2021 SUBWAY ACC FOOTBALL CHAMPIONSHIP GAME: WAKE FOREST VS PITT

December 3, 2021

Dave Clawson

Bank of America Stadium

Wake Forest Demon Deacons

Press Conference

DAVE CLAWSON: Good to see everybody again. We've had a good week of preparation. We head down to Charlotte today, and we're, again, very excited to play for the ACC Championship against an excellent Pitt football team.

With that, I'll open it up for questions.

Q. Dave, given the type of quarterbacks you guys have faced all throughout the year, how prepared do you feel your group is for what they're going to face tomorrow with the Pitt game?

DAVE CLAWSON: I mean, we've played good quarterbacks all year, but Kenny Pickett is the ACC Player of the Year, and he's earned that honor. He's excellent. We have a good quarterback, too, that our guys face, but Kenny Pickett is a great player. He doesn't take sacks. He can make every throw. He's a competitor. He's a winner.

This is one of the best quarterbacks we've ever coached against in my eight years at Wake Forest, so it's going to be a challenge to defend him and their whole offense. I'm sure he'd be the first to tell you that he's certainly got some help, and it starts up front. Their O-line is older, four seniors. They're big, they're physical, they're athletic, they're well-coached.

Jordan Addison is as good of a receiver that we've defended all year, but he's not their only weapon. Jared Wayne has become a heck of a player for them, Shocky Jacques-Louis is a really good player, Taysir Mack, those two tight ends, Krull, Bartholomew is going to be -- watch him the next two or three years, he'll become the most dominant tight end in the ACC.

What he's doing as a true freshman -- these are the things I couldn't tell you on Sunday. Now that I've watched film, that guy 86 is one of the most underrated players on their team, and they've got three backs, Israel, Davis, Hammond.

It's not one person, but the trigger man is exceptional.

Q. You've mentioned honors, Kenny Pickett being the Player of the Year. You were named the ACC's Coach of the Year yesterday. Does that mean anything to you personally?

DAVE CLAWSON: All these are program awards. I've hired a great staff. I have a football team that bought in. I have a wonderful family that's incredibly supportive of what I do, and when you have a great staff, a bought-in football team and a great family, good things happen.

It just so happens that my name goes on the award, but that is clearly a program, staff and team award, and I'm certainly grateful that they recognized us, but it's certainly a we, not a me award.

Q. What does this championship game appearance mean to your program with it being the first one in 15 years, since 2006, the last time the Wake Forest Demon Deacons played in the ACC Championship game?

DAVE CLAWSON: Well, when you start a season, you have goals, and we always want to set our goals high. Whether that's the College Football Playoff, an ACC Championship, a division title, double-digit wins. To see all the hard work, and again, football coaches always say this, and it is a cliche, but it's true, that the amount of work that goes in January, February, spring football, summer training, summer camp, you just don't show up and play a championship game. There's so much sweat equity that goes into this to even be in this position.

It's very rewarding, but at the same time you're not in this position unless you're competitive, and if you're competitive, you now want to win the game.

Again, we're happy to be there but not just happy to be there, and we know how good Pitt is. There's a lot of good football teams in the ACC, and we've played a bunch of them, NC State, Clemson, Virginia. Good football teams - Louisville - that we were fortunate to win. This is another exceptional football team.

You don't play in this game unless you're really good. Pat has done a great job, and we're both coaches that have been in our programs for seven and eight years. It's taken us time to build it to this point, and when you get an opportunity like this, you certainly want to play your best game.

Q. You mentioned Sunday that indeed you hadn't really had the time to process and analyze Pitt. What are your impressions of that front seven, and what has allowed Pitt to -- I think ranked second nationally in sacks per game.

DAVE CLAWSON: Well, they've got a great front four. Kancey, defensive tackle, No. 8 is an all-conference player; the defensive end Baldonado is an excellent pass rusher; Camp and Alexander are both big, physical guys, 285, 290.

