Nov. 17, 2007

By Lauren Brownlow

Butch Davis

Opening Comments:

Well, it was a heartbreaker today. I told the players in the locker room, there are a lot of ways that you define winning and champions and things. I think that one of the best analogies is that teams that refuse to give up, to surrender, teams that never quit - it makes a big statement about people. There was enough adversity, enough things that went right and wrong during the course of this ballgame - going on the road against a very good football team and in the midst of a season that you would have like certainly from the win-loss standpoint to have gone differently. But I truly believe that the character of your program is defined by the commitment and the passion and the perseverance and how hard the kids played. I will tell you that our kids, they literally spilt their guts out there today to try to win that ballgame. There wasn't one kid that played in that game that walked in that locker room that had anything left in the tank. A lot of times, it's not always perfect and it's not always pretty. But as a coach, I will tell you that I am very proud of the way these kids played today.

We've got obvious issues and shortcomings and stuff like that and we've never used any of those as excuses. We just try to go out and try to win and compete and put ourselves in position. We were one first down away from maybe somewhat pulling off a miracle, winning a game that it looked like you had no chance to win and then all of a sudden now you find yourself in the lead. Some guys made plays today. Our defense bailed us out time after time after time - holding them to field goals. They gave up some plays, but without their performance today, we don't have any chance to win - with all the turnovers they created, the sacks they got, the sack-fumbles. Every single kid, and we talk to our players about holding themselves accountable and knowing that you may only play three plays or six plays or 12 plays - go out and make sure that it's the best however many plays it is that you can play. And then you can look yourself in the mirror. I promise you, there is not a kid in there that can't look themselves in the mirror and can't look their teammates in the mirror and say, `You know what? I did everything I could today to try to win.' We didn't win, and there are no moral victories.

I read a book a long time ago that somebody recommended to me and it was called "A Cradle of Eminence", and I think it won a Pulitzer Prize Award back in the `50's. It documented 100 of the world's most famous people - from Helen Keller to Abraham Lincoln, not only Americans, but all across the world. One of the interesting things that this study did was they found out that for every single one of those people that eventually became great, there was a source of discontent, a little bit of a burning passion that somehow, someway inspires those people to become great. Maybe that's what this season is about - is to put that burning passion of being just close enough that next year, there will be no close games. That it provides the motivation that the five, six, seven, eight months before the season starts next year, to say, `You know what? Six games by 25 points,' or whatever it is. Maybe that's the source of the discontent that this program needs. It will burn in people's hearts. They'll lay in bed tonight and there will be a lot of guys that won't sleep tonight. Maybe that's what this program needs. Maybe that's what the coaching staff needs. Maybe that's what all of us need is something that just burns so deeply in your heart that you're willing to do all those extra things in the next 8-9 months before the season starts next year to ensure the fact that those things don't happen again. But I was proud of the team, and I know this - we'll go back and we'll regroup and we'll pick up the pieces and we'll do everything that we possibly can to finish on a positive note and win the next game.

When (Anthony) Elzy scored did you think, `We've got this'?

I don't ever think that, even if we had been up by 13 - I'm too much of a realist. I've been in so many ballgames. I've stood on the sidelines for 33 years. I was there when Flutie threw it in the end zone. I was there when we did it to Jacksonville with one tick on the clock and threw it 60 yards. Who knows? All I know is that our defense today rose up. This is a team, and I don't know the stat specifically, but I think they were leading the nation in sacks allowed. They had only given up nine. For us to get to the quarterback as often as we did today to create some of the sack-fumble opportunities, there were some good things. Every time we play, there are things that you wish you had do-over's. Unfortunately, you don't get those on Saturday's. We'll get them next year.

On Greg Little's move to tailback:

We kind of started against South Carolina when we started putting him in the backfield, toying around with giving him some opportunities. He played running back in high school as a sophomore and a junior and then he moved to wide receiver. We had kind of gone the route of running back by committee, and after ten games we had kind of seen pretty much what the other two guys were doing. It's a hard transition to go certainly from wideout to now, you're the guy that's going to get the snot knocked out of you 35 times a ballgame. Besides carrying the ball, that's the easy part. God has given him unbelievable athletic ability. Handing him the ball is the easy part. It's blitz protection, protecting the quarterback against the nation's No. 6 defense that blitzes every down. You want to talk about a kid who was crash-coursed and learning this week, you can't say enough about what Greg Little did. We couldn't give him everything, but what we gave him, he did very, very well. He ran 80-some yards - I don't know the number of attempts - but I'd like for him to have rushed for ten more yards at the end of the ballgame. He's a big, good-looking athlete, 6-2, 215 pounds. Run after contact, he's got burst, he's got vision, change of direction.

