Duke Blue Devils College Football Pregame Quote, 10/07/2019

All right. Good afternoon. It’s you know ‚Äì it’s college football like any football is a continuum. If you’re doing it right, you’re getting better. Regardless of winning. Sometimes it’s harder to get better when you win as opposed to having to get better when you don’t get a win. We talked about it Sunday and I’m mentioning it because that’s still on people’s mind. We’ve moved on, but the way I put it was you live and you better learn and then you move on. You can’t just live, learn, and move on. You better really learn.

I thought our players did a good job of that as well as the staff and we had great work today. Playing a Georgia Tech team that I mean, you can see them grow week by week. You see a morph and find the right mix with their offense and their defense is already good and pretty complex and there’s a lot of things to deal with there. Geoff has been really good. Jeff Collins has been really good wherever he’s been. And so what you can see is that they’re building a brand there at Georgia Tech and this should be a team that’s going to get better by the week and we’re a team right now that needs to get better by the day. And then ultimately by the week. So we’ll focus on having a great Wednesday next and knowing we got what looks like to a beautiful day Saturday. Another big ACC football game.

On Quentin Harris’ play during the second half against Pitt:

Yeah, I mean, I take complete credit for that loss and I’m not being humble. I think as a coach some of the tendencies are to get carried away with what you see and the looks. And you know, you sit and you add and you add and you know Quentin is a fifth-year player. He’s a brilliant quarterback. But you know, he’s still growing. The biggest part of going back to being ourselves, which about three minutes and 45 seconds is what I saw on a clock on the headset. I told the offensive staff that very thing. I said, ‘I’ll take full credit for what has happened. We’re not handling the new, let’s start the conversation now. When I get off the phone and go back over to the defense I want the conversation to be about getting back to our roots and what we need to do.’ And we’ll be fine if we take it back there. And there’s an old saying that do what we do. And that’s what you have to do. You have to do what you do well. And you can wrinkle things, but you can’t just wholesale put a bunch of new things in. I know that. And I had to relearn that lesson, that’s not very good.

On if Quentin ever goes to him or the offensive coordinator to express what’s working for him:

I’ve tried to get that out of him. It’s hard for quarterbacks to get real comfortable with that. We had that conversation and I said to him, ‘it’s hard to see some of the new things. Do you feel more comfortable just being who we are?’ And he said, ‘oh, yes, sir.’ So you know Quentin is a smart, poised young man and he never lost his poise. I did go to him after ‚Äì when you make a number of mistakes the easier thing to do sometimes is to lower your head and let one mistake turn into another and another. And I think he did a great job of avoiding that. He kept his focus. I saw him going up and down the sideline still being an encouraging player, which is critically important. And those are not only good football lessons for Quentin Harris and all of us, they’re good life lessons.

On playing a Geoff Collins’ coached team after meeting up with Temple in last year’s bowl game:

I think some of them, the ones that played a lot as there is some familiarity. Of course, they as coaches have that with us as well. Not the Georgia Tech players necessarily in their scheme of things though. You understand what I’m saying. But the Georgia Tech players are familiar with us, but also the game is still a game of personnel and regardless of what you run and what you do, you have to win your personal battles. You have to play well, have to execute well, and I think both teams will. That’ll be more of the focus than worrying about past experiences.

On Georgia Tech potentially starting a freshman quarterback who Duke has never seen:

I mean, people don’t just completely change an offense. You do a few things within it. But they have an offensive system they will utilize and we’re preparing a lot of different ways. There are a lot of ways they can go at that position. But the thing you have to be is sound. You have to have people where they’re supposed to be. If you’re going to run a quarterback more, if you’re going to throw a quarterback more, if you’re going to play action pass ‚Äì none of that changes by the person doing it. You still have to be sound. You have to play your defense. Every defensive call should have answers. The thing that you have to do is just be consistent. The biggest part that concerns me is trying to win the battle on the line of scrimmage. That dictates a lot of the ability to be successful on either side of the ball.

On Pittsburgh shutting down Noah Gray:

Yeah. They did a good job of kind of doubling Noah. And you know, I think they had their eyes set there. You can move Noah around, which is one of the answers because there are formations that you formation it and you know he, instead of being the inside receiver of three, could be the middle. That’s part of it. The other part of it is when people commit to that, you’ve got to get the ball somewhere else. And that’s a big part of playing football. Once the ball is snapped you have make reads and get it where it needs to go. And again, that’s why you need to be familiar with what you’re running.

On bouncing back with another home game:

Well ACC football, you know, we only have four home ACC games and we’ve already lost one. Yeah, you have to pay attention to that. We’re only playing one game at a time. But it’s hard enough to win on the road. But you have to play well at home and we need to play extremely well to be able to beat a good Georgia Tech team. That’s a part of the equation where other than one game we’re in league play now. There’s nothing to look at in the rear view mirror. It is all forward. And this is the first of an opportunity to play six more league games and you better believe it. You better play well at home.

On the state of Duke’s running backs:

You know, you never have enough running backs. I had to correct a young coach one time that said, ‘we’ve got too many running backs.’ I made him stop dead in his tracks. You know we’re ‚Äì when you lose not only Brittain (Brown) but Marvin Hubbard III. We’re down two scholarship running backs and Mattaeo (Durant) and Deon (Jackson) are getting hit a lot. They’re going to be fine, but you’ve got to take care of them. And then we need to really get Jaylen Coleman and Jordan Waters in a position to be able to play at a high level. When, and I’m going to say when we need them, not really if we need them. So we’ve kind of hit that point with both Marvin and Brittain out for the season. Like I said, if you had six. That wouldn’t be enough. But we don’t have six. We’re right now with those four guys that we’re ridding and counting on. So, we’ll take care of Deon and Mattaeo both during the week as best we can. But they’ve got to work some in practice to get themselves ready.

On being down running backs and how that changes the play calling and the use of Quentin:

Yeah, I mean, we’ve got to be careful running him. You know, he gets hit a lot. And that’s not ideal. I think you know you have to have the ability. and I’ve always done this, to have kind of alternative planning. You have to have answers. We have what we call an answer sheet ‚Äì with the loss of this position or, sometimes you can lose your tight ends or you can’t put in formations that only are dependent upon that. So we have to have the ability to use different personnel groupings to overcome loss of certain personnel in the game. What you can’t replace is a great offensive guard like Dave Harding. That’s when it gets tough. But you know it is really. Honestly, that’s a big part of my Wednesday night process as I go through all of those scenarios. And as we meet with the coordinators on Thursday, we review that. And it’s not fun to go through all those in your mind all the time, but I don’t want to be surprised, if I can help it.

On Geoff Collins’ coached teams blocking kicks:

They still try to block kicks but you have to trust your protection. You know that’s an every week thing. They just make a lot of attempts at it. And that’s just the philosophy some people have. It’s interesting that more defensive minded head coaches do that than offensive minded head coaches because you always risk the roughing and putting the defense back on the field. And that’s always a tough decision for me after you get a stop. What do you want. You want the ball. But they do it well. They’re very aggressive at rushing the punter.