derrick Henry type backs but then you look at Travis Etienne who has great speed, and then you look up his height and weight and see he’s 210 pounds and can run like that. So he’s a really good back and when you have a guy like Trevor Lawrence, no situation is too big for him, I’ve watched him since he was a freshman in high school and he makes it look so easy out there, like it’s 7-on-7 every day and so they don’t have many weaknesses.

What’s the injury update?

Jeff Gemmell is getting a lot better, I still hate to say he is 50/50 but I am very impressed with how far he is coming every day. I don’t think it is the length of the injury that we originally thought it was. Tyriq Harris is day-to-day, but I don’t feel good about him playing either. All the other ones should be nicks and bruises, and Ben DeLuca is out as well.