Full Transcript: Passing Game Coordinator Kyle Richardson: 'we're average at all positions'

I'm curious what your explanation is for it overall, and I guess that includes the passing game, of course.

Kyle Richardson:

Of course, yeah. It's just like anything else in a season, you play every week and you go to practice every week and you got a plan, but at the end of the day you got to go execute it on game day. And we've done a pretty good job of being consistent and having the confidence to go execute the plans on game day, regardless of the position that you're talking about, and right now we're just in a rut and we got to find a way to get out of it. And that's our job as coaches, and it's also the job of the players ,to go and find a way to get out of it with our help. But it's not a situation where we've struggled all year. It's like you said, we've seen some good progress and we've seen confidence that we've needed coming out of the off-season. We just, we've hit a little rut here in the last two weeks, and we got to find a way to get out of it.

Any specific reason why you think you guys have not been able to produce any of the explosives in the passing game the last few games?

Kyle Richardson:

I think it's a situation where, especially when you're dealing in the passing game, you have a couple balls that don't go your way, you have a couple routes that don't go your way, and then next thing you know that kind of starts building up. It's like basketball. A shooter gets hot and they get in a zone and they start rolling with it, and then next thing you know they get cold, they go really cold. So there's situations across the board. It's not from a standpoint of the receivers or the tight ends, or even just the quarterbacks. Sometimes you got the perfect look, you got the perfect call, you got everything exactly where you needed, and you get a little bit of pressure. So it is just a combination of things and like I said, there's no panic on our end, there's no panic in our players, there's no panic with the coaches. We just got to keep working, and find a way to get out of this rut, and that's what we're going to go back to work doing today at practice.

What your explanation is for the offense taking steps back overall.

Kyle Richardson:

Of course, yeah. It's just like anything else in a season, you play every week and you go to practice every week and you got a plan, but at the end of the day you got to go execute it on game day. And we've done a pretty good job of being consistent and having the confidence to go execute the plans on game day, regardless of the position that you're talking about, and right now we're just in a rut and we got to find a way to get out of it. And that's our job as coaches, and it's also the job of the players ,to go and find a way to get out of it with our help. But it's not a situation where we've struggled all year. It's like you said, we've seen some good progress and we've seen confidence that we've needed coming out of the off-season. We just, we've hit a little rut here in the last two weeks, and we got to find a way to get out of it.

Any specific reason why you think you guys have not been able to produce any of the explosives in the passing game the last few games?

Kyle Richardson:

I think it's a situation where, especially when you're dealing in the passing game, you have a couple balls that don't go your way, you have a couple routes that don't go your way, and then next thing you know that kind of starts building up. It's like basketball. A shooter gets hot and they get in a zone and they start rolling with it, and then next thing you know they get cold, they go really cold. So there's situations across the board. It's not from a standpoint of the receivers or the tight ends, or even just the quarterbacks. Sometimes you got the perfect look, you got the perfect call, you got everything exactly where you needed, and you get a little bit of pressure. So it is just a combination of things and like I said, there's no panic on our end, there's no panic in our players, there's no panic with the coaches. We just got to keep working, and find a way to get out of this rut, and that's what we're going to go back to work doing today at practice.

Coach Streeter said that there were some RPOs called where DJ probably should have kept it, run with it, handed it off on some of them, and he winds up throwing it. There are times that you can see, he probably hands it off, should have kept it.

Kyle Richardson: Yeah.

We've talked to him enough to know he probably knows what he's seeing. Is that a confidence issue?

Kyle Richardson.

 I think some of it is because you get in a situation where, and DJ is the type of kid, he doesn't want to let people down, he puts a lot more pressure on himself because of that. So I think in some of those situations he's looking for the perfect look, he's looking for the perfect read, he's looking for the perfect throw, the perfect play, and that just doesn't exist in football. There's too much stuff going on offensively that he doesn't control, that coaches don't control, and there's too much stuff going on defensively that nobody controls on the field.

So yeah at times, especially Saturday night, there was a couple times where, it's like you come to the sideline, it's like, what'd you see? And it's like man, I should have done this. And it's like, yeah, yeah, well go with what you see, go with what you feel, go with what you practice. But it wasn't a majority of the times that you had those conversations. But yeah, there was a couple times where you're like, hey, you might could have spit that out the back door on the RPO, or maybe you should have kept that one. What'd you see to make...

And I'll be honest with you when, a lot of times what we see is not what he sees on the field. And when you go and you go back and watch the tape and it's like, man I'm glad I didn't tell him to do that because he was right. And vice versa. There's a couple times where the defensive end's kind of in that gray area. Do I pull it, do I keep it? Do I pull it, do I throw it? And in those situations, you look back at the tape... You know in the game, you're like man, man this is wide open.

