Everything From Offensive Coordinator Buster Faulkner's Tuesday Press Conference

Offensive coordinator Buster Faulkner talked to the media during the bye week about the offense, avoiding slow starts, and much more. Here is everything he had to say.

On Haynes King and getting the offense started faster…

“Yeah, I think that's a great question, a fair question. The biggest thing that we have to do offensively, all 11 guys have got to execute the day one stuff every play, right? That's what we talk about. Every play is independent of each other. Each play has a life of its own, and we've got to make sure that we're doing our job on every single play. And, you know, if you watch the Wake game, especially the first, you know, couple quarters, the first drive wasn't bad. But after that, it was everybody taking their turns, right? And obviously, you're the quarterback. You've got to get everybody going. So, it's something we've made a conscious effort to, you know, try to get him going. You know, and we've just been inconsistent, you know, really as an entire offense when it comes to that, you know, is doing our job on each and every play.”

On any trends or looks defenses are giving consistently…

“There's definitely trends with the way people are playing, you know, our quarterback run game, right. When I say quarterback run game, I'm talking about the reads and the different things like that, and the way people are playing their defensive ends. You definitely see trends, you know, it's a copycat league and you know, if people have success doing one thing or making him pull it or making the running back pull it and that's what they want to do within the structure of their defense Yes, we've seen a lot of carryover and that's really some of the reason you've seen high carries by the quarterback position is really the way people are playing us. So the bye week comes at a great time for us, really, to kind of reel some things in, really look at some things, take a look at other ways to, you know, affect the front. You know, it's never really the back end that people change. It's usually the front, right? How are they going to play the front, especially with the way we like to run the football? So, yeah, we've seen some trends, and like I said, the bye week comes at a really good time for us.”

On how big an advantage was it for Wake Forest being off 16 days in the game…

"Anytime you've got 16 days to prepare for somebody, it definitely gives you an advantage. You just get more time, you get more reps, more time on task with the things that you're asking your defense to do, especially with the way that we try to put you in conflict. So is it an advantage? Yeah, but it's part of football, and we never looked at it that way. For us, the bye comes at the right time. One thing that I think we did a good job of is that we were able to kind of fall back on past experience of last year going up to Louisville. They came out and played us in something completely different than we saw going into the Louisville game, and didn't probably have the answers that we needed in that game. And we did have the answers that we needed this week going into the game, because there's a lot of similarities. They had a lot of time to prepare for us. We were coming into our fifth straight game on the road, a noon kickoff. So there were a lot of different things that felt very similar to that game. I think our past experience, we were able as a staff to kind of fall back on some things, and I think it helped us win the football game."

On a big picture assessment of the tight end group and its productivity…

“Yeah, you know, I think the group has done everything we asked them to do. You know, we try to play multiple guys at that position. Brett Seither was out this past week, so we're only able to play three. They're not going to show up much in the stat sheet right now, but they allow us to do a lot of things that we want to do offensively with, you know, the shifts, the formations, the different pictures, you know, the way we want to block defensive ends, arc defensive ends, all those different things. Those guys are a huge part of what we do. We'll continue to use them the way we have been down the stretch, and like I said, right now they haven't shown up much in the stat sheet, although the other day there were three catches amongst the position. That’s something you would want to see somewhere between four and seven every week. It just really depends on how the defense plays them. They're a big part of our offense.”

On addressing turnovers and not letting it compile…

“I think the biggest thing is we've had several unforced turnovers, right? You've got to start with those because we can control those. Some of those happened, and, you know, with just ball exchange that had nothing to do with the defense, two of them. And then the other one early in the season was a forced throw or two forced throws that we probably didn't have to make. But other than that, the one the other day is you're going to look at it as, hey, the running back put the ball on the ground, but we actually didn't.

We didn't work up to the guy we were supposed to be blocking, which gave that guy a great angle to put his hat on the ball. So one thing we talk about here is turnovers. It's not just one position. It's all 11, right, and how they affect the play. So it's something we make a conscious effort of even before we've turned it over. We hammer it every day. You know, as much ball security, the ball is the program. Our guys know that. even before we've turned it over. We hammer it every day. You know, as much ball security, the ball is the program. Our guys know that. We've just got to do a better job of making a conscious effort to protect it.”

