University of North Carolina Athletics
Friday Butch Davis Quotes
August 21, 2009 | Football
Aug. 21, 2009
Opening Statement: We're basically wrapping up training camp in some respects. We've got a lot of practices left to go. Today was practice No. 16. It was hot, humid, sticky, guys are tired of beating on each other. We're rapidly getting close to that stage when they've gone competitively against each other that they're looking forward to the opportunity to play against somebody else.
We're going to scrimmage tomorrow morning. ... There are probably 15-20 special teams situations that we've been practicing in practice - now we'd like to see it on a bigger venue, on a full field where they're not knowing maybe exactly what's coming as far as some of the special teams things. So the whole scrimmage will probably be 75-80 plays as far as offense and defense and special teams.
I'm happy with our players. We had a pretty significantly lengthy team meeting last night. One of the things that I told our players, I said, it is one of the hardest things in life to be consistent. It's hard. It's hard to be a good father every day. It's hard to be a good husband every day. It's hard to be a good employee, a football player, because you've got to somehow challenge yourself mentally every day to not waste that day and realize how important that that particular day is. You don't know if that day is the day that there will be a breakthrough. You've been struggling with something fundamentally, technique-wise, and today is the day that I get it right. But you won't get it right if you don't push yourself.
Everybody wants to win. There's not a kid in that locker room that doesn't want to go 12-0. Everybody's got to be willing to pay the price to earn victories. Victories aren't given away. They are earned. So we're challenging them, we're pushing them physically, mentally. There's frustration. I'm sure they're tired. I'm sure they're sick and tired of listening to me and all the coaches push them `Hard, tempo, fast, run, hustle,' and stuff. But those are the habits that are going to help us win games.
On the shape and physical condition of the defensive line: They've really tried hard in the off-season. They were really conscientious about watching their weight, making sure that they cut down on body fat. The other part of it is that they've taken the initiative. They're doing some extra conditioning after practice just to make sure that they can play hard throughout the entire game. So I would say yes, clearly there's more of them than in 2007 and probably even in 2008, and they're in pretty good shape.
On the installation process: There are little tiny things left that we would like to install. The other thing that we've done - and we've kind of hit upon this - two years ago, we couldn't do this because we had so much of our own stuff to have to do. But what we've been able to do over the last two weeks is that we've been able to take 15-20 minutes in almost every single practice and work on concepts that we're going to see throughout the season. There will be some carryover. I don't know how many teams are going to run elements of option offenses, whether it's read-option offense, midline-option, speed line option. So we're working every second or third day a little bit on some option things. There are some things in blitzes that we don't do but other opponents that we're going to play, they're going to run those blitzes. So we're doing a little bit of that. In years past, we really didn't take much time during training camp to focus on things that you might see because we were trying to grow our own football team. Now, we've got enough experience of guys that are returning that you feel like now, when you have a one-week preparation for somebody, there's some carryover for things that they did last year and things that we did during training camp.
On the progress of freshman running back Hunter Furr: Right now, obviously he's learning all the things that a freshman is learning, all the running plays. He's learning all the pass routes. He has to learn all the protections, which is probably the toughest thing for any running back to have to learn to do. You are so instrumental in protecting the quarterback and a lot of times you're protecting the quarterback's back side. It's a lot of checks. You're looking for blitzing linebackers. You're looking for people and then you're having to release out and look for the football. So mentally, it's a big challenge for him. You're also having to learn to play fast. For the first time for a lot of running backs when they come to college - they were so used to just running away from most people in high school, either the speed or they were just so talented that very few people could tackle them. Now all of a sudden, the guys on the other side of the ball, they all run 4.3 and 4.4, so they run as fast as you. So you've got to kind of run to daylight, follow the blocking, know where certain areas are to attack. So he's doing well. We're trying to work him on some special teams to find out would he have a role on special teams, just like all the rest of the freshmen.
