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ATLANTIC COAST CONFERENCE FOOTBALL MEDIA CONFERENCE

October 12, 2016

Jimbo Fisher

Greensboro, North Carolina

JIMBO FISHER: Very proud of the guys, the effort. Hard-fought victory Saturday night against Miami. Miami is a very good football team, played very well. Typical Florida State-Miami type game, comes right down to the end, kids know each other, play hard, a lot on the line and just very competitive and great for college football, great for the ACC. Very outstanding effort by both teams, and I was very fortunate to be a part of it.

Need to put that behind us very quickly, play an excellent Wake Forest team who's 5-1, playing really well offensively, extremely efficient, take care of the football. Quarterbacks make great decisions, also runners with dual threat. Very patient on offense, take shots when they have to, get great drives, backs can run the ball, line does a great job, receivers really know what they do. They have their man plays, their zone plays, exactly how they're going to play it out, do a great job defensively, outstanding. Great leverage by the linebackers, front guys, everything is tied together. Have to earn everything you get, never get guys just void in big plays, and things that are very obvious, they're very tough up front, play great pad level, great hands. The backers, typical Wake Forest team as far as junior-senior oriented team, have played a couple years.

Really, really good football team. 53 is a great pass rusher, 26 can run, the inside backers 8, up from 14, 95, the inside guys, 25 is a very good cover guy, 22 is leading them in tackles. They play extremely well. I mean, very well, and on special teams extremely sound. Great, great teams, attention to detail, do everything right. Playing very well, playing very confident, and playing like a very experienced team, and there's no doubt why they're 5-1, play excellent football. Create a lot of turnovers on defense, also.

We're definitely going to have our hands full. We're going to have to play a great game, and hopefully we'll continue to get better and look forward to a great week of practice.

Q. I wanted to ask about your defense. After three kind of rocky games, it really stepped up Saturday. What changed? What made the big improvement?
JIMBO FISHER: Well, I think first of all, attitude. I think just in the urgency to do things right, and I think we're getting healthier. I think some of our front guys, Josh Sweat is now a couple weeks out from knee surgery, playing very physical. Derrick Nnadi was extremely physical in the game. Guys are getting much healthier. We were banged up in the middle there, but that's not an excuse, but they're doing that. The urgency to know, and they know they have not played up to their potential, and it was time to do that.

They were able to do that, and we need to do it again this week and do it the rest of the year. Very proud of our kids and the effort which they put forward and the preparation in which they did and the attitude which they played with.

Q. Do you think -- if that urgency stays there and you play with that attitude, do you think the defense can be like normal Florida State defenses in the past?
JIMBO FISHER: I hope so. I mean, I do. I still think we've got -- we're still a work in progress in the things we have to do, but we can play -- when we want to play well, we play well. I don't say -- it's not an excuse. When they learn and they understand all the things they're doing and getting more comfortable in what they're doing and staying healthy, we have a chance to have a good team.

That's what I said at the beginning of the year, but again, they have to have the consistency, and that's what we keep fighting for.

Q. When you talk about urgency, do you think the rivalry game is something that brought the urgency to the forefront?
JIMBO FISHER: It doesn't hurt it, that's for sure. I mean, you know that. But I think also, I think just their pride in knowing that we haven't played up to our potential on that side, and we need to get rid of the potential word and get to the P word of performance, and they needed to perform well, and they did.

Q. Just wondering where the idea of the promise notes came from that was on the show last night and if you had done something like that before.
JIMBO FISHER: We have done many things different, things inside that just makes guys respond and do different things. We often do quite a few things that have never been reported. It was just something we thought was necessary to help us focus and pull ourselves together.

Q. You've talked a lot about Wake Forest and it seems like the last few years it's been a team that's been a little bit of a tough one. What do you think it is that Wake does that allows them to be such a tough game for you guys?
JIMBO FISHER: I think they play us very hard. They've always done that. They play very physical. They're very well-coached. They're very experienced. Again, this team here is a much more junior-senior oriented team, which you can see, and I think Jim Grobe used to build those guys up and play a lot of them young, and then every three or four years they have one heck of a football team.

The rest of the time they were still very, very good, and I think they've got one of those right now, and they're doing very well.

Q. I think it was Freddie who said, this team is very physical; in some ways they're very similar to Boston College. Do you think that's something people kind of underrate or not even really discuss when it comes to Wake Forest, just about how physical they can be?
JIMBO FISHER: Not in our -- not at Florida State we don't, but you may nationally or the way people think. I don't know that, but we've never thought of them that way. We've always thought they were very physical and tough and played very, very well. But yes, they are. They're a very physical football team.

Q. Talk about how you controlled the Miami running game on Saturday night. They have two running backs, very good, a couple games ago both of them rushed for 100 yards. How did you shut them down in the second half?
JIMBO FISHER: Well, I think first the physicality of our defensive front. Our defensive front did a great job of winning the line of scrimmage being physical, denting the line of scrimmage, changing the line of scrimmage and making things bubble and allowing our backers and safeties to fit very well, and our ends kept great contain on the ball, and the physicality up front was the key.

Q. Playing Wake Forest this week, they're 5-1, they're actually a better improved Wake Forest than people give them credit for, so what do you see on film that might give you problems on Saturday?
JIMBO FISHER: Everything, all three phases. This is a really good football team. They're well-coached and they're playing with great confidence. Like I said, they're junior and senior oriented, they're going to be in environments and atmospheres, these guys have done this, been there, done that, and they're playing very well in all three phases, like I said before. They're a really good football team, and they play together. They play to each other.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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