Wake Forest Demon Deacons College Football Pregame Quote, 09/03/2019

Certainly the Utah State game was a great college football game. Like I said after it, we were fortunate to win it. Going back and reviewing the film, Jordan Love is everything he is advertised to be and maybe better. The accuracy and the velocity that he threw the ball, he is an excellent quarterback. I thought their offensive staff had a great plan. We really didn’t know what they were going to do because it was a new staff. In the first half they had us on our heels and they did things that we were not expecting. I thought our defensive staff did a nice job of adjusting in the second half. We got some big-time stops in the second half.

Their defensive front is what we thought it was. They have six or seven seniors up front and those kids are big and physical. Credit to our players. I said we were fortunate to win, but I didn’t say we were lucky. There is a difference. You make your own fortune. There were probably about eight plays in that game that if we don’t make one of those plays, we don’t win the game, but we made them. The third-down stop with two minutes left was an excellent read by Justin Strand to knock it backwards. If we don’t make that play and they get a first down, the game is over. The two-minute drive, from the first pass to Kendall and then our ability to line up quickly and get the vertical route to Sage, really before they could get lined up. Our ability to snap it quickly, protect and Jamie threw that ball and Sage made a heck of a play. The touchdown to Kendall was just a well-executed football play. If you watch on film, the protection was excellent and there was a clean pocket. Kendall runs a gem of a route and Jamie threw a great ball and Kendall made a heck of a catch. Even when they had the ball late with a chance to win it, that interception by Justin wouldn’t have happened if there wasn’t the pressure by Boogie. There were a number of plays that we made.

Any game that you play against a good football team, there are going to be positives and things you need to work on. Our passing efficiency was a positive. Our third down defense and our red zone defense, those were two areas that last year we really struggled with that were very much improved. We had two huge red zone stops. We stopped them on fourth down and Trey Rucker got a pick. We played an excellent quarterback that all of last year threw six picks and we were able to get three interceptions and dropped a fourth. There were a lot of goods. There were also some bads. Defensively, the amount of explosive plays that we gave up. Thirteen plays accounted for two-thirds of their offense. We gave up 13 plays for 393 yards and the rest were a little over 200. We didn’t tackle well. We had poor angles. We had some communication breakdowns in the back end. Those are things that we have to coach, correct and get better at. Our short-yardage and goal line offense (wasn’t good). It was a little bit of a weird game. Usually, third and fourth-and-short, you might have 30-to-40 snaps of that for a whole year. We had 17 in one game. It was half a season’s worth in one game. Early we were good at it. I think we converted eight of the first 10. But obviously not converting the quarterback sneak, not converting Cade’s run, almost losing the game because of our inability to score from one-yard line are problems that we are very aware of that we know we need to get fixed. The beauty is we get to fix them when we are 1-0 and not 0-1. It is one game and it doesn’t make or break your season. It was a good first win and the overwhelming positive is just the way our kids compete and fight and never say die. If keep those intangible qualities, it will help us win other games.

Moving on to Rice, in the one-game sample size we have this appears to be a very improved football team. Army was an excellent, nationally-ranked football team last year and Rice played them to a one-score game. They had every opportunity to win it. There is clearly a blueprint they are using to build a program. If you look at their roster, they played some young kids last year that they really liked. All these kids now are a year older, a year better and are more productive. The amount of All-Conference USA freshmen that they had a year ago, they are back playing at a higher level and are more comfortable with the system. There were also a group of players who probably didn’t buy in and they are no longer there. They have gone out and gotten a bunch of graduate transfers to fill that gap in their classes. Their center is a transfer from Stanford. They have a guard from North Carolina Central, who is a grad transfer. They have a Division II All-American starting at tackle for them. They have a Harvard quarterback transfer and a Stanford fullback transfer. They play eight seniors and five of them are grad transfers. What they have been able to do is take their good young players, who they have done a good job of developing, and combine them with the grad transfers to create a more experienced team. Offensively, their style presents a challenge. It is completely opposite to what we do and what we have seen. They use multiple personnel groups and use groupings with two, three, even four tight ends. It is hard to prepare for. They stretch you out with your run fits. You got to be really good with your eyes. It is extremely well thought out. They have answers for what you do and their coaches are very attune to it. They are now a year into it so their players have a much better grasp of it. Defensively, they played a lot of good, young talent a year ago and those are now a year older, a year better and a year more experienced. We are going on the road for the first time and we are playing a very improved football team so we have to correct our mistakes and be prepared.

On change to the game plan and making adjustments:

I think anytime something doesn’t go well you have to ask, ‚ÄòWhy didn’t it go well? Was it what we’re doing, how we’re doing it, who’s doing it?’ It’s always a combination of those three things so I think at times we were a little bit too robotic with our snap count that they were able to predict the quarterbacks sneak, they were off the ball before we were.

Part of it was we had 17 calls and you’re usually not developing a game plan for 17 short yardage calls, so we probably need to have a little bit more on the call sheet in case. The first seven or eight times we were fine, but we played a good front. They were physical and they were able to tighten things up and get the backfield and at times we just didn’t execute well. So, I think we should look at what we did, look at how we were doing it and use those are the things moving forward, we have to make decisions on.

On Jamie having the ball taken away three times:

Yeah, at halftime we said, ‚ÄòYou have to secure the football.’ That was part of the game that we were fortunate. He had the one fumble that they recovered that he cut back, and the ball got loose, and he lost it. The one play that they stripped us and scored, I think they had a guy tackle one of our receivers on that play and it was certainly a good call, but if that kid doesn’t tackle our guy, they have another touchdown. That would have been three turnovers and then we would have had an even turnover game and if we have an even turnover game, then we probably don’t win it. We won the turnover battle 3-1, but there were guys other than just Jamie that were loose with the ball. We pointed those things out. Our ball security was not nearly as good as it needed to be.

On the performance of the defensive backs:

The play Trey Rucker made in the red zone was huge, Amari (Henderson) did a great job of reading that three-step drop and breaking on the football and Justin (Strnad), obviously, that was a play set up by Boogie’s (Basham) pressure and Justin has good hands‚Ķit’ almost like the first one was too easy for him. Twice we went for it on fourth-and-one inside the 10 and didn’t get it, but both times our defense got a stop and that then led to a score. Part of the reason you go for it on fourth-and-one is you are counting on the stop and getting the ball back and scoring. Both times that happened.

On preparing for the heat in Texas:

Fortunately, we live in North Carolina. When we had a chance to go out and get heat work during camp, we did. We didn’t say ‚ÄòHey, it’s really hot out, we are going to go practice inside.’ The catch-22 is we are going to play in weather that no team in the country would be allowed to practice in. If we had that weather for practice, the safety standards would say you shouldn’t practice. So, when we had those days, certain times we were allowed to go outside for an hour whenever our medical staff deemed appropriate because we knew we needed that heat work. We have gotten heat work, but never for four hours like we are going to have to on Friday, but because of where we live and the climate and the weather we have in August, we are certainly better prepared for that than if we were in New England or the Pacific Northwest. We got a lot of heat work this camp.