A lot of it is scheme. Pat is a guy as long as I've known him that believes in stopping the run schematically. They are a press quarters, outnumber the box, downhill, blitz you. His goal is to make you one-dimensional, and when you become one-dimensional, it allows them to rush the passer.

His scheme is well thought out. He knows it inside out. He knows what he's challenging you to do. He knows what he's taking away, and his kids know it, too.

I think the great thing that Pat does, and Randy Bates, is they coach defense, they don't coach defenses. They're not one of those junk defenses that you don't know what you're going to get and they may get your or you may get them. They know what they're doing and the pressure points of what they're defending, and that's why Pat has always played good defense.

Q. If you'll indulge me a question about your past at the University of Buffalo, there was a young man, defensive back, who suffered a career-ending injury and became a volunteer student assistant coach named Brent Pry who just yesterday was introduced as Virginia Tech's new head coach. I was wondering, he mentioned you when we were asking about his coaching journey, and I was wondering what you recalled about him and if you have followed his career arc.

DAVE CLAWSON: Yeah, I have followed his career arc. His dad, Jim Pry, was the offensive coordinator the year before I got to Buffalo, so Brent was a defensive back. I was the secondary coach there in 1991. Brent comes from a football family. He certainly was an intense football player and got into the family business, so to say, and he's had great success at Vanderbilt and then Penn State.

When you have success at that level as a coordinator, you eventually hope to be a head coach, and for him to go to a place that he GA'd and I know he's got relationships with the Beamer family, and I'm sure he'll do a great job there.

Q. What was your reaction when you heard the news yesterday about Bronco?

DAVE CLAWSON: Not completely shocked. Surprised at the timing of it. But in the ACC room, I've probably become as close with Bronco as any coach in the ACC. He's the guy in the league meetings that when we break, the two of us would have a conversation or have a meal together or go for a walk, and I just have a ton of respect for Bronco.

I think he gets the big picture of college football, the stress that it puts on a family and the pressures that it entails. I never thought Bronco was one of those guys that was going to coach until he was 70.

I know how important his faith and his family is to him, and again, he's -- last year when we were dealing with the pandemic and what the right thing to do was, Bronco and I probably talked two or three times a week because I value his opinion so much because I always know it's value-based, and it was never about what's best for him, it was what was best for the student-athletes.

I reached out to him yesterday, and he got right back to me. I'll miss my friend. I really will. He is somebody I have a lot of respect for, and he's become a really close friend, and I'm going to miss him in the league meetings.

He was a football coach that was in it for all the right reasons.

Q. He was truly conflicted about last season and playing in the pandemic, wasn't he.

DAVE CLAWSON: Yeah, yeah. I was, too. You know, I just -- are we doing the right thing, and we kept going back and forth of, okay, the decision is made to play, what precautions can we take to help protect our team. It wasn't, well, what can we do to help us win.

I think both of us viewed our primary responsibility was the safety and welfare of our team, not what's a way to cut a corner to steal a win. I really feel that Bronco truly felt that way.

I think we probably both did things early in the season that helped protect our team at the expense of maybe not playing well early. If I had to do it again, I'd do it again, and I think Bronco would, too. But how we handled the pandemic in terms of not having our players tackle and not going to the ground, I did not want to risk an injury to anybody on our football team if we weren't going to play games. I thought I owed that to Boogie Basham and other seniors, and we probably weren't as ready to play as we should have been. But I don't regret that decision, and a lot of that mindset came from my discussions with Bronco.

I don't think it's an accident -- Bronco didn't get off to a good start last year, either, and neither did we. We just talked about it, everything was about the health and safety until the games were played, and then it just became about the wins. I don't think either of us were really aligned with that, but we went to bed at night feeling like we did the best for our players to keep them safe.

Q. I was wondering, when you were the OC at Villanova and Pat Narduzzi was the DC at Rhode Island, who won?

DAVE CLAWSON: Well, those years we had the better team, so I wouldn't say that I won or Pat lost. Villanova beat Rhode Island. But Rhode Island was a little tougher job than Villanova, so we had the better team those years, so I had Brian Westbrook, Brian Finneran. I called a lot of bad plays that went for 40 yards.

