Postgame Quotes - Wake Forest vs. Elon
9/19/2009 12:00:00 AM | Football
Sept. 19, 2009
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Wake Forest Head Coach Jim Grobe
On the game...
"I think we beat a good football team tonight. I think our coaches worked as hard this week on preparation as any week we've had. We knew that Elon was very well coached and very talented. We'd seen all over the country how well I-AA teams had done against I-A teams. I think we did a good job getting our players in the mind frame that they needed to respect Elon and prepare for them. I thought we played good tonight. There are certainly some things that we'll want to correct. But I thought overall we played pretty well on both sides of the football."
"Elon has a very athletic defense. They brought some pressure in the right spots, they made it tough for us to run the football. They forced us into throwing a little more than we wanted to. From our defensive perspective, it was one of those games where you can never relax. We were on edge the whole game but I felt like our defense did a really nice job. I was a little disappointed that we didn't hold good field position a couple of times. A couple of times we let them out and ended up starting drives on the ten yard line offensively, so we aren't going to like that. But I thought overall defensively I felt we played really well against a really quality offensive football team."
On the kickers...
"The way we've looked at, we really haven't seen any of the three kickers emerge. There hadn't been a lot of consistency out of any of the three. With Shane Popham, I felt like he was doing an OK job punting and an OK job kicking. I think he can be a really good punter if he concentrates on that. I think Jimmy Newman can be a really good field goal and extra point guy if he concentrates on that. We really like Cline Beam kicking the ball off. We'll help ourselves if those three athletes can specialize and divide the reps between them. Right now Jimmy's going to kick field goals and extra points, Shane will punt and Cline will kick off. That's still fluid, just like any other position. But I think if we can get our kids to concentrate in one area we'll have three good ones where we've been a bit average because we've been trying to overlap responsibilities."
On pressuring Elon...
"I thought coverage-wise we were OK. I thought we missed some tackles on the short routes. That was a problem for us against Stanford and something we're going to continue to work on. I thought at times we didn't give much pressure. We hung our secondary out to dry because we weren't pressuring."
"I think Elon does such a nice job with their screen game, it makes it hard to just decide to blitz every snap to get pressure because they hurt us on the screens. We had to work harder on a four-man rush. Overall I think that's something we'll have to improve on as we go through the season."
On the young linebackers...
"We are pleased with Joey Ehrmann. I thought Scott Betros got quite a few reps tonight. I thought he did some good stuff. We've got some really nice young linebackers that have lots of ability. The problem is we have to get them going in the right direction. There were some situations tonight where we didn't quite get lined up the right way, we didn't quite drop where we needed to drop. I think those young linebackers can play, we've just got to coach them a little bit. As we go through the season I think that linebacker group can really be a plus for us."
On Kenny Okoro...
"Kenny's a really good player. We've never had any doubts about his ability. He's starting to be a little bit more consistent now. Consistency is a key back in the secondary. I think one of the things we've got to continue to work on back there is making checks and getting lined up. Kenny's got a lot of ability and made a ton of plays tonight. He did some nice things for us."
On Chris Givens' touchdown...
"I thought it was an amazing play by Chris to keep his feet and catch the football. I don't know how in the world he did that. It looked a little bit crazy. I think one of things we've got to do with the young guys, and Chris is one of them, is at times they aren't sure if they are going to get the ball and they aren't really hitting it as hard as they can, especially our guys that can really run. We've got to get those guys anticipating that they are going to get the ball. At times they kind of slow down then and think `uh oh, Riley's going to get me the ball, I've got to get going again.' I felt we had a little bit of that tonight. But that was an amazing play to keep his feet, keep his concentration. That he caught that ball was really amazing."
On Wake Forest's running game...
"I have to give credit to Elon. I thought they did a nice job. They did some things that gave us some problems. There were a couple of times we didn't block the right people. There were a couple of times where our wide receivers did not crack back inside on the safety and the safety made a couple of nice plays. There were a couple of times where we didn't get lineman pulling where he should be, but overall I thought we kept beating our head against the wall trying to run the football and that probably helped us throw the ball a little bit better. We'll probably not be very happy with the way we ran the ball today but I think it probably set up some throws."
On playing strong through four quarters...
"It was a big point of emphasis. What we really need to do to beat anybody on our schedule is to play four good quarters. We played really poorly in the first half against Baylor and poorly in the first half against Stanford. The good news is we came back in time to beat Stanford but we ran out of time against Baylor. I think our players realized that it's not ok to use the first and second quarters as warm up for the second half. We got a better effort tonight, I think our guys were a little more focused."
On seeing Rodney Rogers before the game...
"I thought that was really special for us. Rodney Rogers, what a class guy. A great player for Wake Forest, a great player in the NBA, and a wonderful person. I think it was really cool that he was here and we were able to go out there and be with him."
Wake Forest Defensive End Will Wright
On preparing for an Elon team that passes the ball well...
We just practiced play the run first and play the pass second, and obviously that brought success tonight.
On how the team is feeling entering conference play...
We feel very good about it. We love playing BC. They're a great team and I'm looking forward to it. The games are always very close.
Wake Forest Quarterback Riley Skinner
On the passing game...
"We did some good things on the passing game. We were pretty excited to push the ball down the field. They played us pretty well in the first half and took away some of our big plays that we thought we would have. They gave us some different defensive schemes that we were expecting, but we threw a couple balls up and had some of the guys make some great plays. Chris (Givens) made a great play on that deep post and Marshall (Williams) got good separation on that last touchdown, so we were pretty happy the way our receivers played, but there are still some things that we have to fine tune before we head up to Chestnut Hill."
Elon Head Coach Pete Lembo
On tonight's loss to Wake Forest...
"What I would say is we lost a football game to a better team tonight. I thought Wake Forest came out ready to play; they certainly weren't overlooking us at all. I thought our guys came out a little tight and was disappointed we didn't make some basic plays in the first half that would have kept it a lot closer."
On playing Wake Forest...
"Obviously, the competition is as good as we'll see all year, and it's our third game so hopefully there's still a lot to be learned. A lot of guys got significant playing time tonight, obviously, against very good athletes. And we'll look at the film just like any other week and try to make the corrections and get ready for Georgia Southern."
On if a game like this makes Elon better in the end...
"Yeah, I think as long as we come out of it healthy, hopefully it will. Brandon Ward, one of our starting defensive ends, went down in the first quarter. Hopefully that's not serious. If we lose him, that'll be disappointing. But if we can get him back in a few weeks healthy, then hopefully we learn from this."
