What They Are Saying: Clemson Week

10/4/2023 10:39:00 AM | Football

Hear what the Demon Deacons are saying going into the Clemson game on Saturday

By: Dylan Shackleford and Blake Lowry

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. - The Wake Forest Demon Deacons are ready to bounce back this weekend. Fresh off of their bye week, the Deacs will head to Memorial Stadium to take on Clemson this Saturday, Oct. 7th at 3:30 p.m. The game will also be airing on the ACC Network.

Ahead of their matchup, the Deacs met with the media to discuss the matchup and other news around the Wake Forest program.

Head Coach Dave Clawson
Opening statement
"We had a very busy bye week. After the Georgia Tech game, we did a deep dive Monday and Tuesday to figure out what went wrong and things we've got to get better at. We evaluated the first four games of the season. What are we doing well, what aren't we doing well? Areas of improvement and how do we get this football team to improve for October, November, and our next eight games. Wednesday we had practice, we got the younger guys a lot of reps. Thursday and Friday our guys lifted. All the coaches, myself included, hit the road recruiting. We were able to evaluate a lot of really good football players. Saturday was family and football, we had a chance to watch the Clemson/Syracuse game and the Notre Dame/Duke game. Sunday, we got right back at it. Now we're getting prepared to play a really talented Clemson team."

"Dabo's teams are always talented, they're well-coached, they play hard. Offensively, over 35 points a game, over 450 yards, they're very well balanced with 270 in the air and 185 on the ground. The quarterback (Cade) Klubnik is playing at a really high level. He's taking care of the football extremely well, they've gone 137 passes without throwing an interception. Both of the backs are outstanding, both (Will) Shipley and (Phil) Mafah. Really good players. What's most impressive about them is all of their yards after contact. With both of those guys two-thirds of their yards are after contact, so if you try to throw a shoulder into them or arm tackle, it's going to be a long day."

"Beaux Collins is a good receiver, Tyler Brown, a young receiver for them, is playing really well. (Adam) Randall and (Brannon) Spector those are guys we've faced. The tight end (Jake Brinningstool) 9 is a good player, they're very experienced up front. This will be a very good challenge. Defensively, only 267 yards a game. Only 83 yards a game on the ground. Their defensive line is always elite. That's always a four and five-star all-star team up front. They've got three really good linebackers. Barrett Carter, they're doing a lot of the same things with him as they did with Trenton Simpson a year ago, he's a really good player. The other linebackers (Jeremiah) Trotter and (Wade) Woodaz are good players as well. They're good in the secondary as they always are."

"Memorial Stadium is always a great environment. It's loud. Those fans love their Tigers. For us, it's a great challenge, but also an awesome opportunity. Our guys look forward to going down there and playing in front of a big crowd and get tested. These are the games that make you better."

On sticking with Griffis
"It'd be easy if you just say, let's say we're playing great up front, and our running backs were perfect in pass protection. If you could say everything that's going on is because of one person, but that's what the bye week gives you a chance to do, it gives you a chance to look at everything. One of the biggest problems we have on offense right now, is we have too many negative yardage plays. If you take away the kneel downs at the end of a game we have 35 negative yardage plays. Officially it's 18 sacks, but when I broke it down, it's more like 21 sacks. You say 'jeez, 21 sacks, the O-Line must be playing poorly.' They've only given up nine of them. The running backs have given up five of them. The tight ends have given up two of them. Then about five or six of them, the quarterback has held onto the ball too long."

"Then you look at the five turnovers. The first one, he hits Cam Hite right between the numbers. If you just tuck the football away and get North and South, it's a first down and the drive continues. It's hard to say that one's on the quarterback. The second one, our punt returner couldn't hang onto a punt. That has nothing to do with an offensive play. The third one, a running back didn't finish a blitz pickup. We've got a guy wide open in the middle of the field we're trying to get the football to and the running back let the linebacker go. Now the last two, that's on the quarterback. The one was a really poor scramble decision when we were going down to try and tie the game. The last one you're down two scores and you're trying to force a play. Those ones happen. So you say 'jeez, five turnovers, let's make a quarterback change.' Then you watch the film and probably two of them are on him and one of them is down 14 with 30 seconds left."