Q. Did you notice from Pat in those days the same thing you're seeing now from his defense? He hasn't changed over the decades, has he?

DAVE CLAWSON: He's aggressive, and he believes in what he believes. The thing about Pat is he's not conceding you an inch. If you beat them, you beat them. It wasn't because he was giving you hitch throws against three deep or giving you a six-man box. If you beat Pat, you had to execute them and you had to win match-ups.

Again, I think that's where we're a little bit similar. We do what we do on offense, and Pat does what he does on defense, and whatever team executes the best will win that match-up. It won't be because we came up with something cute last minute.

Q. You said that Narduzzi's defense is extremely aggressive. How does your offense help that, having secrets built into every single play?

DAVE CLAWSON: Well, it's going to come down to match-ups. Pat doesn't want you to be balanced, and so I think in his mind if he does certain things he'll dictate to us what we'll have to do, and that will come down to a match-up.

Again, they'll lighten the box every now and then, but for the most part, they're going to be plus one, and how do we manage the plus one.

Q. You talked about how important is the preparation during January, February and the spring especially. How do you see the evolution of the team since then to now, both individually each player and as a team, as a family?

DAVE CLAWSON: Well, I've said this multiple times. COVID was awful. It was a really awful time for our country, and there were so many sad stories of how many people dying and people losing jobs, and last year was really hard on our football team.

One of the silver linings of it was how close our team became, and I could see that in our winter workouts, I could see that in spring football, I could see that with the amount of time that they were spending in our football office, that when a team is close and chooses to spend time together, usually that shows up on the football field.

You know, I had a good feeling about our team going into this season. I realize not everybody felt the same way, which was why I think we were picked fifth in the preseason polls, but I've done this 33 years. I've been a head coach 22. I had a sense that we had a chance if we could stay healthy and develop depth and remain unselfish to have a pretty good football team this year, and I'm not always 100 percent accurate with that, but in this case I'm glad I was in the ballpark.

Q. This is the first time since 2010 the ACC champion will not be named Clemson or Florida State. What do you think that says about the conference this season?

DAVE CLAWSON: Well, I think the conference is really strong. We have four teams in the top 20. The level of football and the competitiveness, and unfortunately the national media becomes when it isn't Clemson or Florida State or a preseason top 10 team, there's this perception that the league is down. I think the league is just more balanced. There's a lot of good football teams this year in the ACC. We've played them, and Pitt is right up there.

We're excited about the opportunity. I think we're the first team from the Atlantic not named Florida State or Clemson since 2008, and the opportunity for us or Pitt to be the first team since 2010 when Virginia Tech won it I think would be a big deal to both programs.

Q. I'm just interested, is there a team that you've played offensively this year that reminds you of Pitt, and vice versa, defensively, that you have some experience from playing this year that kind of reminds you of what you might see tomorrow?

DAVE CLAWSON: Not really. Pitt is probably as much of a pro-style offense as we'll play all year. Mark Whipple is their offensive coordinator. He was with the Pittsburgh Steelers. I think he was with the Eagles for a little bit. There's a lot of pro concepts they run, what we call drive concepts, Hank concept, and there's a lot of West Coast passing concepts that show up.

He's also one of the few people that still runs some I-formation concepts. He runs a tackle-over formation that he's been running for over 20 years. I remember seeing that when we were at -- when he was at UMass, and it's very unique. He's got a really well-thought-out run game and play action game out of it.

So their offensive system like ours is unique, and like I said with Pat's defense, it is a clear-cut philosophy of what he believes in what he does, and that's one of the reasons that Pat has always coached good defenses is he believes what he believes and he's going to do what he's doing to do, and they do it really well.

Q. Have many other guys from the 2006 team reached out this week, and if so, what's that been like?

DAVE CLAWSON: I'm going to be honest with you, we work 80, 90 hours a week and then you're in a championship game. As a football coach, this isn't a week for a lot of chitchat. I'm sure there's a lot of people coming back. Riley Skinner reached out to me, but this isn't social week. This is not a bowl game that you've got two weeks. You win a game, you fly back, and we're trying to win a football game.

