What does Dabo think about playing Drake Maye?
It's common practice amongst head coaches to never give the other team any bulletin board material in the week leading up to the game. Praise is thrown around and complimentary words are shared about all aspects of an upcoming opponent no matter how their season is going. However, with a talent like North Carolina quarterback Drake Maye, all those pre-prepared phrases start to sound genuine.
Dabo Swinney gave his thoughts on the upcoming game against UNC this Saturday but most of his comments focused on the future 1st round QB and understandably so.
North Carolia quaterbak Drake Maye
"This is another elite quarterback," Swinney started. "This guy is going to play football for a long time if the good Lord keeps him healthy. He's going to play a long time. So, it's one of those cool opportunities to play against one of the best. He's a great one...he's one of those guys that makes the coaches better, he makes the fans better, he makes the popcorn taste better. Everything's better when you got a dude like that under center."
When asked about having success in the ACC title game last year against Maye the head coach didn't quite see it that way, as he responded by saying the stats belied the actual score of the game. He also gave his insight into what the Tigers need to do better this time around to be successful, "We're going to have to be better. We gotta be better on third down, we've gotta defend better on the back seven. That was probably the worst thing we did all last year was our pass defense. We've made great improvements but this will be a huge challenge because they are a big-play offense. I mean massive explosives and a lot of it comes from Drake."
What will Drake do to make it difficult? "He looks to run. He'll sit in there and when he looks to run he'll create, he'll extend, he'll scramble and then he'll hit a guy for a 60-yard touchdown and it just drives you crazy. So you gotta cover him forever or he'll run for 20. And then they'll max protect and here comes the shot, the deep post, the double move outside and he can place the ball where it needs to be placed."
So, what are the main goals to have success? "We gotta minimize the big play, be better on third down. Red zone will be a huge part of this game. Red zone on offense and defense."
Should be quite the challenge and fun to watch how the young Clemson secondary will rise to meet it.
