Swinney updates injuries, work with field goal blocks, snap counts for OL

Peter Woods is progressing from his injury.

David Hood - Senior Writer - Wednesday, November 06 2024

Injuries and special teams work dominated the conversation following Wednesday’s practice.

Head coach Dabo Swinney met with the media to discuss the week and this Saturday’s trip to Blacksburg to take on Virginia Tech.

He started with updates on Peter Woods and Tre Williams, who were injured in the loss to Louisville.

“Just a little bit better each day. It’s still just Wednesday and so they made a little progress each day,” Swinney said. “So we have a couple more days before we have to head up. We leave here on Friday morning, so every day is going to help. Every minute. So they're progressing pretty good.”

He said Harris Sewell wound up playing more snaps than Walker Parks at right guard Saturday for a reason.

“We have Walker on a little bit of a pitch count. It's late in the season, and he's got a lot of things he's dealt with,” Swinney said. “And Harris deserves to play, so nothing more than that just kind of worked out probably with the series that he was in there.”

On field goal block issues

“Just trying to make sure we get the right personnel with what we have, the players we're working with and then just try to do a better job of coaching and teaching the technique and fundamentals that we need to execute. So that's been the main thing.”

What caused Woods’ injury

“It was a kickout block with the guy. Kind of hit him at the top of his head. Really kind of dangerous when the guy hit him. It kind of hit him kind of high, and so he tried to keep going a little bit, but he just didn't feel right.”

On the safeties with Khalil Barnes at nickel

“We've got good players there. We like our personnel. We're always evaluating. We've got some young guys that we think are going to be really good. They just need a little time in the program. A kid like Ricardo (Jones), we are really high on him, excited about his future. We just need to be a little bit more persistent. Tyler (Venables) gives us a lot of knowledge and wisdom and he can definitely can play multiple positions for us, but we've just got to be as consistent as we can be with whoever's out there. But it's really about who we're playing, what their personnel is, what's their style of play. All those things kind of dictate week in and week out how we position our guys.”

On practice this week

“it's been really good. Two good days. I mean, Monday was a tough day. That's the first day we get to be with the players, but they responded and had a really good physical practice yesterday and today, so they've done a nice job.”