Caldwell Discusses Upcoming Clash With North Carolina
11/2/1999 12:00:00 AM | Football
On the North Carolina game
"Obviously, after losing one of those close games, you have one of those
ballgames when you have a lot of 'what ifs.' I think in terms of an
approach in what we're doing at this stage is, like we always do every
week, try to regain our focus and focus in on this next team that's coming
up. They're the best 1-7 team in the nation, I guarantee you that. They
are talented. It's unreal. You watch them on film and they've got big
people that can run. That's got to be our focus. We still have got a lot
of football to play. We've got three ballgames left. This one, obviously,
is the next one, which makes it the biggest game of the year. I know one
thing, they've got people. I guarantee you. You have to be able to
finish, and that's going to be our focus. Just trying to make sure we
finish plays, finish drives, and that's extremely important. It affects
the overall outcome of ballgames, but it's got to be more or less just the
finishing of each play and finishing of each drive. The rest of the stuff
takes care of itself, and that's what we've really got to work on all week
long. They have better personnel than Clemson. That's the problem with, I
think, most people who simply view the game. They don't look at the things
we look at in terms of details like personnel. We know that, without
question, they're the best 1-7 football team in America. They are very
good on the perimeter in terms of their man-to-man coverage, and have a
good, solid secondary in terms of the safeties. They run real well up
front defensively, and they're big. It's a big group and they are very,
very effective. I think they're that way on both sides of the ball. They
have good speed on the outside. Obviously, they've had some problems in
terms of the quarterbacking situation. They have big enough people up
front to run the ball as well as they'd like to. I think they're a good,
solid team."
On Clemson
"That's really what killed us - making mistakes in crucial situations. It
doesn't have anything to do with being overpowered or anything. It's just,
I think, when you penalize yourself out of scoring territory and instead of
getting seven, you get three in a tight football game. Those are the
things that really make a difference. We're a stronger team than we've
been before. We're faster than we've been before. We need to be faster
and we need to be stronger. We have still got to keep working on those
areas. I'm more concerned with the things we typically don't do, and we
typically don't beat ourselves. We certainly were thin on the interior of
our line. Fred Robbins played just a heck of a game, and so did Dustin
(Lyman). We were able to work our way through and that's something that we
have to continue to be able to do to play well. They require you to do a
few things a little bit differently. They give you a challenge, running
guys in and out or multiple receivers when you might have your tight
personnel package in there. You've got to make your substitutions early."
On the team's offensive performance
"Obviously, the object of the offense is to score points. The overall goal
is to win games. I think when you look at that, sometimes you'll find,
particularly, when you're playing a really good, strong and tough defense,
that it might not always take 40 points to do it. We need to score enough
to win. That's the only statistic I'm worried about - that win-loss
column, for the most part. When we have opportunities to put that thing in
the endzone, we need to put it in there. We haven't done that
consistently. In half of the instances that we've gone in, we've been able
to get that accomplished. We'd like to build on that part of it as opposed
to looking at it in the negative light. To tell you that we're satisfied
with where we are, that would certainly be misleading in that sense. To
tell you that we don't feel that we certainly should be better in terms of
putting points on the board, I would be dishonest if I tell you that we
need to do better and that's why we work. We've got to do a better job of
getting that ball in the endzone. You keep doing the same things you've
been doing, You stick right to it and don't change in terms of the things
that you're doing. Do the things that you believe in and keep moving
forward. That's what I do and I think that's, without question, the right
thing to do. I think moreso than anything else that those situations where
we did not score as much as we were capable were simply due to mistakes
more than anything else."