But then you go back and you look at the tape, you go, eh, I'm kind of glad he gave it right there, I'm kind of glad he pulled it. So what we have to do is just like I said, go back to where there's a confidence level there in, hey it doesn't have to be perfect. It doesn't have to be perfect, make full-speed decisions, we'll roll with the punches. And that's where we got to get him back to. That's where we got to get our entire offense back to. Because like I said, it's not a situation where we haven't seen the positives out of this offense this year, we just got to get back to playing more confident.

Would you like to see Cade Klubnik actually instead of just two plays in this situation or three plays here, maybe get him some actual work with the ones, and do that during the week, and get him out in a game and seen for 10, 12, 14 plays?

Kyle Richardson:

Yeah, I got confidence. Let me start with, I got confidence in DJ running our offense, and I got confidence in Cade running our offense. And DJ's a great football player, and Cade's going to be a great football player. It takes time and we all know that, especially in this sport, where development is key. But yeah, you'd like to see maybe Cade get in there and take a few more snaps, and just give you a change-up.

And then the flip side of it is, sometimes when you're the start and tight end or sometimes when you're the starting wide receiver, sometimes it's, hey come over here and watch it for a second or two, and see it the way we're seeing it. And when you got a guy like Cade, you can do that with DJ. But both those guys have strengths, they have weaknesses, and it's our job to make sure that we're putting the best person out there to give us a chance to be successful on that drive, be successful offensively, and then find a way to play complimentary football, offense, defense and special teams. And just not screw it up.

And a lot of times, I mean we've done that this year. I know everybody's upset, but we're 8-1. I mean we're not 5-3, we're not 4-4. Let me take my Clemson coaching hat off and put my Clemson fan hat on. How many of y'all been here for... Don's been here for a long time. And guess what? I've sat here and watched this press conference when it was 3-8. I've watched this press conference when it's 6-5. I've watched this press conference when the Tangerine Bowl, we're dying to go play in the Tangerine Bowl. No offense to the Tangerine Bowl. No offense to the Humanitarian Bowl, but we get a birth to the Humanitarian Bowl and we're like, man, this is awesome. So we got to keep things into perspective too. I'm upset we're losing. I hate to lose, I don't care what I got on my chest, I hate to lose.

But at the same time we're 8-1. We went to a Notre Dame team that guess what? They got football coaches too. And guess what? They got a lot of pride too. And we played in a tough situation, tough stadium and we got beat. But we can go back to work. Because if we had got back on the plane in South Bend, and let's say we scored 50 points and everybody's happy go lucky over the offense and wow, we're back, we're still going to walk in the building the same way we walked in the building yesterday and go, what do we got to go fix? Because that's what we do. So good, bad or ugly, we always walk in here ready to fix things on Sunday, and then we turn around and we go to practice on.

... Ready to fix things on Sunday. And then we turn around and we go to practice on Monday and we start a brand new week because the biggest game of the year is this week. It's like that every week. So I'm not going to get on the negative train, I'm not going to get caught up in the narrative, and our players aren't either. And that's our job as coaches too, to make sure our players understand the big picture.

And I've been here for seven years and I've walked in this building on a Sunday after a devastating loss to Pittsburgh and the season is over, just to turn around and go win a national championship about a month and a half later. I've walked in this building with a devastating loss to Syracuse and it's over, just to go to the playoff two months later. So nowhere in our building does it say we have to have the number one rated offense in the country. That's not a goal. Nowhere in the building does it say we have to go undefeated. It's not a goal.

And when I walked back in the building on Sunday, all our goals were still right in front of us. Everything is still right in front of us. And that's my mindset. And when I walk out of that tight end room today, that's going to be the mindset of the tight ends. And they already know it's mindset because they heard that from me first thing Sunday morning when I woke up. We're just going back to work and that's what we got to do offensively. We're in a rut and nobody's sitting here trying to disagree with that.

We've got to play better, we've got to coach better. We've got to put kids in better situations and account for everything that comes with that. But all we can do is go back to work and make sure that they're confident in what we're doing, and I know they are.

Did you get up and send them a text? Did you call them, did you see them?

Kyle Richardson:

Well crazy enough, we got back in about four o'clock in the morning and a few hours later, the sun came up. It was a little cloudy because it was a little bit of rain dropping and therefore a minute I thought maybe it wasn't going to come up, but it did. And when it came up, I got my butt up and went to church and the preacher still preached. That was crazy because I was actually worried he wasn't going to preach, being down on the boys.

