Oct. 28, 2014
Coach Johnson Press Conference Audio
Opening Statement
“It’ll be another huge challenge this week against a Virginia team that is coming off a difficult loss for them. They pretty much seemed like they had their last game won the whole way. Then at the end, to North Carolina’s credit, they found a way to win the game. Their backs are up against the wall as are ours as far as the conference race. I’m sure we’ll get their best shot here this Saturday at Bobby Dodd.”
Virginia defense forces turnovers
“Defensively they’ve been a good team. We self-inflicted ourselves last year with the turnovers, but hopefully we can get away from that. We played them very well defensively a year ago for the most part and we were able to hang in the game even with turning the ball over. This week we just need to go out and play how we’ve been playing and execute how we’ve been executing and see what happens.”
Scoring off of turnovers
“Sometimes you get good field position and other times it’s been a product of the offense scoring on a lot of possessions. If you go back and look we’ve probably got a pretty good points per possession average over the last few games. For instance, Saturday we got a couple of short fields because of turnovers. Then on the one D.J. [White] made, we went 80 yards and it still looks like a turnover. Anytime you get the other team off the field; a turnover is better than a punt. While we haven’t forced a lot of punts over the last couple games, give us six turnovers and we’ll take our chances.”
Offense recording more than 600 yards in back to back games
“We’ve just played well. As I’ve said before, our quarterback gives us a chance to do what we want to do. We got back this year to doing what I want to do and it’s my own fault for getting away from it. I got away from it. It’s what I know and it’s what we need to be doing. I think we’re back to doing a few things good instead of trying to do a lot of things average. And last year what we did was a bunch of things average.”
Virginia’s third down defense
“The key to that is you want to stay out of third-and-long against them. They’re a good blitz team and they blitz a lot. They bring pressure. Most teams if you can get people in third-and-long you’re going to be good on third down, but to our credit we’ve stayed, for the most part this year, out of third and longs. I think the nature of what we do, and if you go back and look historically, I think you’ll find that we’ve been pretty good on third down. We’re a little better this year, but historically we’ve probably been right around 50 percent on third downs.”
D.J. White’s forced fumble
“It was a great play by him. It was a great effort play. I think all of our guys play hard and I’ve said that all year. While we may have not had as much success as we would like defensively, I think they play hard. Other than one game I can think of, for the most part the effort hasn’t been a big problem. I think guys battle and compete and that was just a great example of it. He didn’t give up. That’s the mantra you try to get them all to play with: don’t give up. It was a great example of not doing it and it was a huge play in the game.”
D.J. White on and off the field
“Personally he’s really kind of a quiet kid away from the field. I think he likes to play the game. He’s got good speed and he’s got a good skillset. I think, like a lot of guys, the more he plays the better he gets.”
