What They Said: Dave Clawson reacts to loss at Louisville

“First, credit to Louisville and Coach Satterfield and their staff and their players. They completely outcoached us, completely outplayed us. They won on both sides of the line of scrimmage, they won on the perimeter, I mean that was a thorough ass-kicking and they deserved to win the game. We have a good football team, but obviously, I did not have us ready to go today. You know, when you have eight turnovers, we’re always a team that has taken care of the football. We started to get loose with it at Army, then we were loose with it at (Boston College), and it bit us in the ass today. When you turn the ball over that much, you don’t have any chance of winning the football game. On defense, I thought we hung in there for a while, and then the turnovers started mounting. We gave up some trick plays, gave up two trick plays for touchdowns, the double reverse pass, and the option pass, just an overall lack of discipline. We just didn’t play Wake Forest football. But again, you go to the turnover margin, you turn it over like that and you got no shot We didn’t give ourselves a chance. Credit to them, they’re good at creating pressure, they’re good at getting turnovers. That was going to be the key to the game, we knew it, we talked about it all week, and they did it and we didn’t stop it. Disappointing, and again we have a good football team, and we didn’t play well. I know what our football team is made of, and we have to come back and prove it. So, with that I will open it up. “

Q: Dave, I saw you go over and chat with Sam (Hartman) at the end of the third quarter, I guess basically telling him his day was done. What did you have to say to him at that point?

“Just we got to bounce back. We’re a good football team, and we didn’t play well. This is why you have captains, and you have leadership, so you can bounce back at a moment’s notice. Just one turnover, two, I mean turnovers are happening, we’re not going to be perfect with it, but at some point, it became like it’s not okay to turn the ball over. We continued to not chin it, we were loose with it, we took chances with it, and now allowing a competitive game to get really, really ugly”

Q: Obviously, protecting the ball is going to be a key theme you’re going to focus on next week. Can you think of any other takeaways that will help you kind of pause and reset going into next week?

“I mean, just our history, and we have a good football team. You know, we’re not robots. You just don’t go out there and do the same thing every day. Every week is a new challenge, every game is a new challenge. In the last two years, more times than not, we’ve risen to the challenge, and today we didn’t. We did not play well. I didn’t think we played well upfront on either side of the ball. We didn’t play well on the perimeter. It’s hard to walk away today and say that anybody did a great job, and again, that’s including the head coach.”

Q: Eight turnovers, and I know Sam (Hartman) just got rattled and it seemed like you couldn’t block them. Can you kind of explain what happened?

“Their corners made some nice breaks on the balls on some of the picks, and a lot of those turnovers were in our RPO game, and they edged us so that they got on the edges, and they did a really nice job of working edges. They have a very athletic front, and we allowed them to get on edges. I mean, some of those, it’s really hard to pin on Sam, right? Some of those, you have a guy coming off his blind side, he can’t see him. Again, sometimes when you step up in the pocket, you have to expect that there’s going to be a little bit of that. It was a disaster. To pinpoint one thing, that’s hard to do. We have a good football team, and clearly, I did not have our football team prepared today. I’ve got to sleep on that and live with that one. “

Q: You said in your press conference Monday that turnovers against Boston College were a problem and were a problem again today. Can you speak on the impact turnovers had on today’s game?

“Last year we had 20 turnovers the whole year, nine in our three losses. When we lost to Louisville in 2019 it was the same thing. These games come off, and all those fundamentals that we practice and the tenets of our program that we preach don’t execute those things. Again, if you go back, whether it’s Louisville in 19, the Mayo bowl in 2020, or the ACC Championship game in 2021, you just can’t overcome that many turnovers.”

Q: In the first half you guys didn’t get off to a fast start either but you found yourself allowing field goals on the first couple of possessions. Did you feel you were doing enough defensively to get off the field and keep yourself in the game?

“I don’t think we played well on defense, but we played good red zone defense. In the first half, I thought they completely outplayed us. We were lucky that we scored two touchdowns and held them to two field goals. I didn’t come out of the first half thinking, we got these guys, we’re outplaying them. We looked at the time of possession, yardage, and first downs and they were controlling the line of scrimmage on both sides. We had some good passing plays, but we weren’t running it consistently. It just felt like we were in our backfield and weren’t getting off of blocks. So I thought at halftime we were lucky to be only down by one.”

Q: This is a team filled with a lot of experience and senior leadership. How important is that right now in order to respond to a loss like this?

“This is why you have leaders and seniors. Like I told the team, I think a lot of times after a game like this the message is what are we made of. I know what we’re made of, now we just have to prove it. I’m confident we’ll do that and learn from it. It happened right? It’s out there, the game’s over and that was our performance. So we have to learn from it, grow from it, and get ready to play next week.”