On trying to find a role for everyone:

As a coaching staff, the challenges that we've got have been enormous challenges every single week, trying to put game plans together every week and trying to find ways - Okay, what does this kid do well? He may not be ready to do this, but what does he do? Okay, let's do a little bit of this with Zach Pianalto. Let's do a little bit of this with Richard Quinn. Let's do a little bit of this with Brooks (Foster) and Hakeem (Nicks) and all of those guys. We're trying as hard as we can as a coaching staff to get the ball in the hands of playmakers. This is not an easy chore. The saddest part, obviously besides not winning, is not scoring touchdowns when you get the ball down in the red zone. We had opportunities today to dramatically change the way the whole second half was played and the way that the game was played. But you've got to give Georgia Tech credit. They're a good football team. They've got 18 juniors and seniors and seniors on defense. It's not by accident they're playing good defense. So you just try to find ways to make plays, to give yourself a chance to score and unfortunately we came up short today.

On the team's red-zone problems both against Georgia Tech and over the season:

Having been a defensive coordinator, I've spent a significant amount of time studying all of the teams in the National Football League and all the teams in college. Good teams in the red zone - I know this in my heart - teams that are good offenses in the red zone are teams that can run the football. That field gets short and you've got to back to it. You don't have them backed up and they're worried about defending 75 yards; they're worried about defending a basketball court and it gets crowded with seven defenders and they drop eight and rush three. If you can't run the football effectively, play-action pass has no validity and you've got to stay on track. So until we as a football team become a much, much better run offense, you're always going to struggle. If you go back there and you just try to throw the ball in the end zone all the time, it's hard. We've made huge strides. Even though we've had shortcomings running the football this year, our offensive line, they've gotten better and better every week. Greg gave us a spark and gave us some plays today and that was encouraging. We'll be better in the future.

On problems preparing for Georgia Tech's two quarterbacks:

The biggest difference is that it forces you to segment your practice routine during the course of the week because you've got to prepare for an awful lot of stuff. You've got to prepare for one kid; you've got to prepare for the other. You've got to have different packages for nickel-dime. They do a nice job of being able to mix those two guys in, and he's a talented athlete. It's like putting in a good tailback. We tried similar stuff a little bit earlier in the year with Greg back there. In Year 1 of your program, those are the things that you don't have the luxury to be able to work out.

On Carolina's first timeout before Georgia Tech kicked the game-winning field goal:

We were trying to orchestrate with the head linesman right there. We were trying to alert him that we wanted to call a timeout - not at that particular moment. We were trying to get his attention - `Hey, we're going to call a timeout.' It's like in the NFL when they line up and they're trying to ice the kicker, thinking they're going to dramatically run out there and be disorganized. We wanted to make sure that we got our block in, the block that we wanted to come with, and he (the referee) called the timeout way before they ever got organized and let them get organized.

So you didn't want the timeout?

No, not at the time that it was called. The second one, it's the same thing, and then he went in there and waved it off and he went in there and told the referee that, `No, they don't want it now.' Well we didn't want the first one now, either. You've got the coaches' box where you cannot go by that, so you've got to scream down there and hope you can get your attention. You've got to get eye contact and tell them, `Watch me, watch me, I'm going to call a timeout. Watch me. Keep your eyes on me.' So they saw us do this (mimes a timeout motion), and they called timeout. So we didn't orchestrate it exactly the way that we would have liked to, and I'll take responsibility for that.

On T.J. Yates setting the single-season record at Carolina for passing yards by a freshman:

Like a lot of these guys, if you just had a clue how far he has come from just a guy in the springtime that we weren't sure if he could play at all to being the freshmen leader, 2,600 yards. He has battled. Like all quarterbacks, you take too much criticism at times and he hasn't had enough of the glory. But it is a hard job to go out there and do what we're asking him to do and he has grown enormously through this process. The toughest thing, and we spent about 30-40 minutes in my office talking Monday, and I think it's important for the head coach to talk to the quarterback about not beating yourself up. When my son was 5 ½ and had training wheels on his bicycle, I didn't expect him to take his training wheels on his bicycle, I didn't expect him to take the training wheels off and start riding a Harley Davidson. That's kind of where a lot of these kids that are playing are, and T.J. is one of them. He doesn't even know what he hasn't seen yet for next year, much less where he has come in 11 games. So he's doing a good job and I'm proud of the way that he's preparing and playing.