CHEEZ-IT BOWL: CLEMSON VS IOWA STATE

December 26, 2021

Jon Heacock

Eyioma Uwazurike

Camping World Stadium

Iowa State Cyclones

Press Conference

JON HEACOCK: First of all, very thankful and grateful to be a part of the Cheez-It Bowl. And really what this Bowl game represents and what these guys have done, listening to Steve [Hogan] last night and really being here a couple years ago, watching what they have done, you know, surrounding the Bowl site and obviously Camping World Stadium, it's really impressive.

Great to be here. Our guys are excited about it. Worked really hard the last few weeks and really appreciative of being here and grateful and thankful that we have opportunity.

Q. I wanted to start with some of the core seniors that you have on your roster, guys like O'Rien Vance, Mike Rose, Greg Eisworth, what do they mean to the program and how you've changed your scheme from the very, very beginning when you came to the 3-3-5 which has been so effective for you? What does that mean for you schematically and from a leadership perspective?

JON HEACOCK: I think, first and foremost, they are the secret sauce, the 3-3-5, 3-5-3, three-high safeties, whatever you want to call it, has gotten a lot of notoriety. The secret sauce is those guys that bought into how we play defense and not so much what we were playing.

I think Enyi is a great example of that. He's been here as long as we have. I think that has been the secret sauce, their makeup of how we do things, how they have studied the film, what they bought into, our vision of defense.

As we got into it, defense was not something that was maybe a high priority in our conference. Everybody was scoring points or you didn't think you could play defense. I think our kids, our players, took that to heart and bought into the how stuff. And they meant everything to what we have been doing on defense. They have been the secret sauce.

Again, I think a lot of it gets put on what we do. I think the reality of it is how our guys have done it has been what's really been remarkable for me. I've done this for a long time, and they have been as impressive a group as I've ever been around.

Q. Go back to 2019 when you were both here, faced Notre Dame in the Camping World Bowl. What changed after that season going forward that made Iowa State Football program better? What changed? What had to change?

EYIOMA UWAZURIKE: After that game, throughout every season, you learn a lot. You capitalize from the mistakes that you've made before. And I really feel like that was the biggest key that helped us grow from that situation that happened in 2019.

But I'd like to say we take -- you know, with all our losses, we learned a lesson with them. It was a lesson at the end of the day, and whatever we learned from that game we took forward with us to prepare for the next season. It really helped out. So, yeah.

JON HEACOCK: I would agree with that. I think really you learn lessons. I think as a coaching staff, we had all, for the most part, come with Coach [Matt Campbell] from the University of Toledo. I think we had always done things certain ways and gotten ourselves to the point where we were playing here, playing Notre Dame, and think we came out of that game and made a lot of changes of, you know, who we were, what we had done.

We had always -- with Coach, the answer is work harder and work more hours. We had gotten to a point where we had worked as hard and as many hours as you could probably work, and we came out of that game and realized maybe that's not completely the answer either.

I give Coach Campbell a ton of credit. Made some changes, hard changes. I think we all looked around the room and made changes in our own way. Our guys -- again, we learned great lessons from it, and I think our kids have responded and coaches have responded as well.

Q. Clemson's offense, notable struggles through the first part of the year, maybe even the first two thirds. What changed for them there in the last three or four games that allowed them to have at least a little bit more success?

JON HEACOCK: I don't know. You would probably have to directly ask those guys. But you see the change. I think -- I don't know. I don't see a ton of schematic changes, to be honest with you.

I think what you see is I think the guys maybe got comfortable, the experience of guys that were playing, it was a newer group, those kind of things.

But, man, sure, you do notice a difference in the second half of the season, as you're talking about, you know, scoring upwards of 36, 30-some points a game; the ball is going up and down the field, success running the football, throwing the football.

And I think probably just -- again, just watching probably the experience all those guys got as the season went along. They improved and got better and better and were playing -- as coaches, playing their best football at the end of the year, and that's what you hope, and that's really what I saw on film.

Q. Coach Campbell talked, when the Bowl game was announced, about his connections with Coach Dabo Swinney. I think those have been pretty well documented, the work you have done with them. Can you walk us through that from your end? When you guys got an opportunity to work with them, what did you learn from them, and what did they maybe learn from you?

JON HEACOCK: Those guys, again, we were in a new defense, and when they came up, we gave them a completely different scheme than what we are playing now, so -- just teasing. You know, the situation where those guys came up and visited with Brent [Venables] and the staff and looked at what we were doing. I think all staffs do that. I think really good staffs do that, try to get some stuff that they can use.

And I don't know how much they are using now or not. But really kind of build a little bit of relationship with them through the years and even with Wes [Goodwin] off the field and those kind of things.

Great relationship, to be honest with you, very professional. We had never gotten down there. I think Coach Campbell had spoke maybe down there, but those guys came up and visited with us. I think just a professional thing that you do is coaches visit places. And they came to visit us, and stayed in touch with those guys. Touched base with Brent last week in his new hire. So that's kind of been -- that was it, to be honest.

Q. When a team goes through a coaching change and coordinator change as well, do you feel you have to do anything differently because they are not going to have the same offensive coordinator? Or when they make changes, do you have to look out for something different, or will they run a pretty similar system for what they did before?

JON HEACOCK: I think you have to prep for what you see. I don't think you chase ghosts. I think you do chase some. Obviously, we go back through years of film, whatever we can find.

But, you really have to focus on what you think you're seeing and what you're getting. And for us, because we play a little bit of a different defense. We do get a lot of schematical things that people have run, whatever, and so we rep those things as well, things we have seen throughout our season and the last three years, really, spend time doing that.

So not a lot. We don't try to chase too many ghosts. You just don't have time. You have to kind of do what you do. You have to look at what they are doing, what their strengths are, try to pull from that, look at years, maybe, of experience that they have seen versus your kind of style of defense or whatever.

If you get caught chasing ghosts in a Bowl game, it's a long haul. We try to stick with what we think we've seen and who is doing what they do, and that's what we go with.

Q. You have lost two defensive backs to the transfer portal. How do you replace that? And you have ten starters that are senior-level, whether they go or stay, too early to tell, but how have you adjusted maybe practice to try to look at some of the younger players that may have to step in in 2022 and beyond?

JON HEACOCK: Coach does a great job. We have spent a ton of time. We get our reps with the ones, reps with the twos, reps with the threes. We have built depth through what we have been doing. So with some guys that have moved on, we just kind of move next guy in and move them over and move them up. So I don't think it's been a huge change.

I think you spend your time with reps. Coach [Matt] Campbell has always been a huge Bowl game practice, repetitions with everybody, from true freshmen to sophomores to juniors.

So I don't think it's changed a lot. I think we stick with kind of the pattern that Coach has got us into, since we've been with him, as a Bowl prep. So we have gotten a lot of reps. We've had to move some guys over and up, obviously, but most of those guys have all played for us throughout the season.