Virginia Tech football coach Justin Fuente talks with reporters on the ACC Teleconference on Wednesday.
OPENING STATEMENT: We’re coming off a bye week, had a good week of work. Got a tremendous challenge ahead of us, traveling to North Carolina, playing Coach Fedora’s team. They’re very, very talented on both sides of the football, very well-coached. Really looking forward to the challenge.
Q. I’m curious when you face an offense that’s been as successful as what Larry has done at North Carolina, does it change your offensive philosophy at all in terms of either wanting to hold onto the ball longer or being more aggressive for points? Does that factor in?
JUSTIN FUENTE: Well, you’ve just got to see how the game goes. I mean, obviously we know we’re playing an explosive offense on the other side. But we’ve got to do our offensive side. We’ve got to try our best to be as efficient as humanly possible. Whether they’re going fast and scoring points or not, it shouldn’t change our outlook in terms of making sure we do a good job executing.
Q. And a couple of the guys mentioned that you had been practicing with wet balls this week and some things like that. Are there any other tricks you can use to kind of prepare in case the weather is nasty?
JUSTIN FUENTE: Not that I know of.
Q. Coach, talk about you had a bye week last week. Just talk about your first month with Virginia Tech and what you’d like to see going forward.
JUSTIN FUENTE: Well, we spent a part of our bye week working, going back to fundamentals in terms of special teams work and offensively and defensively. We’ve got a lot of work for our young guys. We didn’t exactly just give the older guys off, but we still kept them sharp and got good work for them. Our kids did a good job of approaching the bye week and understood that it’s certainly not an off week. Just because we don’t have a game on Saturday doesn’t mean we don’t have a tremendous amount of work to get done. I liked the way the kids approached it and have approached game week thus far.
Q. Also talk about the weather coming up this weekend with the hurricane; you might get a lot of rain in Chapel Hill, around the Durham area. You guys haven’t played in a lot of rain so far, so what are you guys going to prepare for? What do you guys have to do?
JUSTIN FUENTE: Well, I don’t know that there’s a whole lot that we can do. We don’t have a lot of control over the weather. We practice outside quite a bit and there’s a fair amount of wind in Blacksburg, particularly in the springtime. We’ve done some work with wet footballs to try and simulate that. It’s something we don’t have a whole lot of control over, and whatever it is, we’ll do our best to adapt.
Q. I just wanted to ask about their passing game; they’ve had three straight games over 400 yards. When you’re looking at that, how much of that is are they scheming something or how much is the personnel, Trubisky’s accuracy and the receivers?
JUSTIN FUENTE: Well, I think it’s a little bit of both. My take on what they do offensively is they do — they have a great foundation in terms of the schemes that they run throwing the football. You can tell that they’ve repped them into submission. They just have completely mastered the schemes that they’re running. They may dress them up or have them look different from week to week, but they do a great job with their passing game foundation, and then they’ve got some really good players out there. They’ve done a great job with their quarterback. It’s almost like you’re shocked if he throws an incompletion. He’s just been incredibly efficient. They’ve got really, really good wide outs, and then they can also run the football. I know they put up really big numbers throwing the ball, but they certainly have a viable threat there running the football, so if you get a little too carried away trying to take care of the passing game, next thing you know they’ve got a tailback running down the middle of the field.
They’ve got great balance. They’ve been good on offense for some time, and this year is certainly no exception.
Q. And I know he doesn’t throw it as much as Trubisky, but your guy is leading the ACC in passing efficiency. Can you talk about how Jerod Evans has developed?
JUSTIN FUENTE: Yeah, he’s continued to get better and take each week in preparation and really dive into the teams that we’re going to face. I still believe that centering it around running the football helps the quarterback play well, and it’s an emphasis for us every single week, finding ways to run the ball. But Jerod is a great athlete, and the thing he’s done a good job of is taking care of the football, and hopefully that will continue. I mean, he’s pulled the ball down a couple times when things weren’t just right and got a couple yards or thrown the ball away. Those are good decisions. I think he’s continuing to get better on a weekly basis, but also each week provides new challenges, and adapting to those challenges is part of being a good quarterback.
Q. Back when you named Jerod as the starter you said it would be an ongoing evaluation and you didn’t want to say he’d be starting every game. Four games in have you changed your mind? Is he your guy now?
JUSTIN FUENTE: Good question. You know, as long as he continues to do the things that he’s doing — I mean, and I didn’t want to paint the picture that he was going to be on a short leash. I didn’t want him looking over his shoulder, but also wanted him to understand that we have some things that we are going to demand of the quarterback in terms of taking care of the football, and he’s certainly done that.
As long as those trends continue, then we’ll continue to move on the path we’re on.
Q. Has your relationship with Jerod developed a little bit over this short period of time? Are you guys learning to kind of either sense each other a little better, listen to each other a little better, things like that?
JUSTIN FUENTE: I don’t know. I’d be interested to hear what Jerod says. I certainly haven’t let up on him any, continue to be demanding of him in practice on a daily basis, and he’s done a good job handling that, I guess, pressure or those expectations. You know, and he’s continuing to learn what we want and how we want it done, and I’ve been proud of, thus far, how he’s adapted to those things.
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