	products recent interviews FastScripts archive about ASAP Sports

Our Clients:

Browse by Sport

Find us on

Subscribe to RSS

Click to go to
Asaptext.com

View our
e-Brochure

ATLANTIC COAST CONFERENCE FOOTBALL MEDIA CONFERENCE

October 18, 2017

David Cutcliffe

Greensboro, North Carolina

THE MODERATOR: We're now joined by Duke head football coach David Cutcliffe.

COACH CUTCLIFFE: When you play Pitt, you know you're going to play a complete team. Their staff does -- Coach Narduzzi does a great job of balance of offense, defense and kicking game.

So preparation needs to be complete. And that's what we're in the process of right now. I'm watching it right here before we speak, continuing to watching and work with what we're having to get done.

Q. To look at the Coastal Division and the ACC overall, just what you can say about the talent level of coaching and then student-athletes overall, just how nobody is really safe, as we've seen with Syracuse over Clemson, as the Coastal Division continues to change from year to year, just what you can say about the level of competition.
COACH CUTCLIFFE: Well, it's been changing since I've been in the league. This is the tenth year. And I think the quality of coaching, as you mentioned, has continued to just get better. You have a league now where coaches are coming to take jobs to stay, not to get another job. They're building programs.

The universities are committed to building programs, and therefore you are definitely seeing more balance and better student-athletes across the board.

Q. As far as your quarterback play through these first seven games for you, just what you can say about Daniel Jones and his evolution at this point, what your takeaways have been from him under center?
COACH CUTCLIFFE: He's extremely tough, talented, incredible young man. He's been hit more than we'd like him to get hit. He's been under a lot of duress at times this year, and that's not ever the design.

But he's a guy that we all have a great deal of confidence in, and he can make plays with his arm and he can make plays running. So we're very fortunate to have him.

Q. I was intrigued by the title you put on your coordinator, Baxter Family Offensive Coordinator. I was wondering if those kind of endowments are becoming more and more prevalent in college football. I know it happened to Pat Narduzzi and Michigan State, and I think Stanford does it, too. Is that inevitably something that's going to happen at a lot of schools?
COACH CUTCLIFFE: I think it probably is going to some degree. Naming rights are important. Bill Baxter and his family have been incredibly generous and supportive of our program.

I think it's a unique way that, yeah, there's facilities but a big part of what we do are the quality of the people that we can hire. You're not ever going to have a great college football program without great assistant football coaches, and I think that's indicative of what -- emphasizes what people really believe is important about a program; it is about people, not always just facilities. So I do think it's definitely something in the future.

Q. Question about Georgia Tech. They're playing Wake Forest this weekend, and one thing I wanted to write about is Paul has a really good record in that rotational game against the Atlantic. I was curious if you were having thoughts about why that might be.
COACH CUTCLIFFE: I think the first reason is that Georgia Tech's been really good under Paul Johnson. That's the first reason. They have a good record against a lot of people, nonconference and otherwise.

So the fact that he's an outstanding football coach. I think there's no question that if a team that is playing Georgia Tech is not familiar with the scheme, that they're not playing another team that runs the scheme, it's a little more difficult for them to prepare. They may not work in spring practice any against it, et cetera. I don't know that.

But I think the biggest reason is that Georgia Tech has got good players and they've got an outstanding staff, starting with the head coach.

Q. Obviously you've played them now nine years, this will be ten, has the benefit for you been more like your players have seen this offense year in, year out, so they have a better sense of things; or have you evolved also in terms of knowing the best ways to get your team ready?
COACH CUTCLIFFE: We've played Army and Navy this entire time off and on, too. So we've had a lot of exposures. We've developed a system how we go about preparing for it. I'm not talking about scheme. I'm talking about how we practice for it, et cetera.

So we hope we're doing better as we learn, which has got to help some. We're doing things we believe help us. But I think people that don't have a system, don't have a way to go about getting themselves ready get caught behind the eight ball a little bit.

As we all know, it's more unique than not. You don't see it that often. And particularly, you're not going to see it where someone knows it like Paul Johnson knows it. There's a huge difference when his experience, his level of ability and they recruit good players. So that's a pretty tough combination.

Q. Coming off the Florida State game, did you see any improvement in your defense going back to where they were earlier in the season compared to the Miami and Virginia games?
COACH CUTCLIFFE: We played well, really well at times. We didn't tackle as well as we would have liked. We did some good things at Virginia. We didn't play nearly as consistent versus Virginia.

We actually physically probably dominated Miami. We just had a really poor day around all over offensively and put ourselves in a bad position.

So they haven't really gone away. And the thing you gotta do, you can play well. If you don't tackle well, the results aren't going to be what you want. So we think we're going to continue to improve defensively.

Q. Any offensive improvement at all, I guess? You were hoping you can get better on that side of the ball coming off the Miami and Virginia games?
COACH CUTCLIFFE: We were a great deal better against Florida State. Florida State probably has one of the more talented defenses in the country, not just in our league. And I thought we ran the ball consistently better than anytime we've done it this year. We just did not break the line of scrimmage in big runs. Or we hit one pass, 57 yards. We just didn't get explosive plays.

It was a hard-fought, 17-10 game, but we didn't score enough points. That's the bottom line. But did we play better? Absolutely we played better.

THE MODERATOR: Thank you.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

ASAP Sports, Inc. | T: 1.212 385 0297