 But he preached and his sermon was on static and it was about static. And the static is seasons of a lot of noise and it's where a lot of outside noise comes in and tries to affect your season and what the truth is, which I thought was very ironic to the situation we were in, still in. So yeah, I mean after I got done with that, I sent a text out to the tight ends and just told them that I loved them, told them that I was proud of them because you can say what you want, but that entire offense kept fighting the entire time and we finished on a high note and that's something to be super positive about going into this week and I wanted to make sure they understood that.

But then the flip side of it is, we're not patting on the back telling them how great they are either, as an offense and as a tight end group. They're accountable too for their play. Just like I'm accountable for my coaching and they're accountable for their play. So when they come in today, I just want to make sure they know, hey, we got everything in front of us that we have said from day one, but we got to go back to work. We got to get better. We got to treat the Monday we treated the Monday after we beat NC State and Wake Forest who was ranked at that time. We're going to go fix some things that were wrong in the game and then from there, we're not going to let this game beat us twice. And that's the mindset that we had to have and they all responded.

Brenning Stewart just growing before my eyes, and I love that about him. He's still a young guy and he's growing so much. And his response was, "Coach, this just makes the story even better," and that's his response. And that just shows you what the culture of our program does for our kids. And the same time, they're not listening to the static. They're just focused on what we got to do to go get better. And then on Saturday, we got to go do it. And I can't wait to go do it. I wish tomorrow was Saturday, I can't wait to go do it. We're not going to backdoor our way into the ACC championship. We're going to go bust the door open Saturday to this ACC championship. And that's our mindset and that's our goal and that's what we're going to go do.

Is the task right now for this offense, very similar to what the task was all off season, generating confidence.

Kyle Richardson:

Yeah, I mean think we got to get back to that. We played free there for a while and I don't know what's happened to trigger it back to where you know can just tell, we're hesitant. And I'm not just talking about quarterback, I'm talking about a lot of areas. We're just hesitant and man, just let it loose. Just run this route the way you run it every day in practice. And then we get out there and it's not really a lot what the defense is doing.

Now at the time, there is some things that the defense is doing. There were some things that Notre Dame did different, obviously than they did in [inaudible 00:13:07]. They got football coaches just like we got. But I think the weather played into, because when you go and you watch, if you watch any of the Ohio State Northwestern game, the weather played into obviously some offensive and defensive changes in regards to probably game planning.

And then I think the same thing was probably a little bit the case there, to where some of the stuff that they done all season defensively, there were a couple tweaks that they hadn't showed all year. And I think some of that was just due to the fact of the weather and that type of deal. And then a flip, you turn it over to their offense side and they grinded it out. And that was, again, that was great for them and the conditions we were in. And we just got to find a way to, you come to practice and the practice has just been different.

 Our practices don't look the same as the games in the last two weeks and there for a while, the practices were just parlaying right over to Saturday's games and that's just where we got to get to. And again, I think it's just a lack of confidence and not just with the quarterback, across the board. And we just got to get that back and get back to being consistent. We've scored open and drive, we've scored, I think six out of eight drives. Six out of eight open end drives of the game, we've gone down and scored and we just got to get back to that, to where we're getting off the bus, we're rolling. And then from that point, everybody starts feeding off everybody.

And that's the thing that really, the biggest thing that stood out to me as a team on Saturday was, we never could get the momentum back. When the defense has been down at times, the offense has picked them up. When the offense has been down at times, the defense has picked them up and our special teams has just been really consistent. And on Saturday, we get the block punt, it goes for a touchdown. And at some point you're like, all right, we're going to get that momentum back, defensively. We're going to get it back offensively and then we'll start feeding off each other.

And that was just for the first time all year, that never happened and we never got the spark that we needed to change that momentum. Because I truly feel like if we could have, then we're back to that situation that we've been in before, other years, this year. And then at that point, we're just playing football and we just never could get over that hump.

What would you say the identity of this offense is at this point?

Kyle Richardson:

That's a good question. I mean, I think there's different identities at different parts of the season, at this point. Right now, I think the identity for us right now is that we're one play away from being great. We're one play away from being just average. 

... play away from being just average. And that's where we are right now. There's been a couple balls that they're thrown un-catchable. If they're thrown catchable, it's a different ballgame. There's a couple balls that's been thrown very catchable and they're not caught. It's a different ballgame. And that comes from the receiver room and the tight end room. And then there's a couple plays where we've handed it off to Shipley or Mafah and we are one block away and it looks like it's there and we get a shoe string tackle based off of one block.

