Opening Statement: “Like I said the other night, I thought we played a really good football team. I thought there were some good things and we’re going to draw from those things and keep working. We talked in great detail as an offensive staff about starting slow and why and so forth, and hopefully we’ll be better at that this week. We did put ourselves in the lead two times and just didn’t hold onto it. Our kids played extremely hard and played with great effort. We have to build on that and now get ready for the ACC. We’re all ACC now so we’ve got a critical game this week against a team that I think is playing extremely well. Offensively, they’ve got all their people back up front. No. 85, their tight end is really good. Renner is completing 64 percent of his passes. Three tailbacks in there, Bernard is averaging about 7.3 yards a carry. I think all of them are averaging over five. Wide receivers are tall. Highsmith is the leading receiver. Davis is the next guy. They’re averaging 478 yards a game, 173 rushing and 305 passing. They’re dynamic and then defensively, they’re only allowing 296 yards a game so this is a really good football team, and a hot football team. I think they’re playing really well right now too, so we’ve got our work cut out for us.”
On the play of the play of the defensive backs
“They were out there on an island quite a bit and when Kyle [Fuller] went out, they picked on Manning quite a bit. Overall, I think they did OK. The last play of the game was a misplayed ball, but I think for the most part I think they did OK.
On how comfortable he is with Antone Exum in man-to-man coverage
“I think he’s a big guy who can run, just have to use good technique. I think the more he plays it, the better he’ll get.”
On what they can do about the slow starts
“We’ve discussed that as a staff and we’re going to keep it within our staff and try to do better this week.”
On orating Caleb Farris in late at center and starter Andrew Miller’s health
“We’re just trying to keep him fresh as much as we can. I think the more that we can alternate, the fresher he can be. I think we need to continue to do that.”
On David Wang’s health
“He wasn’t ready. Hopefully, he’ll be ready this week.”
On what they can do to jumpstart the offense
“I think we can do quite a few things so like I said, we’ve talked about it in great detail and we had some good plays there the other night. We got ourselves in the lead twice, but there were some plays that weren’t so good too. Like I said earlier, we talked a lot about it and hopefully it’ll be better this week.”
On what they can do to jumpstart the offense
“I think we can do quite a few things so like I said, we’ve talked about it in great detail and we had some good plays there the other night. We got ourselves in the lead twice, but there were some plays that weren’t so good too. Like I said earlier, we talked a lot about it and hopefully it’ll be better this week.”
On if the young guys feel like they’re not living up to expectations
“What I see, I think is that Holmes ran really well in the second half and Coleman, a freshman, gave us some big plays. The young guys are getting better all of the time. Where we need to stay healthy right now is our secondary. The thing we’ve got now is the ACC and this is a critical game this week. Our out of conference games are over and now it’s ACC time.”
On if the team is more vulnerable at certain positions this year
“I think the secondary is where we have a lot of inexperience at the second team.”
On Kyle Fuller’s leg cramps and if it affected him on the final play
“I don’t think so. He fought through it and he’s good to go.”
On Logan Thomas’ struggles
“He had a couple balls that got away from him, but again, he hit a couple great passes, [Corey] Fuller for the touchdown, that was a great throw. Again, I do think that people around him, you have to trust people around you. All that hasn’t settled out as we would like, but we just have to keep working at it.”
On Tariq Edwards’ status
“Another good week of practice and hopefully he’ll be closer to 100 percent.”
On the ACC’s injury reporting procedure
“I haven’t really studied it much. I just know you put out Thursday how you rate them and that’s what we do. That’s the way we do it.”
On if Ronny Van Dyke has moved ahead of Jeron Gouveia-Winslow on the depth chart
“Ronny has a little more quickness in there and his position didn’t play a lot in the ball game to be truthful with you, but on the other side, GW is a valuable guy. He’s really valuable on special teams, a good, smart guy so he’s a valuable part of our team. We’ll see how they practice and so forth. I think Van Dyke does add a little more quickness to the position.”
On what his message to the team is after having two non-conference losses
“We gotta just keep working. At the start of the year, I thought we could be a good football team, but we weren’t that right then. I feel the same way right now. I do think we can be a good football team. I think the team really cares.
They’re extremely hurt, disappointed after the game, but we did some things better in this game so the message is keep working and we’ve got some critical ACC games coming up.”
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Chris Graham
