Neal Brown Press Conference - Clemson Game

Opening Statement:

Happy Labor Day to everyone. Thanks for being here. It's a great opening weekend for our conference. I want to speak about that before we got rolling. Huge win by South so congratulations to Coach Jones and that group. Coach Satterfield on Thursday night in front of a national TV crowd really put on a good show against Tennessee in a narrow loss. A big win for Texas State beating Ohio, down there in his first game. I think our conference is getting better and it showed on opening weekend. I think it will continue to show. Wrapping up, Austin Peay 1 and 0 glad to do it.

Wins are hard, I think it's important that we celebrate it and enjoy it. Appreciate the crowd, especially the students, we had a big big student crowd and I think they enjoyed themselves and had a good time. I know, Stacy had a good time tweeting about them. Austin Peay was much improved, they're well coached and Will Healy and his staff are going to do a good job. We out manned them in a lot of spots and I thought we took care of business and we were able to play a lot of guys. It was a good win, I'll go through each phase and talk about some good and bad so you'll have some notes.

Special teams wise, I'll hit on the negative first, we had six penalties, which is way too many. Several what I call selfish penalties, which are blocks in the back, late hits, something like that. We had a fumble on a punt return. Positive side on special teams, we had a net punt of 42 which is better then what we were doing last year. Thought Ryan Kay hit the ball well, thought our coverage units on kick off and on punt were really solid. We had good operations, our long snappers, holders, kickers, they all did a nice job.

Defensively, hit the negative first, we only have one take away. I thought on first down we weren't good enough and Coach Vic (Koenning) probably talked about that as well. Our communication and our eye of discipline, I know a couple of you asked about eye discipline, eye discipline is really, our eyes were all over the place instead of reading our keys. I think some of that was first game jitters, some of that is like Jeremy talked about after the game. We didn't know what to expect, and they surprised us with a couple unbalanced formations. Positives are, we stopped the run, they were under three yards per carry, we limited the explosive plays, by our count they had thre explosive plays. Then in the second half we played good defense. We played like we should have for the whole game.

Offensively the positives obviously the stats were really impressive. 706 yards total offense third highest in Troy football history. We ran the ball really well. Several different running backs ran the ball well. O-line was much improved there like we've talked about. Zero turnovers, always the most important. Also, had zero drops which is something we really emphasize during the offseason. The negatives for us on offense, penalties. Then we had 83 snaps, but I thought our tempo could be better and we've got to continue to press on that.

Got some award winners that I tweeted out. You'll have a graphic on that, we'll do this after every win. Junior Gnonkonde was our defensive player of the week, he had six tackles, he had a quarterback hurry. Special teams, Josh Marshall. Special teams player of the week, had a perfect effort, really did a good job on our coverage units, on kickoff and on punt as a gunner. Had a tackle on the kickoff inside the 20. Offensively Ismail Saleem coming back off a knee injury had four receptions for 106 yards, and a touchdown. Our offensive lineman of the week, was Deontae Crumitie making his first career start at center graded out at 93 percent, really proud of him.

Scout team guys real quick, I think it's important to notice them. On offense it was Justin Wyatt, on defense Montae Barto, a new player to our program, and on special teams Clark Quisenberry, he accepted his role and done a great job. Wanted to recognize him.

Then two awards we'll do win or lose, we'll recognize each week, Corey McCullers Spirit Award which we give to a person on the sideline that has the best spirit, that was A.J. Smiley recovering on an injury, he had unbelievable energy on the side, recovering from an injury and he had unbelievable energy on the sidelines. Then our Nathan Harris Service Award, named after Nate who passed away in May, goes to a guy on our team who really demonstrates service to his team mates, that's KE'Marvin Pitts get that inaugural award so, we'll recognize them.

Moving on to Clemson, which I know y'all want to talk about. Big step up in competition as you know, Coach Sweeney and his staff have done a tremendous job in recruiting and when you look at them across the board, they're big, they're long and they're fast. They're exactly what you'd expect of the No. 2 ranked team in the country. We're looking forward to getting to Death Valley, 12:30 Eastern kick. Great challenge, great opportunity, however you want to look at it. It's one of the best atmospheres in college football, should be fun. Offensively they are lead by Heisman Trophy front runner Deshaun Watson. I've been watching him play really since he was a freshman at Gainesville High School in Georgia. Run pass threat, you all know all about him, I don't need to talk about him much. Probably as good a kid as he is a player.

Solid up front and they're lead by a potential All American at center, the running back Gallman he was the first team All-ACC, he's a load to tackle. They got three really good wide outs. Mike Williams, who had a really good game against Auburn, he's All-ACC. Artavis Scott who's explosive, not only on offense but in the return game. They got Hunter Renfrow who's a baller, I like watching him play.

Tight end is an All-ACC guy Leggett. On defense, a lot of respect for Coach Venables we've gone against each other several times. I think he's done a tremendous job since he's got to Clemson. They're big and they're long upfront, several potential pro guys up there playing in that group. They all look the same, interchangeable, they'll run about 10 to 12 in the game. Their will linebacker's their leader on the defense, Ben Boulware. Then at corner I thought two kids really stuck out in that Auburn game – No. 25 Tankersley he was really physical blowing up some screens on the perimeter. Then the safety Van Smith, No. 23, really got down in the box and made some big tackles for right at the line of scrimmage at that safety position.

