Weekly Press Conference & Video: September 4

9/4/2018 2:55:00 PM | Football

Head Coach Dave Clawson and offensive linemen Jake Benzinger and Nathan Gilliam met with the media Tuesday

By Wake Forest Athletic Communications (@WakeFB)

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. - Coming off a season opening victory over Tulane, head coach Dave Clawson and offensive linemen Jake Benzinger and Nathan Gilliam met with the media Tuesday at the team's weekly press conference, sponsored by Carrabba's.

Head Coach Dave Clawson
Opening Statement...
"Starting with the Tulane game; anytime you can go on the road and trail in the fourth quarter and you are starting a freshman at quarterback and you find a way to win, it is a good thing. It really was a tale of two games. If you said you were going to outgain an opponent by 100 yards, have 12 more first downs than them and have over 500 yards of total offense, you think you might win going away. But if lose the turnover battle by two, have two red zone trips where you don't score, and you give up touchdown passes of 52 yards and 74 yards, you wonder how you win a game like that? Overall, we won the statistical battle, but when you lose turnovers and the miss red zone chances and give up big plays, it becomes a four-quarter game. We found a way to win.

"It was certainly a costly win. We lost two of our best players for the season. Justin Herron, an all-conference tackle for us, will miss the year with a knee injury. Coby Davis, who was really coming on and was almost a third starting safety for us, we also lost. Coby and Justin become the sixth and seventh players we have lost this year with ACLs. That is why you recruit and why you build depth. Those things can never be an excuse for us not to be successful. We have other good players. On the O-Line, we have good depth. We may pull the redshirt off of some safeties now to help us on special teams.

"In every case that a player went down, the next guy up really stepped up. Jack Freudenthal is our starting tight end and six plays in he was ejected. Brandon Chapman was ready to play and he played at a high level. Coby goes down and Traveon Redd ends up playing a lot more snaps than we anticipated and he played really well. In my mind, we always had six starters on the offensive line. So if watched us in camp, there were times where we would take one guy out and figure out what we would do. Jake Benzinger played left tackle in camp. Nate Gilliam played right tackle. Patrick Osterhage plugs right in and he really is a starter. There are so many examples of that. Sage Surratt stepping up for Scotty Washington. In all of the cases where a guy goes down, the next guy was ready. We have to continue to do that and develop that in our program. That is one game, there are 11 more to go. We know this is going to happen. Hopefully not season-ending injuries but injuries are a part of football. We have to prepare that next guy like a starter so when it is their time, they are ready. Fortunately in game one, guys stepped up and I loved the way we handled overtime. Their sideline was going nuts and ours was very composed, cool and collected. I thought our kids showed great poise in the overtime. The defense probably had their best series of the game and then the offensive line and Cade finished it with seven straight runs. We are 1-0, but far from a finished product. There were enough mistakes in that game that we could take two weeks and not correct them all. That is football. It is not a perfect game but our kids played hard. We fortunate, but we will take it.

"Moving on to Towson, this is always the week where I will be accused of making them sound like some NFL team. But it is the nature of how I came up in coaching. The FCS is the level I coached at for many, many years. My first two head jobs were there. Whether it was Brian Westbrook or Tim Hightower, there were countless NFL players I coached at this level. It is good football. I was a head coach in the CAA for four years. I was a coordinator in this league for three. This is, in my opinion, the best FCS league in the country. Towson has players. They are really well coached. I have known Rob Ambrose for over 20 years. He was the coordinator at Towson when I was the head coach at Fordham. He went on the Connecticut and some other places and is a really good offensive mind. A few years ago he had Towson a game away from a national championship. They have two coaches on defense that were on my staff at Fordham.
"They are very sound. They have a lot of guys on their football team that at one point were deemed to be Power 5 players. They have a lot of transfers. You can go down their roster and there are guys who were three-star, Power 5-level recruits and for whatever reason things didn't work out. That is the one advantage of FCS is these guys and go there and play right away. You always want the greatest improvement in your football team to be from week one to week two. We got two extra days and after watching the Tulane film, there are a lot of areas where we need to get better."