I'm sure people are reaching out to Bill Faircloth and other people, but as coaches, we're in the bunker. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that we'll do the social stuff afterwards.

Q. Last year Sam had in that stadium what could be viewed as a career low point with the interceptions, and I remember you mentioned in fall camp that it was important for him to go to the Manning Passing Academy this summer and get a chance to actually pick the brains of some of the great quarterbacks in the NFL of how to handle situations like that and how to grow from it.

Now that the regular season is finished and he's had such a great year, what area have you seen the most growth in Sam, as he goes back to that stadium?

DAVE CLAWSON: I think just his maturation, his ability to get past a bad play, his ability to forgive himself for a mistake. He doesn't have this expectation anymore that he has to be perfect.

Q. Would you say the Louisville game was an example of that where he threw the pick and then they led the drive?

DAVE CLAWSON: Yeah, you've heard me say that three or four times. That was to me a breakthrough moment that he threw a bad pick in the fourth quarter, shook it off and led us to two scoring drives afterwards to win the game.

I don't know if Sam Hartman from a year ago would have handled that as well. Absolutely that's -- he's always had a good arm. He's always worked hard and prepared himself. His ability to forgive himself for a bad play and his mental -- how he processes not being perfect is really where he's grown, and that's why he's had the success he has this year.

Q. Defensively with the takeaways you guys have had this year, is there an exact science to getting takeaways the way you have this year relative to some of the years where that was a problem for you guys?

DAVE CLAWSON: I mean, that's an area that we've been pretty good at traditionally. We spend a lot of time at it. We teach habits of how to attack the football, whether it's a punch or a strip or a rake. We have different techniques that we teach and coach.

I think as players get older and they've kind of learned those habits and they become second nature, it certainly helps.

Q. You've talked about how a championship game is different than a bowl game. Small sample of your players, there aren't that many guys who have played in championship football games. Have you had anybody step up to say these are experiences I've had in these kind of games in high school or other places, and who's been a leader in that kind of an area?

DAVE CLAWSON: Well, I think our older players who have been here for four, five, six years, there's an appreciation that these games are hard to get into. You can't take them for granted. I don't think anybody on our team is really in the mood to hear about a high school track meet or a semifinal state basketball game. The reality of it is for our players, this is new for all of them, and for the Pitt players, it's new for those guys that weren't on the '18 team.

It's like a Super Bowl or a World Series or an NCAA championship game; it's unique because you're doing it with this group for the first time. I don't know if anyone stepped up and said, hey, this happened my sophomore year in high school in the state playoff game, this is what we need to do. It's been more, guys, this is hard to get to. This is a unique opportunity, and let's make the most of it and make sure that our preparation is top-notch so that when the game is over, win or loss, we have no regrets about how we prepared for it.

Q. How about the way that you've been able to draw on your experiences from the other championship games that you have played in at the college football level?

DAVE CLAWSON: You know, in my mind we played a championship game a week ago. I mean, when we went to BC, if we win that game, we win the Atlantic championship. If we lose that game, we don't.

So again, there's certainly a 10,000-foot big-picture view of what we're doing, but the reality of it is you don't win a championship unless you win the game, so if you focus on the things you have to do in the game, the execution, the preparation, that's still the focus. If we're able to go 1-0 this week and win the game, the consequence of that is we do win a championship.

But we're focusing on going 1-0 in preparing for Pitt. You can't win a championship unless you win the football game, so our focus is on our execution and preparation.

Q. It seemed like Malik Mustapha struggled against Army and it seemed like he's been on the upward curve you like to talk about since then. What have you seen from him that you've really liked over the last five games?

DAVE CLAWSON: I think he's feeling a lot more comfortable with the defense. He's a very instinctive football player. I thought he had his best game of the year against BC, and I just think it's a guy that's becoming comfortable with his role, his position and the scheme and the application of that scheme on a weekly basis.