The same thing with Saturday. I mean, first play we go eight, nine yards, we spit out a screen, we go eight, nine yards and what are we doing? Get it back for holding and then we turn around and get a holding and call two plays later. And that's just kind of where we've been the last two weeks.

We've done an incredible job of protecting the football early in the year. So the narrative early in the year is, "Man, they're great in the turnover margin in protecting the football." The last two weeks, not been the case.

You look across college football in the last two weeks, there's a lot of ranked teams that have played really effective on offense and really efficient, and they've turned the ball over in the last two weeks and they've got beaten. And that's where we are right now.

 We can't throw the catchable balls that we need to throw. We can't catch the catchable balls that are being thrown. We're getting penalties when we got positive plays. We lived in third and long this week. We're fifth in the country in red zone offense, which was a struggle last year. And we've been consistent in that all year in red zone offense. We're fifth in the country and I think we're 18th in the country in third down efficiency. We lived in third and long all night Saturday night. And that's something that we haven't done this year.

So I think depending on which part of the season you're looking at is kind of, to answer that question, is which part of the season. Right now, we're a very average offense. Very average. And we're average at all positions.

I will say this, we're very average in all positions right now, but we have greatness in all the positions too. And we are just one play away. Because, we've already seen it. It's not like I'm sitting here saying, "Hey, we're one play away. Remember three years ago when we did it? Let's go."

I mean, did y'all come to Wake Forest? Everybody came to Wake Forest game? Okay. I mean we were pretty good offensively that night. Wasn't too long ago.

So I mean we have these pockets of greatness. We just got to put it back together. And again, we got to keep things into perspective too. And again, it's been a bad two nights, we've had two bad nights and it just happens to be the last two games and we'll get it turned.

How do you marry the... Coach Swinney says that you need to get DJ just to be able to turn it loose sometimes. "Hey, don't be afraid to go make a play."

But then you have what I guess was maybe an option route where you threw the pick six there. Somebody made a wrong read. You go, "Okay, so now I've made a mistake." How do you kind of say, "Hey, turn it loose, but still don't make mistakes?

Kyle Richardson:

Yes, it's tough. From a quarterback standpoint and coaching quarterbacks, I've coached quarterbacks for a long time and it's really tough. Obviously, it's a tough position to play and it's a tough position physically. But mentally it's tougher than any position.

So there's a fine line there where you're not in his head too much and you're not predetermining how to throw balls and the reads that have to be made. Because, you can't do that at quarterback. You got to see what's happening live and you got to see it post snap. But he's just got to trust and that's probably the biggest thing. He's got to trust himself. He's got to trust what he does at practice every day.

Because if he wasn't the guy, he wouldn't be playing. He wouldn't be at this level, he wouldn't be at Clemson. He wouldn't have gone to Notre Dame two years ago and did what he did then. He can do it, he's just got to trust himself. He's got to trust his reeds. He's got to trust his coaching.

And like I said, he's one of the greatest, if not the greatest kids I've ever been around. And he is one of the hardest workers, if not the hardest work I've ever been around. There's not one person in this building, there's not one player, there's not one coach that will say something negative on or off the field about DJ.

But with that personality, he brings a lot of pressure to himself, and he's a perfectionist. And those type of things you got to find, like I said, it's a fine line. You got to find a way to kind of work through those things. But I would just say trust man, "You got it. You got it. Just go do it." And he can, and he will

 And, We got to help him as coaches. I think at times you can't live in a fast paced offense as in running every play. Trust me, I love tempo, but you can't live every play like that. And for him, I think he does a little bit better when he is playing a little bit faster because there's not as much thinking, defense can't do as much.

So for us, maybe we play a little bit faster at times. And that's kind of what you saw at the end of the game there. Flip side of it is there wasn't as much pressure on you at the end of the game when you're just kind of out there tossing it around and it's a blowout at that point.

So again, there's a fine line there. But we can, as coaches, at any position that we're at, including the quarterback position, we have to find a way to highlight their strengths and hide the weaknesses. And that's what we're working on every week in this building. And I think maybe tweaking some things there and just saying, "Hey, play a little faster, play a little more free," and let's see what goes from there. But again, you can't just line up and do that every snap either. That's not football either. So we'll have to figure it out. But we got a good plan moving forward.

Is DJ running also integral to generating that looseness that you're talking about?

Kyle Richardson:

Yeah, I think the last two weeks he hasn't ran as much. And again, it's not from... We're calling the same plays that we've called all year in some capacity. It just hasn't worked out to where he's gotten loose the way he kind of has.

