Steele: "Rest assured we will get it fixed"

Kevin Steele said that the mistakes that led to the Tigers giving up 462 yards were correctable.

by David Hood - Senior Writer - Tue Sep 07 20:31:43 GMT-04:00 2010

CLEMSON – Clemson defensive coordinator Kevin Steele met with the media Tuesday afternoon in the West Zone, and he said that while Clemson’s defensive effort in the opener against North Texas was unacceptable, he did say that the mistakes that led to the Tigers giving up 462 yards were correctable.

Steele started out by telling the media that what was seen on Saturday was not what he and the coaches had seen during fall camp.

“In terms of the game Saturday, that is not what we saw in spring practice, it’s not what we saw in fall camp- in fact it was far from it,” Steele said. “We’ve made a lot of progress of really making strides to being a dominant, accountable, responsible defense. You can’t put everything on players- we’re in it together as coaches, making sure we get that done and get it done well. It’s players making sure they do their jobs- we are all in it together. There’s enough responsibility that falls on the group. What we saw Saturday is not what we had seen. It was a strange deal when you really watched it on tape- it was not effort. It was not, not knowing what to do- it was a real simple game plan- we didn’t have busts all over the field. What we had was an eye transfer mistake here, not keying the right thing.

“Then we had some technique mistakes where we would get too fast on things and lose leverage on it. We’d get too slow and get behind leverage on it. It was things that had not shown up in any practices to that level. Then, you have to give North Texas credit- the running back is a good player and he did a good job. The quarterback did a good job. The bottom line, it was totally unacceptable. It’s exactly what we talked about last year and of building this thing and learning to be a dominant defense, no matter when you play, what time you play, who you play, what the conditions are that you go out and you dominate your opponent through alignment, assignment, technique, eyes, and effort. That was not good. It’s unacceptable. That one falls on me and I’ll take that one. Rest assured we will get it fixed- we know what needs to be fixed, how to get it fixed, and we will get it fixed.”

The Tigers also had several missed tackles, and Steele said that was apparent, both on Saturday and during film study.

“Anybody who has watched football at all or covered football knows that we were not a sharp tackling team,” Steele said. “We’ve scrimmaged. It’s not like we didn’t go out there and scrimmage- we were a sharp tackling team in scrimmages. We’ve got our finger on why we think that was the case and we know how to fix it. It wasn’t so much of not knowing your job and not knowing how to line up. It was little things- leverage things here and there and that comes from playing your eyes and making sure you’re in the right position based on what your eyes tell you. And if you get behind in your eyes, then you’ve got a problem.”

This week, the Tigers will face a Presbyterian team that was blown out at Wake Forest in week one, but still managed to gain 362 yards of total offense against the Demon Deacons, including 18 first downs and 292 passing yards.

Steele said that after watching tape of the Blue Hose, his team won’t take Presbyterian lightly.

“We’ve watched a lot of tape since Sunday,” he said. “Those guys had 362 yards against Wake Forest- obviously they know how to move the football. Their running back [senior Trandon Dendy] is a powerful guy in terms of he’s not going to take the first shot and go to the ground. He’s about 5-9, 215 pounds, so he’s kind of a fire plug guy that runs with power. You’re not going to run up there and arm tackle him. The quarterback [Brandon Miley] really does a good job of throwing the intermediate and short routes- he gets it out of his hand quickly, he’s accurate. Three [Patrick McKoy], the wide receiver, can make people miss in space and has got some juice when he turns it on.”

The Blue Hose did pull out a trick play against the Demon Deacons, and it worked for a touchdown. Miley did a quick two-step drop and rifled a lateral to wide receiver Derrick Overholt. The ball bounced into Overholt’s hands, and Overholt played his part to perfection, acting like it was an incomplete pass, and the Wake Forest defense fell to sleep as Overholt then tossed a 68-yard touchdown pass to wide receiver Michael Ruff.

Steele said it is common procedure to prepare for trick plays.

“You always have to do that,” he said. “When you play certain teams, you get a lot of stuff thrown at you in terms of formations, different plays, different, different, different. The first 34 plays of last week, they were all different. It’s our job to get them stopped.”