Wake Forest Athletics
Football Press Conference Quotes
9/10/2002 12:00:00 AM | Football
Sept. 10, 2002
WINSTON-SALEM,N.C. -
Wake Forest Football
Weekly Press Conference
Tuesday, Sept. 10, 2002
Head Coach Jim Grobe
On close games:
??I like to be competitive. I think when we take the field, we??re probably, very rarely the most talented football team. But, I think we??ve got a good team. I think our guys play together pretty well, I think our guys play hard, and they??re just giving us a chance. For good or bad, I think that??s us. I don??t think we??re really talented enough to go out and flat out beat anybody and have any kind of cushion in the fourth quarter for us. I think we??re very fortunate if we??re in the game in the fourth quarter, and hopefully we??ll have enough opportunities to win games, but that??s kind of our team. We??re not the most talented group, but we??re not a bad football team. We??re a group that likes to play and I think our kids play pretty hard and our coaches put them in positions to win. Hopefully we??ll be in a lot of situations like that this year. I hope we??re in the fourth quarter with everybody.??
On Philip Rivers:
??We??ve not faced anybody like Philip Rivers, nor have we faced the receivers he??s got. I think ECU was very talented, but Paul Troth is a young quarterback and gave us the opportunity to break on the ball a little bit, but Philip Rivers doesn??t give you those opportunities. He??s a veteran guy, he??s got a lot of experience, so we know we??ve got a tougher chore. I??d like to see our secondary continue to improve; I think we improved quite a bit from the first game to the second game, and that??s what we??ll be looking for. But, we know we??re facing a much bigger challenge in Philip Rivers.??
On conference play:
??We continued to make a lot of mistakes last week in the game against East Carolina, but I saw some improvements and we were a little more solid on the defensive side. I think our offense needs to be more consistent; our kicking game has improved, but certainly not where you need it to be if we??re going to win week in and week out. If we can make another big jump this week, then possibly we??ll be ready, but we??re not based on our first two games.??
On what the team??s focus is in practice this week:
??Same stuff. We??ll work on special teams harder this week than any other time. I think defensively the key for us is not to miss assignments, still doing too much of that. Then offensively, we??ve got to take advantage of opportunities. We??ve really wasted some great opportunities off of turnovers with good field position where we haven??t gotten points, I think part of that is a little bit of killer instinct and a little bit of execution. We got to become an offense that is very consistent and really takes care of business when we get in the red zone. We were not that in the first two football games.??
On NC State??s offense:
??They are very, very explosive, very talented. The scary thing is the 65 points [vs. Navy] could have been a lot worse. That??s just what they decided to score. They could have named the score in that game. They??ve had three very impressive wins: over New Mexico, who is a pretty good football team; East Tennessee State, a [NCAA] I-AA school, but a very good I-AA program, and Navy, who had a very impressive win over SMU. I think North Carolina State is for real. I think they??ve got talented football players, great team speed, and they??re good in every area. I think Chuck [Amato]??s doing a great job with that team.??
On one year anniversary of September 11:
??Last year, the NCAA made a huge statement about not playing any games. We??ll all be very somber this week remembering that this is the anniversary. I think that kids bounce back pretty good. Certainly this week, we??ll be thinking of the all the victims and survivors that were affected by this tragedy. This week has special meaning to our kids. Certainly a lot of our kids were affected by this, and it was tough last year to keep playing football for a couple of weeks. It really put things in perspective, you really got the sense that football is just a game. At that time, it seemed that time was standing still. That week leading up to the next football game seemed like it took forever before we could get another football game under our belts. Now it just seems unbelievable that a year has gone by. I think the word ??American?? has a lot more meaning to our kids. I think the national anthem has a lot more meaning to our kids right now. I think, really and truly last year, it really drove home that [football] is just a game. Sometimes we really put too much emphasis on football, and I think it really pointed out that football is just a game.??
Senior Quarterback James MacPherson
On NC State:
??They??ve got really good team speed. We can??t make a lot of mistakes against them because they recover fast. We are going to have to execute that much better against a team that has the speed that NC State has.??
??They have put up a lot of points (in their first three games), but we feel like we have a good shot against anybody that we step on the field against. It is a opportunity for us to play a team that has put up those points and has the talent that NC State has.??
??We are still looking to break out offensively. We point up a lot of points against Northern Illinois and could have had a chance to put up more points against ECU, so I think it is only a matter of time before our offense breaks out.??
Sophomore Cornerback Eric King
??We're happy to be starting the ACC season. Unfortunately we gave to start with a great team like NC State. We have to be ready to go, practice well this week, and execute. A couple of guys are kind of banged up. But other guys are ready to go in and perform if they have to, and hopefully we can just get these guys back as soon as possible.??
Prefer high-scoring or low-scoring game vs. NC State?
??I'm not really sure yet, but their team speed?K I just hope it isn't too high scoring. I just want to get a win and the rest of the guys just want to get a win. However we get it done, we'll just get it done. That (NC State??s 65 points at Navy) was very impressive. It really doesn??t matter who you play, in college football it??s hard to put up 65 points against any opponent. We??re just going to have to be ready to play. They??re a great team, and we??re going to have to be ready to execute on offense and defense and then the kicking game.??
On Philip Rivers:
??First of all he??s very experienced. One of the things about Philip Rivers is that he just knows where to go and how to play the game. We just want to do a really good job on him and hope to disrupt him and get him out of his flow.??