And then there at the end, he did and look what happens. He turned a big play. But again, we just got to go back and make sure that we're putting everybody in... Some of the times that we put the situation where it's a quarterback run, there's still pass tags attached to it and they give you a wide open pass and you throw it out there.

Like I said, there was a couple plays on Saturday where he's probably going to end up running the football, but they left a wide open tight end running a flat route. Well take the tight end on the flat route. But then we get a holding call or we get this. The last two weeks, we just haven't been able to piece it all together.

But yeah, we got to get him going more in the run game. Shipley and Mafah and him, they're just good compliments. All three of them are just really good compliments to each other. So we get him going a little bit more in the run game and he's enjoyed running the football this year and it's calmed him down a little bit.

And then you turn around and you see some of the things that we can do in the RPO world when he's that threat, too. So that's another piece of it. And like I said, we've gone back and obviously we study ourselves from the previous game, but we've gone back and looked at things earlier in the year and said, "Why were we so successful here? Or what has happened here-

So successful here or what has happened here. And so we're exploring some of that stuff and seeing where we can piece those things back together. The other part of it is you get this part in a season too, we're in November and you got a lot of film on you at this point, and there's a lot more for the defense to digest as they're preparing for you and creating their plans.

 So you have to be, again, there's a fine line, you have to be ahead of the game on that and you have to make plans for that, but if you're screwing your own players up with giving them too much to do or too much to digest mentally that slows them down playing faster and playing more free, then you're really screwing yourself in that comparison too. So we have to be careful that we're not putting too much on them just because the defense has more stuff on us.

Just the weather, how much did that impact the lack of shots, downfield in the first half and then one of those with the fourth-and-4, that was probably not the first read taking the defensive move.

Kyle Richardson:

Yeah, first part of question, the weather, it's the windiest game I've ever been associated with. Heck, before we ever got to the stadium, the power was knocked out at the hotel due to the wind, and it was just crazy when it comes to just from a win standpoint. But they was in pre-game, even myself warming up with the tight ends, I like to think I got a really good strong arm. I feel I throw a great ball, but I was overthrowing the boys Saturday and it was weird. But I think there was a couple of them that might have got loose from him or maybe you account for the win too much just because of the situation you're in. But it didn't really change what we were going to do from a game playing standpoint. They might have changed a couple play calls just from which direction you were going and the wind was going.

Obviously Notre Dame didn't throw the ball as much as we had in our game plan, so it probably didn't affect their game plan as much. But for us we made a couple tweaks. But as for that play, yeah, Bo on fourth and four, we had a play call that we've executed thousand times in practice and executed a bunch on third and fourth down in games already for the first down. And that wasn't his first read. The first read ended up being covered up, the second read ended up being covered up and your third and fourth read were two outside deeper shots on both of those calls there. So that's explanation on that. But even with that, that's got to be going back, DJ's got to throw a catchable ball there and give Bo an opportunity because anything can happen if you give him a chance there. You can get past interference or you can get a big catch.

And whether the wind took it or not, we got to throw a catchable ball there, especially on fourth down. And those are the plays here and there that when you look at the effectiveness of our offense here in the past eight games, we've thrown those balls for completions, we've thrown those balls for pass interferences because they're catchable. And then here in the last two weeks we've probably thrown more uncatchable balls than we have catchable balls.

So it's not like it's a schematic thing, it's not like he can't do it, he's just got to go out and take a little bit off of it and we don't need a perfect ball there to run underneath and go score a touchdown. We need a catchable ball that we get an opportunity to get the first down on and move the chains. And like I said, that goes back to sometimes DJ just tries to be... Because he don't want to let people down and he puts so much pressure on himself that now he wants to make that perfect throw, and he's better than that and he's shown that and he'll get better at that. But we got to coach it up and demand it

Who do you look to that is maybe that number three guy?

Kyle Richardson:

Adam's coming along with him being out with his injury. He slowly made it back and he's a big-time playmaker for us in practice and has gotten more reps in a game and he'll slowly get more reps there. Specters a glue guy. He can go to any of the three positions and play any of those positions and be really consistent there.

I think with Davis and Brenny, you got two guys there that can also plug and play. So I know just because they have tight end beside their name, they don't necessarily get lumped into that receiver group. But when you get in these types of situations, it's about getting your best players on the field and getting your best players on the field surrounding your quarterback, especially when your quarterback's struggling a little bit. Giving him more playmakers out there at the same time.

So we'll have to figure out what we're going to do there from a standpoint of we know who our guys are and I'm going to get in-depth with it here. I figure Louisville's probably listening a little bit, but we'll have a plan with how we're going to carve up our personnel packages.