Special teams, they're solid. They do a really nice job, they've switched up a couple things they did last year on the kick off return unit. They've got two, really three, guys that they use in the return game. They're all really explosive. With that, open up to questions.

What do you expect from a Venables defense?

I think what they'll do is, they're always going to out number you in the box regardless of your personnel, I think they'll have one more than you can block. Does a really good job of mixing up his fronts, as far as going from a four-down to a bear front. The secondary, they're good at corner, and so I think, we expect to see quite a bit of man coverage. They're well coached, they do a good job, mixing up when they're going to pressure, when they're not going to pressure. They'll have a plan.

You had success on offense this past week, how do you keep working towards that and kind of get something to work against Clemson this coming week?

I think, when we started looking at this schedule, and when we knew how it was going to lay out in front of us, going back to the winter even. We looked at these initial two games as kind of we need to feel ourselves out, find out who we are and what we're about. We found a little bit last week, I'm not sure we're really going to know where we're at on either side of the ball until after we play the Southern Miss game. It will a challenge, obviously lot stiffer competition this week. The biggest mismatches for us are upfront, their D against our offensive line. We've to to figure out ways to put our guys in favorable positions and we've got to be able to hold on the ball which means converting third downs.

You mentioned you won't know who you are until after, what are some of the things you're still looking for?

Well, I think in that Austin Peay game, we were clearly better at several positions. This week, at some positions, not all of them, we'll, it's almost role reversals. Then we're going to play a lot of guys, we played a lot of game in week one, we're going to play a lot of guys in week two as well. I think it's fair, anytime you're playing in that heat I think it's going to be in the low to mid-90's at kickoff on Saturday. You play those day games, you've got to be prepared to play a lot of guys. When you play a lot of people, especially young guys, you're going to find out early what they're about. We had some guys that stepped up that performed under the lights on Saturday night and we had some guys that didn't show up quite as much as they'd been showing up in practice. We need to still filter through some of those things going into week two as well.

Coming against Clemson No. 2 team in the country, kind of gets, in this situation is kind of like a mental game, you get psyched out sometimes. How do you keep your players grounded in practice?

I think you just go about your business. We didn't spend a whole lot of time talking about Austin Peay last week, we won't spend a whole lot of time talking about Clemson this week. I don't need to go in front of the team today when I see them at 3:00 and talk about Clemson being the No. 2 ranked team or Deshaun Watson being the Heisman Trophy candidate. Or them being really good on defense, they can turn on SportsCenter and see that. They came home from the game and watched them against Auburn last week so they know what they're up against. I think it's about us making a steady improvement, through these first three games of the season. It's about us steadily getting better. When we hit our fourth game when New Mexico State comes here and we play at home again. We've got to be ready to click on all cylinders.

What's the challenge for the wide receiver, how can they replicate what they did last week?

It's going to be different, a lot of soft coverage last week, I don't expect Clemson to give us a whole lot of room. I think they'll come down and play us on man coverage and press us and get in our face a little bit. That's what they've shown and I think they'll continue to do that. Our guys have got to be, we got to work our release techniques, and we've got to do a better job with our discipline, as far as getting our routes. Sticking routes, leaning on people. You talk about in in practice but once you see it in games it's usually easily correctable.

Last season when you played against UL Lafayette, you said that's what I want out of my team. In the next, how did you accomplish that last Saturday and how do you continue?

We are playing with the same type of energy, we've got some confidence about us. We're taking the field with belief, we've got a much better understanding of what we're doing in all three phases. I think it carried over, we'll take a confident group into Clemson. It's going to be fun to see where we are at. We've got some young kids that this is going to be their first time is this type of atmosphere so it'll be neat to see how they react. In my experience in the past, a lot of times when you take guys into those type of atmospheres, for the first time. They raise their game, I'm excited to see that.

How do you attempt to simulate a guy like Deshaun Watson in practice?

If we had Deshaun Watson he would be playing, he wouldn't be on the scout team. I don't mean that as a bad question, we've got a kid that we are redshirting, Jaylen Jones, who is similar size wise to him, and he'll do a great job. I know he's excited about putting on the No. 4 and running around and being Deshaun Watson on our scout team. He'll give us a good look. Here's the thing, the biggest, when you take these and you go play at Clemson or you go play some of these type games. You cannot replicate, you don't replicate it in practice, you don't replicate it even in some other games is the speed. We're going to talk about it offensively, we talk about it a lot. It's a ball security issue, guys are running so well that they're going to get hit blindly for the first time.

Troy University Athletics

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Players Mentioned

Montae Barto

Deontae Crumitie

Junior Gnonkonde

Nathan Harris

Ryan Kay

Josh Marshall

Corey McCullers

KE'Marvin Pitts

Clark Quisenberry

Ismail Saleem

A.J. Smiley

Justin Wyatt

Neal Brown Press Conference - Clemson Game

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