"We've got to play better around him, and he needs to play better. He's holding onto the ball, at times, too long and that's created part of the problem. Every tackle we had yesterday got beat by a speed rush. There were five sacks on our tackles. We could have Tom Brady or Aaron Rodgers back there and those guys would get sacked and the ball would get knocked out too. The quarterback is always going to take too much blame, and he needs to play better, but we've also got to play better around him and give the quarterback a chance to function."

"It's what the bye week does. You say, 'why do we have these problems?' It's not one position right now. The O-Line has got to play better, we've got to protect him better. The running backs have to protect better, the tight ends have given up two sacks. Some of those sacks, they happen so quickly, it's hard to pin that on the quarterback. Now five or six of them? Absolutely. So everyone has to do their part in order to clean it up."

On going down to play Clemson with the Tigers already having two losses
"Duke played really well against them in game one and Clemson self-destructed. That Florida State game could've gone either way. There's not one guy on their roster who wanted to come to Wake Forest. We wanted all those guys. There are even guys on here that we offered and they committed to us but the second Clemson offered them, they left. This is our challenge when we play these guys every year."

"They've been at the top of the recruiting charts every year. Xavier Thomas, Tyler Davis, Barrett Carter, these guys are pros. They're a really talented team. Every time we play these guys, the whole has got to be bigger than the sum of theirs. And that's the challenge. These are the games that force you to be better and there's a very small margin of error. Last year we were right on that line. We didn't get it done. This year is a new opportunity. It's not because they've dipped, we have to execute and play better."

On using prior year's games and his reaction to them
"It's always part of my preparation for games. I always try to watch two whole copies of this year's game and I always go back and watch last year's game if we played the opponent. I'd say to Dabo, if he's in pain then my pain should be worse because they won the game. We hit some big plays on them but they hit some big plays on us. That was a very good day to be an outside receiver and a very bad day to be a cornerback in press coverage. Their quarterback DJ (Uiagalelei) played great that day. But we had opportunities to win that game and we didn't take advantage of it. We were up eight and then they tied it up, and then we had the ball with two minutes left. Even in overtime, we went up, and if we get one stop we win the football game."

"There are certain games in your career you never, ever get over. That's one of them. When I'm on my deathbed, that game will still bother me. Hopefully, our players feel the same way."

On what he's seen with a week to scout
"We're probably a little ahead of where I thought we'd be on defense. Right now, we're playing well on defense. Our defensive line is playing really hard, they're very active, very disruptive. We're covering people well. I hate that we don't have Chase Jones, but thank goodness we have Jacob Roberts. Dylan Hazen is having a good year. Right now we're playing pretty solidly on defense. Certainly well enough to win all four games we've played."

"Now having said that, the most challenging part of the schedule is in front of us. This will be probably as tough as an eight game stretch as we've had. We're playing a lot of teams that are very good, very talented, that are nationally ranked. So we're going to get tested a lot more this week on defense than we've been all year."

"Offensively, I've kind of hoped we would gel a little quicker together. We lost a lot of starts last year and on top of that you lose Chase Jones and Donavon Greene. So right now, we have 15 new starters. It's seven on offense and eight on defense. After playing four games, they're not new starters anymore. So what bothers me is that some of the mistakes we've made, we haven't cleaned up. So if we're going to have success this year, they're not rookies, they're not new starters anymore. They've got four games of starts under their belt, that experience has to start showing up. We're talented enough, I don't think we lack for talent."

