Another ACC season is underway. Over the past few days coaches from around the ACC held their press conferences to discuss last weekend’s games and look forward to their next opponent.
In this edition of What we heard we bring you some of the highlights from the head coach press conferences from around the ACC.
Florida State
Q. How did you come out from a health standpoint?
COACH FISHER: Good. We had no a couple little bangs and bruises, but nothing that guys
will be at practice and be in the game. Everything’s fine.
Q. After watching the game, who was the best on the offensive line?
COACH FISHER: (Sophomore left tackle) Rod (Johnson). Rod plays well. I thought the two guards
(redshirt sophomore Wilson Bell and redshirt junior Kareem Are) played really well too. And [redshirt
freshmen] Corey) Martinez and (Brock) Ruble, for young guys, freshmen in there, I thought they did a really
nice job, but they ve got a ways to go.
Q. You said you didn’t wantto watch any or too much film of Everett (Golson) from his days at Notre Dame. With practices, scrimmages and now a game, what’s been the assessment of Everett?
COACH FISHER: He has a chance to be a very good quarterback. He’s doing a nice job, adapting well, working hard, and hopefully he’ll continue to play well. I like a lot of his attributes. He’s doing a good job of managing the game, interacting with his teammates, leading, doing those kinds of things, and learning our offense and doing a great job at decision making and accuracy. He’s got a ways to go, but I’m very happy with where he’s at. I think he’s a very good player.
Louisville
Q. On what things you can take away from the Auburn loss:
COACH PETRINO: Well, we always try and come out and get better technically. So we go through and grade everyone on their technique and fundamentals and see how we get better there. I thought we played hard so it wasn’t an effort deal, it wasn’t where we weren’t playing hard, our guys were giving good effort and working hard at it. We need to take care of the ball offensively, we did a lot of good things, we did a lot of good things on third down, we did a lot of good things defensively on putting pressure on the quarterback. We didn’t get sacks and we like sacking the quarterback but he is a guy going into the game that we said is not going to take a sack, he is going to try and get the ball out of his hands and I think that did help us with the interceptions in the fact that he didn’t want to
take any sacks but there are a lot of things we need to improve on to get ready for Saturday.
Q. On the performance of Lamar Jackson:
COACH PETRINO: You know he really gave us a lift, we had four series in the second half and we got three touchdowns and a field goal. He made a lot of big plays, some of with his legs and some of with his arm. He showed great competitiveness, I liked what I saw on the sideline not just from him but the entire offense. Guys were excited, we need to get back in there, we need to go score quick so there was a lot of positive energy, a lot of positive talk on the sideline when you are behind and sometimes you don’t have that and that was encouraging. There is a lot of young guys, that’s a lot of young guys out there making plays at receiver, offensive line. Micky Crum is a redshirt freshman tight end, there is just a lot of young guys out there so I was encouraged by their energy on the sideline and their competitiveness. We have to do things right all the time, I think that is the thing we really need to improve on.
Q. On JamesQuick’s injury:
COACH PETRINO: I am not real encouraged, I guess the encouraging thing is it’s not an Achilles and that was one of thoughts that it would be because of where he said the pain was. It is not an Achilles but it is a severely sprained ankle and I don’t know the amount of time that he will miss. There has been some improvement in the past hours but he is still in a lot of pain.
Q. On whether James Quick would play this weekend:
COACH PETRINO: Yeah, I would doubt that he would be ready this week end.
North Carolina
Q. On the play calling near the red zone in the team’s last possession:
COACH FEDORA: If I could do it over I would. I’d do a lot of things differently, but I don’t get the option to do that. We could have called a different pass or a different run. We could have called a lot of different things, but the ones we called we had prepared for and we felt good about those calls. We expect them to be successful and unfortunately they weren’t.
Q. On if Elijah Hood will get more carries moving forward:
COACH FEDORA: You look at how productive he was during the game. We want to make sure we get the ball in his hands so many times a game. When he’s healthy and running the ball productively, we need to get the ball to him more, there’s no doubt. He reeled off 30 something yards on a play and we took him out for a breather and we didn’t get him back into the game because we were in a hurry up mode, and we can’t substitute in a hurry up mode. We had taken him out because he had just had a 29 yard run breaking about four tackles there at the end of it, so we took him out to get a breath. We had planned to get him back in, but we went into hurry up mode, so we don’t substitute.