On the freshmen performances against Tulane:
"As well as Sam (Hartman) played, and at times he played not like a true freshman, there were a handful of plays that were not wise plays. There was a pick in the red zone and it took him a quarter to settle in and once he settled in, he played well. He was confident. There was one play he played to Cade Carney on third down that was like a John Wolford-type play. He scrambled towards out of bounds and then pitched the ball a little bit. He has to control that a bit. He forced it on that one red zone play that ended in a pick. We have to coach those plays out of him. It's good to be creative but you also have to know the time and place. In the secondary, both touchdowns we gave up were just awful coverage by us. One time, we lined up in a way that we don't even line up. Those are two veterans in Cam Glenn and Essang Bassey, two good players that have played a lot of football for us. We can't lose our mind for a single play. The other touchdown we gave up was a double move against cover two. As an offense, you don't even want to run a double reverse, it's a dead play. You see that coverage and you forget about it and go to the other side. In some cases, it's guys that haven't played before and you're always going to have that. They're out there for the first time and they lose their mind. They put their eyes in the wrong place, they're looking at the wrong keys. They have to learn from game one to game two that these are your progressions, these are your goals, this is your eye discipline. I could list a hundred things. It's in some ways, when it's all said and done, a perfect opener. You go on the road, you face adversity, make a lot of mistakes and still find a way to win and you're 1-0. But there are a lot of corrections you can make that are real corrections."

On Sam Hartman and expectations entering Tulane:
"We named him our starting quarterback and I expect our starting quarterback to play well. Now, having said that, Tulane clearly came out there with a mindset of we are not going to let you run the football. We're going to make you win this game with your freshman quarterback. People can say we didn't run the ball well and be critical of the offensive line, but if you look at the way we were being defended, there was an extra hat. It wasn't on the surface, the extra hat was right there. Everyone on the offensive line can do their jobs and block, and we weren't perfect, but we were being defended in a way that Tulane was clearly saying we're going to make you throw the football. So we threw the football. Going into it, I was asked if we were going to run the ball or be more conservative, but the nature of our offense is you can't do that. We don't just say we're going to run because of who we have on the O-Line and who we have at running back. If you get defended the way Tulane defended, you just run into a brick wall. There's going to be a guy right there near the line of scrimmage you can't block. We figured that out quickly. We had to throw the ball. He went 31-for-51 and threw for over 300 yards and a few touchdowns. That's a good game for a true freshman. Did he exceed my expectations? I had high expectations. That's why we named him our starter. The fact that we were able to execute the passing game at the level we did in his first start against a quality opponent, I am certainly happy with that aspect of our game. I think at the end of the season that win will look better than it does right now."

Redshirt Junior Offensive Lineman Jake Benzinger
On Tulane game:
"I feel like we meshed well as an offense as the game went on. Sam (Hartman)is a freshman and I felt that he got in his groove and we started playing off each other. As the game went on, we got more comfortable and moved the ball better as we progressed. I feel even more confident going into the rest of the season."

On senior offensive lineman Justin Herron getting injured:
"It's tough. Justin Is such an awesome guy, he is a leader. He has helped me a lot becoming an offensive lineman. T's a tough loss, but the good thing is we have an old and experienced offensive line that is able to step in and adjust. I will be moving to left tackle and Nate (Gilliam) to right tackle. We will be able to figure it out. Luckily, we have all taken reps at all offensive line positions so we are able to acclimate."

On changing positions:
"It's tough, but luckily we have had multiple reps in camp. We are pretty prepared to make the switch over. Freshman year I played left tackle and the reps from camp are definitely going to help."

On Towson:
"Coach Tabacca, our O-line coach, always stresses 'face this opponent and prepare perfectly for every single game.' If we do that we will be ready to go and play the way we should against a good Towson team."

On quarterback Sam Hartman:
"We are very confident in him. If he can trust in us as the offensive line we will have even more success. We are going to do everything we can to keep him protected. If he is standing in the pocket, I have full confidence that he is going to do amazing things for us this year."

On longer practice week:
"It has helped immensely, especially for me and Nate (Gilliam) with the switch to different positions. The extra reps will be huge for this week. The more reps we get at the new positions, the smoother that transition will go. It helps having a full extra two days to prepare."

Redshirt Junior Offensive Lineman Nathan Gilliam
On offensive line's performance against Tulane:
"We prepared for anything and when something happens we all have to be ready, and I think that we were. It's always 'next guy up' for us and I feel like we played really well. It is a test every week and we can't look past any opponent. Coach Tabacca always says face every opponent every week. Whether we are playing Towson or Clemson or any other team, we have to look at it the same and prepare as well as we do every week."

On Towson's defense and protecting Sam Hartman:
"They are pretty simple; they don't blitz a lot. That opens a lot of plays, whether its run or pass. Our players match up with their players very well…We are going to prepare every week and go out there and give our best regardless of who we are playing. I feel confident in Sam, especially with the first game under his belt. Usually the most improvements come between the first game and the second game and I think the offense is ready to take each step every week."

On Justin Herron's injury:
"Every time a guy goes down, especially Justin who is a fifth-year senior, it's a big shock for all of us. We have to move on because every week we have to be ready. We are an experienced offensive line, so we are ready for this."