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ATLANTIC COAST CONFERENCE FOOTBALL MEDIA CONFERENCE

September 7, 2016

Larry Fedora

Greensboro, North Carolina

LARRY FEDORA: Our team is anxious to get back out on the field and play again, and we're looking forward to going to Champaign and facing a very strong Illinois team, a team that Lovie Smith is doing a great job with.

Q. Just your takeaways in week one from quarterback Mitch Trubisky. I know you obviously said he's been very patient for this opportunity that he got this year and what you can say from game 1.
LARRY FEDORA: I think in game 1 he learned a lot. I think he realized that coming off the bench in relief is a little bit different from being a starter. I think he'll be a better player this week than he was last week.

Q. And then as far as the multidimensional weapon of TJ Logan, just what you can say about his ability in the run game and in the return game, as well, moving forward.
LARRY FEDORA: Well, TJ has always had the ability to make big plays for us any time he's on the field. It was fun to see those kind of things pay off for him because he's a hard-working kid. He's in his senior year. He's put a lot into it, and he wants to make plays for this football team. I'm happy to see that. He's a lot of fun to coach.

Q. I just wanted to ask you about the rush defense. The numbers don't look good, but how much of that was things that you saw that were problems, how much of it was just the fact that Chubb and Georgia has a great running attack?
LARRY FEDORA: Yeah, I'd say there were probably two or three times that we felt because of the shifting and the motioning that we got out-gapped, but for the most part, it was things that we feel like we can get corrected. I mean, we had 17 missed tackles in the game, and listen, I don't want to take anything away from Nick Chubb because he's a great running back, but we did have 17 missed tackles in the game, and he called some of those missed tackles. We've got to do a better job of tackling.

Q. Are you confident that the rush defense, which was a little bit of a problem at times last year, will be where you want it to be this year?
LARRY FEDORA: I think so, because I think there were flashes of it in the game the other night where they played really well against the run. We're going to have to tackle better or that'll be tough for us against any opponent.

Q. Talking about last week's game, you played a really tough running back in Chubb. Will that help you the rest of the season when you play schools like Florida State who have big running backs like that?
LARRY FEDORA: I hope so because Pitt has got a whole backfield of guys that can go. Florida State does. There's other teams in our league we're going to play that have really good running backs. We think hopefully we'll be better because of our opponent this past week. We feel like we learned a lot about our football team, so I think I'm looking forward to see what this team is going to do in the future.

Q. This week you take on Illinois, Coach Lovie Smith, who used to be a pro coach, now he's in college. Have you ever met the gentleman before or do you have any history with Lovie Smith?
LARRY FEDORA: I don't. I'm really looking forward to meeting Lovie. I know Lovie played high school ball at Big Sandy back in the day, and they were really good, I think two or three state championships, and his head high school coach was a position coach at the college that I played at. I got to know him, and he always had great things to say about Lovie Smith, so I look forward to meeting him.

Q. Any time that you play an opponent who has made a coaching change, and especially one that you played last year, how different do they look to you this year?
LARRY FEDORA: Well, they're still very, very talented in the defensive line. I mean, it's the same guys that played against us last year, and we thought we were really good last year, the defensive line. There's one guy in the secondary, the safety, that played well against us last year. He's back. Offensively the quarterback is back. I mean, so personnel wise we know a little bit about some of these guys, but we really don't know scheme wise what they're going to do. We've studied a lot of the NFL film. How much of that Lovie will have into his game plan, I don't know. We studied Garrick McGee's history as an offensive coordinator and everywhere he's been.

There's just so much unknown. We're going to have to go into the game and make good adjustments.

Q. Are there particular points of emphasis for you this week in practice, things that you want to improve on, change?
LARRY FEDORA: You bet, yeah, every area that we were -- that we had flaws and showed mistakes, we want improvement in all those areas. We know we've got to tackle better this week, so there will be a point of emphasis on that, even though we do emphasize it every day. We have to continue to take care of the ball. We did a nice job of that the other day.

And we have to clean up a lot of the mistakes that caused the inconsistency on offense.

Q. Did some of the things that concerned you in that game, were those kind of private worries that you had observing your team in fall camp, or were some of those things that surprised you coming out of fall camp?
LARRY FEDORA: Well, I worry about everything coming out of fall camp, and some of the things I worry about come true, and some of them don't. We didn't tackle as well as I would have liked to, and I did not expect that. I thought we were going to tackle fine. I thought we had spent plenty of time on the physicality part of football during camp. But unfortunately it didn't work out that way.

So yeah, there were some things that I was surprised about, and there were some things that I was worried about that -- you always worry. You never know offensively how you're going to be as you start out, especially with a new quarterback. We were inconsistent in a lot of places, I mean, and it was not just one guy, it was multiple -- it was a different guy in just about every situation. So we've got to get all that cleaned up.

Q. The team really came together and some leaders really emerged in the locker room after last year's loss to South Carolina. Did you get a similar sense in the locker room after this week's game?
LARRY FEDORA: You know, I think there was a lot of disappointment, but there were a lot of guys that were being very positive, and so I do expect that to happen. Our guys have seen it before. They know what it takes. They know it's really -- for us, it's focusing inward. It's making sure that we are right, making sure we get corrected, making sure it's not so much about the opponent that we play but making sure we get the things cleaned up that we need to take care of as a team.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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