On how to get Jamal Haynes going…

“Yeah, that goes back to what you had asked earlier, actually. You know, the way people are playing us, and they're forcing the quarterback to run it more. You know, Jamal is a guy that we have to get going for us to be explosive, and we know that. So that's why I mentioned that this bye week comes at a great time. You know, I think he was a little, you know, a little banged up last week going into the game. Just not banged up, but tired. You know, he's had a lot of carries. It's been a long, you know, camp and four games. And we know that he's better when he's fresh, right? You can kind of look at his history. When he's fresh and fast, he's a lot more productive. So that's some of it. The other part is us designing things that can get him, you know, in space to get him going. We try to get him involved in the passing game as well. You know, that can get him in space and may not have as many carries. The other day, I think it was five catches he had, and give Wake Forest a lot of credit. They made a lot of open-field tackles.”

On how he would evaluate the red zone offense…

“Well, without looking at the stats, you know I feel like it has been better than it was a year ago. The other day, it wasn't great, but overall, I think we've been better in that situation. I think we've got more of an identity of what we want to do and how we want to attack it. I'd have to go back and look and make sure those numbers do add up. But, you know, some of it we've gotten down there in certain situations, like at the end of the game, you know, the other day, you know, it's going to go down as not scoring a touchdown, but you're in a hurry and, you know, you've got to line up and kick a field goal. You'd like to have back is when we got down there and we ran a couple quarterback runs in a row. Knew he needed a breather, you know, and tried to get to something and give them credit. They did a great job of playing it. We didn't get, you know, we weren't able to stay ahead of the chains right there when we had the three straight runs. The ball was in the middle of the field, so we felt like we could get them in a certain front on third down, which we had gotten before and didn't get them in it. If you're not trying to tie the game right there at that moment, maybe you go for it. I think the right decision right there is to tie the game.

You know we've come back we've built it all the way back so I thought we made the you know the right call to you kick the field goal there and then you know if that's earlier in the game you know maybe we go for it and we're able to punch it in but the way the kids that had battled back got us to that point I thought it was very important that we go and tie the game right because if you if you go for it you don't get it right it's very deflating. I just couldn't be more proud of the way the kids just fought you know, we didn't play our best game by any stretch of the imagination. There were a lot of things that we could control. Give Wake Forest a lot of credit I thought they did a great job defensively, but one thing that we were able to do is is our leadership kind of took over and our fight our grit our toughness all the things that coach Key has done since he's been the head coach here is is you saw it on full display and you know that's the testament to all our kids.”

On if there are any packages for Aaron Philo the rest of the season…

“Philo will be ready when his number is called. Philo is gonna be an awesome quarterback. He can really throw the football, but you know Haynes Kings is the quarterback of this football team, and there's no debate in that. So he'll be ready if his number's ever called.”

On Malachi Hosley is ready to pick up more of the running back load…

“Malachi's been great. Actually, he woke up Saturday morning sick as a dog. So we were kind of battling that throughout the game, you know, DG (Daylon Gordon) came in, played some crucial snaps for us down the stretch. That's just a guy who's been in the program. He was ready when his numbers called, you know, got a late carry. Hadn't had many carries here in his career, you know, as far as when the game's on the line. The game's on the line, he goes in, gets a good five yard run, did a good job on the next play. So, I feel really good about the running back room. Trelain Maddox was available last week, but hadn't practiced as much as we would like to get him in. So we're gonna get healthy at the right time at that position.”

On his thoughts on Isiah Canion and any surprises about his play…

“That's probably no surprise at all because we've seen it, and just whether he was going to carry it into games. We're excited about his future. I mean, the guy's getting better and better every week, and that's showing up on film. You guys can see that. His confidence is getting through the roof. He had the one drop the other day, but he plays so fast, and he's big. He's a guy that we need to continue to play at the level that he's playing at and even take it a step further. The thing about Isiah is he's ultra-competitive and wants to be better, wants to be coached, loves getting coached hard. He's getting better at practice every day. We're just fortunate we have him.”

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