"There's some things that we've done. Up front, we've got three new starters there. There was a play at Georgia Tech, we made a first down and then we had three guys pull. The center is supposed to pull and the guards are supposed to stay on and all three of them pull and it's a TFL. We run an outside zone play and our guard goes the wrong way and that ends a drive. We're getting behind the sticks too much because of the negative yardage plays. A lot of those are because of missed assignments up front and that has to get cleaned up. If we can get that cleaned up, which is our job as coaches, that's our job. To make our team better and fix mistakes. We have enough good players on offense that we can still have a good offense and a good football team. But it's not going to fix itself."

On players going from playing 15-25 snaps to full-time starters
"The hardest thing is the play-in, play-out detail that's required. You go out there for 15 plays and you focus on 15 plays. Now you're playing 55,60, 80, to play with that focus level. The harder thing is now to turn around and do it all again a week later. Older players get into really good routines because they know what they're playing against on Saturdays. Younger players, at times, are a little bit naive and no matter how many times you warn them or the older players tell them it's harder than they think. Sometimes until they get punched in the mouth they don't figure it out. Then there's always the reaction.

"We've been through this before. 2018 was like that. We lost a lot of players off the 2017 team: Cam Serigne, John Wolford, Duke Ejiofor. They just thought they were going to just show up and win. We learned the hard way. That group regrouped and finished strong. That led to a really good 2019 and then we graduated a lot of guys going into 2020. '20 was a little bit of that. I thought that group hung together through COVID and that built the foundation for 2021 and 2022. After '22 we lost a lot of guys, we've got a lot of good starters. They're plenty talented, I don't think they lack ability, but we're just not playing as cohesively as we need to be. Again, that's our job as coaches to get them there and you just hope that as they're getting this experience that some of that stuff, they realize the detail it takes to be a really good football player at this level against other really good players. A lot of these guys haven't played this much since high school and they were all bigger, stronger, faster than anyone else they went against. The detail that's required, the physicality, the preparation, it's new for these guys. Again, it's our job to get them there."

On what surprised him on watching film from Wake's games
"I'm maybe a little bit of a glutton for punishment. I don't go back and look at the touchdowns or the sacks or the interceptions we had. What I do is I study every explosive play we've given up. What are the explosives we've given up? Why have we given them up? Did we lose leverage, did we miss a tackle, was there a missed assignment? On offense I look at the turnovers and the negative plays and ask 'why did they happen?'. If we get outmuscled or beat, that's hard to fix. If it's a technique issue or a missed assignment, then those things are correctable."

"I'll give Georgia Tech credit, some of those defensive ends went right by us. We probably should not have played Spencer Clapp. We thought he was ready to go and he said he was healthy and tried to tough it out. That probably wasn't fair to him to play him. He gave us everything he had and then we made a change. We probably made it too late. A lot of our eros have been self-inflicted. It's a fourth and two, the guard and center are supposed to work together from the nose to the linebacker. The center works the linebacker to the left, the nose works the linebacker to the right, the nose guard splits us, knocks down the ball on fourth and two. Then people say your quarterback is too short. Well you cut a nose guard loose. It doesn't matter. It's so easy to put that on the quarterback. No. You can have Sam Hartman, Jamie Newman, John Wolford, Aaron Rodgers, Tom Brady, Brett Favre back there. You cut a nose guard loose, you're probably not going to be in good shape."

"Those are correctable problems. That you have two guys starting for the first time and weren't on the same page. They learned the hard way how critical those mistakes are. It's not one position. You win, it's because a lot of people do things right. If you don't play well, it's across the board. I don't think there's one coach on the offensive side that says my group is doing well. We've got to get better across the board over there. Again, they're good players, good players usually get better."

On going to Death Valley after a loss
"There's two separate things: you always have to believe things are in your control. Georgia Tech did a lot of good things against us and I want to give them a lot of credit, but we clearly made a lot of critical mistakes. If you turn the ball over five times against anyone, you're probably going to lose the game. The first thing is you look at the film and you've got to fix the mistakes you're making. Then you gameplan against an opponent and you look at their talent. You don't control how talented you are, you control how well we execute. That's what we've got to focus on."

