University of North Carolina Athletics
Butch Davis Press Conference Quotes
October 22, 2007 | Football
Oct. 22, 2007
Chapel Hill, N.C. -
Opening Comments
The off week came at a good time for us. If it would have come at week three, you team is excited about playing, you're probably trying to get better, you're getting into a routine. I think that for this football team coming at the time that it did it accomplished quite a bit for us. Just take you back a little bit to what we tried to accomplish last week from a coaching standpoint we did as much statistical analysis on our football team to try and find out all the things that we were doing well and all the things that we were doing poorly. And look at the things that we were doing poorly and said ok is it something that we can fix with just a little bit more coaching, with a little bit better understanding and more repetitions or is it something that we should can totally and revisit sometime in the spring or maybe never again. So we've eliminated some things and looked at some stuff and we think that we can get better on some of that.
From a physical standpoint I think our football team dramatically got better. I think that if we would have had to play on Saturday there were maybe two or three players that probably definitely would not have played in a game on Saturday and another four or five that would have played at less than 100 percent. As we speak today I think that almost every single guy that practiced yesterday for about an hour and 20 minutes. Everybody was able to go 100 percent with the exception of Hakeem Nicks. With today off and tomorrow off we expect him to be back to practice and be 100 percent. With the exception of Chase Rice this is probably the healthiest we've been the entire season. It's good to get everybody healthy and back.
I think that the other thing that we've tried to accomplish is that it gives you a jump-start on the next week's opponent, which is now currently this week against Wake Forest. It gives you a look into them, find out a little bit more about them and sprinkle in some opportunities to practice against some of their schemes offensively, defensively and special teams last week. Primarily yesterday was the first time we significantly got in to try and work on them. I think that the open date came at a good time; it recharged everybody's batteries. I think that it gave the players a chance to get away from football and go home and I think from that standpoint it was very good for our football team.
It's a big challenge and we've said that for several weeks. Wake Forest is amidst a five game winning streak right now they are the defending ACC Conference Champions and playing very well. I think the thing that impresses me the most when you watch their football team they are very well coached in all three phases. They really truly accomplish they understand their personnel, they know what their kids can do, what they can't do. They don't try and ask them to do things that they can't do and the things that they do ask them to do they do very, very well.
They are efficient on offense; I think right now they are averaging 350 or something plus yards per game on offense. Their quarterback is very efficient, protects the ball, takes care of the ball so from that standpoint. They've got the league's leading receiver with 56 catches and he's an outstanding football player. Great return guy, great receiver really plays extremely well. Their running backs have done a nice job for them. Their defense is really opportunistic. Their secondary, for some reason it seems like we have played against some really good secondary guys and I think that the same is true here. They do an excellent job, they don't beat themselves, if you are going to win a game against Wake Forest you are going to have to earn it, and they are not going to give it to you.
They're not going to go out and have four, five, six turnovers and have eight, 10, 12 penalties and always put themselves behind schedule. I think that is one of the things that we've talked to our players about for the last week or so is that we have to be more efficient as a football team to protect and value the football more on offense. We've got to create more turnovers on defense and we've got to play much better on special teams and stop giving up so many big plays. It should be an exciting game, I know that it's the first time that we've been to Wake since 2004 and so it will be interesting to go over there and they are playing well and it will be a big challenge for our team.
On the cornerback situation
We are going to work several guys. Charlie Brown has been playing and started and has played in all seven ball games thus far this season. We are certainly going to look at him possibly playing corner. Tavorris Jolly is going to be another guy that we are going to take a look at. We've moved obviously Anthony Parker-Boyd over to the defense probably three to four weeks ago, he's another guy that we can kind of work him in.
On the wide receivers this year
I am pleased, coming out of spring practice the concern was that we obviously thought that Hakeem Nicks was an outstanding player so who is going to be the other guys that are going to be part of that passing offense and they all have little-bitty things that made them look like they were going to be pretty good. But until they demonstrated the consistency and the big-play capabilities and the blocking downfield and all the different kinds of things. Almost every one of those guys has contributed somewhere.
