Louisville head coach Bobby Petrino held his weekly press conference to preview the Clemson game.  A transcript is found bellow:

Opening Statement

Looking back on the Syracuse game, it was a big win for us; it was a good win. We’re working to find a way to win
the game, which is new to me. I haven’t been in this type of situation where you’re real strong on defense, but
offensively your’re working real hard just to make sure you can score enough points to win. But our special teams
gave us a big lift, did an excellent job punting the ball, getting it down inside the 5 two plays in a row, then did a good
job in our return game, we covered kickoffs really well. I think that was one of the things I was most excited about, to
see young guys on our kickoff coverage team sprint down the field and show toughness. Stacey Thomas had a
couple big hits, so all of that is a real positive.

We have a great challenge ahead of us. Clemson is a very, very good football team. They’re very explosive
offensively; I think it will be the biggest challenge our offense has seen to date. They can throw the ball deep, a
running quarterback, a great receiver, they have a lot of pieces in that offense. Then defensively, they’ve been very
good. Last week they were extremely good against North Carolina State, but they’ve shown to play good defense on
both stopping the run and defending the pass, so it will be fun. It’s a great trip for us. When you look on the schedule
and see you get to go play in Death Valley, it’s the type of game the players came here to play in. So we’ve got to
have a great week of preparation, go attack the week and go down there and play very good football to come away
with the win.

On DeVante Parker

There’s a good chance. He’s been running routes now for over a week and had a good weekend. Today will be an off
day for him and then he will have an opportunity to practice tomorrow, then kind of take it on a day-to-day basis from
there.

I think he’s gonna be good to go from all indications I’ve gotten from the medical staff, but you never know what
happens on a day-to-day basis. But between our medical staff and the group that did the operation, they gave him
the thumbs up to start practicing (this) Tuesday and hope that everything goes well. He’s been running and doing
routes, and they went out and threw last night. He’ll get in the pool (today) and do some conditioning in the water, but
basically stay off the foot for a day. But all indications are he’ll be ready to go; it just depends on how everything goes
in practice.

How long does it take

Four days would be good for me. That’s a hard one to answer; you never really know that, but he’s a special talent, I
think there will be some issues with conditioning, obviously. Do you get soreness in other areas, muscles you haven’t
used, all those things. I think the thing we have to be really good about is being smart about how we practice him and
see where he is.

On the Quarterback situation

We have two of them available to play. I think I might have made a mistake the other day when I said Will was
available to play. He was available in an emergency capacity. But I think it will be interesting to see how he comes
out and practices this week, and what improvement he makes.

Reggie improved during the game. I thought he handled the adversity well again. I’d like to get off to a little quicker
start, but he did do a great job in the fourth quarter, made some big plays, did a lot of things to help us win the game.
So we’ll see how that plays out in practice.

On the Clemson environment

I think it’s something you look forward to and enjoy. And to be real honest with you, it’s gonna be very similar to last
week. That was a loud place, I don’t know if it can get any louder. The crowd wasn’t that big, but during that first third
down when the crowd started screaming and yelling, I don’t think it can get any louder than that. The stadium is big,
there’ll be a lot of people there, but the field’s the same. We need to focus in practice, get ready and then go play
football.

Why Brandon Radcliff has been so good:

Radcliff so good–I think it’s his acceleration, his burst. He’s been running really hard. After the first contact, he keeps
driving his legs and breaks tackles. I’ve been really impressed with him, he’s done a real nice job for us. To be able to
break tackles and get the ball in the end zone two games in a row in the same area of the field. . .cause you can’t get
all 11 of them blocked. You always tell your running backs, you have to make at least one guy miss to score a
touchdown and in the last two games he’s made one guy miss and run over the other one, so that’s a pretty good
combination.

On Being an offensive coach

I think the No. 1 thing I’m trying to do is just really try to understand that we’re 5-1, we’ve found ways to win the game
and we are what we are. It’s new for me, it’s not something I’m just to, not being able to go out there and just call
plays freely and throw the ball deep and do all that, but we’re not really there yet. We’re not there in the protection
aspect, we’re not there in experience at the quarterback. That was the beauty of my first year here with Stefan.
Stefan knew how to change any play, so you could just call ’em up and then if it wasn’t there or there was something
that hurt our protection, he could just change it and get you out of a bad call. We’re a little less experienced. And
we’ve seen a little more variety of defenses that have made it where you have to be a little more conservative and not
hurt our defensive play. I think that’s what’s new to me, is really making sure we understand our strength is on
defense, offensively we’ve got to drive the ball, wear ’em down, get the ball in the end zone and then win the game in
the fourth quarter.

With offensive struggles:

feel like 5-1–Yeah, definitely feel like I’m 5-1 (laughing). It’s hard to win games and anytime you do it’s a great
feeling. You look around the scores this week and Notre Dame beat Stanford 17-14, they should feel great about
that. That’s a great win for them. It’s been a battle, but we’ve really done a good job of finding ways to win and getting
in the fourth quarter. And I’ve enjoyed our players on the sideline in the fourth quarter, seeing the mentality of ‘we’re
gonna go out there and win the game,’ and the way they’ve rallied around each other says a lot for their heart.

On Deshaun Watson:

He can really wing it deep, that’s the thing you see that really jumps out at you on the videos is how he can throw the
ball downfield, also has the ability to make a lot of plays with his legs, so that’s always a big challenge.