"We've got to go down there and focus on us and go down there and play our best game. We've got to focus on us. If we play our best game and that's not good enough, we can live with that. What we can't do is go down there and turn the ball over four times and have a punt blocked and have missed assignments on defense and make it easy on a very talented football team. The more talented a team you play, the margin of error there is less. With Clemson, there's always going to be a small margin of error. When you play Florida State, there's a small margin of error. When you play Louisville, when you play anyone in the ACC. We've certainly shown we're capable of being at that level, it's our job as coaches to get that performance out of our team. It's there, we just haven't gotten it yet."

On his expectation at the beginning of the season to now
"My expectations were that we'd be 4-0 on the way to being 12-0. Now my expectation is that we're going to be 11-1. We go into every game expecting to win it, I expect this football team to be good. With every football team I expect there to be challenges but we have high expectations here. We're never going to drop those. I'm glad we won the three, but even in the three we won I don't think we played to our standard in any of them. Probably Vanderbilt was the best game but we need to get better. It's a whole season. It's 12 games. I've said all year I hope with this football team because of all the new starters is a better football team in October than in September and is a much better team in November than it was in October and September. Having said that, I know what the schedule is, so we better be better."

Redshirt Junior Offensive Lineman DeVonte Gordon
On what the team accomplished over the bye week
"The bye week was good. We've had a long stretch, between camp and the first couple games up so it was good to get some rest and t o get our bodies back as good as they can be. But, we also did a lot of work to prepare for the next week. We have some extra practices to prepare which was really good for us."

On what he thinks the offensive line has done well and where they can improve
"Every game we bring grit to the game. We are going to fight our butts off. The other game we ran the ball very well. But what we need to improve on is fighting all the way through to the end of every play. It's good to block somebody for one second, two seconds, three seconds, but we need to do it as long as we need to. We're really excited to get a chance to do that this week. Obviously they have a really good front."

On keeping consistency with shifting on the offensive line
"The good thing about it is that we were practicing that way all fall camp. There would be practices where I wouldn't take as many reps or there would be practices where Spencer wasn't taking as many reps. So when Eric, Matt and Nick were all rotating and trying to figure out who was going to play. The coaches made sure that we all had reps together. We have that ability on this team. We all trust the younger younger guys, because we've taken so many reps next to them. For the first game it was a little weird switching back and forth but now that we have gotten reps in different positions we are all used to it."

On the offensive lines relationship with Mitch Griffis
"Oh, yeah, we have confidence in Mitch for sure. We've seen what he can do. We all know the player he is. So there's no question about knowing what he can do going forward. We're excited to see it."

On how the offensive line can help Mitch Griffis
"As I was kind of saying earlier, this is Mitch's first year playing. We have to be sure that the pocket is good for him at all times. You know, two seconds might not be enough. Whatever it is, no matter what is going on, two seconds, three seconds, four seconds to deal with the ball. Then we have to be able to pick it up."

On the differences he noticed during his first year between practice and game situations
"The biggest difference is during my first year playing at Clemson, I was like wow, there are 80,000 people in the stands. You also can't hear anything. But the difference is now I can tune the atmosphere. Obviously they have some good players and we want to go in and focus on playing football right? Not worrying about all the noise and things going on outside of the game."

On adjusting during the bye week after the Georgia Tech loss
"Obviously, No matter how well you play or how bad you want to come out of every game with things that you can improve on. This past week we had a lot of those things and I kind of alluded to it earlier, but there were a lot of things to fix this past week. We got after it."

On assessing the team after the Georgia Tech game
"You have to look in the mirror every game. We expect better from this team but you have to kind of look in the mirror after every game. And like I was saying earlier, no matter how well you play there is always something that you can improve upon."

Redshirt Junior Wide Receiver Taylor Morin
On his message to younger players during the bye week
"It was a long bye week. And I say that just because, obviously we left some things out there on Saturday against Georgia Tech. So just having to stay with those things and try to do our best to fix them and make sure we're ready to go on Saturday. But overall, it's a great week to get healthy and get our bodies back for this next eight week stretch."

On being hungry to get back on the field against Clemson
"Absolutely. It was great to be able to watch some college football this past weekend. But nothing beats being out there on the field. So we're ready to get back to it."

On the transition from the scout team to being a starter
"The consistency, showing up day in and day out. When you're a guy that's playing it's not something that he can just show flashes of. You have to put it together for 12 weeks straight. I'd say that's the biggest adjustment going from being a guy that's on the scout team. Being a younger guy that makes plays during practice, being able to do that day in day out, week in week out and for the entirety of the entire season."

On if there is anyway to understand that feeling without going through the transition
"No, I'd say it's something that's harped on in our program. When I first came in, that's something that older guys told me was very important. But you understand how difficult and challenging that is until you're not only doing the football aspect of it, but the school aspect of it as well. So being the best version of yourself each and every day. And that goes for on the field and off the field as well."

On how the team has cleaned up the offense over the bye week
"The big thing is that we are beating ourselves with turnovers, penalties, drops, or just shooting ourselves in the foot. As you guys know the offense runs on a rhythm. So once we're getting out of rhythm and doing those things to hurt ourselves. It's very hard to get clicking again. For the first four games, we've shown our ability to get into that rhythm and what things look like when that is clicking. It's just the ability to put that together for four quarters and put it together consistently drive in and drive out."

On the team's struggles with turnovers so far this season
"It's difficult. There's things that happened during the course of a football game that you can't control, turnovers, batted balls and things that happened during the course of the game. But the ones that are very frustrating are the ones that we can't control. Whether that's not protecting the football ornot making good decisions. Those are the ones that are frustrating to watch. The great thing is we made these mistakes early in the season, and there's a lot of football left to be played. I'm glad we had the bye week to be able to focus on those things and I'm excited to see what we can do this Saturday."

Junior Defensive Back Malik Mustapha
On the bye week
"The bye week was good. I just took a little break from football. We had a really constant schedule from fall camp to the season, just to put a pedal on things and get away. Some people went home just to clear their mind a little bit to kind of forget about football in a sense, but now we're back to work. Now the emphasis on defense is basically to just be more physical than Clemson and going to enemy territory ready to battle, ready to bleed, ready to claw. We just have to make sure we tackle the ball well and be the more physical team come Saturday."

On his performance this season
"I'm just glad that we're able to cover well, not just me, but as a defense. We're able to make turnovers, DaShawn has three interceptions. So just that improving and giving our D-line enough time to get to the quarterback and just creating havoc as a unit. This season I feel like creating more turnovers, being good on third down and even fourth down stops, is going to give us the upper advantage if we handle our side of the ball. Improvement will be you know, being more consistent on those tackles and covering, but it's definitely something that I'm satisfied with as of right now. I'm just looking to improve throughout the season"

On the explosive plays allowed
It comes down to missed tackles or miscommunication. That's the big thing for us. We're able to make plays, limiting those plays can be the difference maker in the game. We're just making a point of emphasis on that and making sure we're all aligned, we're all talking and we're all on the same page. After that, just being able to be efficient tacklers as well will prevent those big plays from happening. It's definitely something that we're focusing on and looking to improve.

On if last year's game against Clemson adds 'extra juice' to the matchup
Oh yeah, definitely. That's something we talked about as a unit, just remembering that feeling in the locker room, that we left too many things out to chance. It was the offensive shootout, but at the same time, there's some conversions that they made that could have flipped the whole game. We just need to be able to create turnovers in certain situations where we were just trying to make a big hit. The point of the game is the ball and the ball only. We have a chip on our shoulder going into this year.