TigerIllustrated.com - TI's Talking Football with Woody McCorvey

November 20, 2009

Woody McCorvey
Special to TigerIllustrated.com

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The following is another installment in a new feature on Tigerillustrated.com with Woody McCorvey, Clemson Associate Athletics Director for Football Administration. The feature is released twice each month. McCorvey is in his second stint at Clemson. His first was coaching wide receivers and tight ends under Danny Ford from 1983-89.

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I think a big part of football is mental. And that all goes back to the off-season. First of all, you have to recruit the right type of people. You have to recruit character. Instead of going with all these rankings, you have to look and see if a guy really fits into your system. You might have a great, running, dual-threat QB, but he might not fit into our system here at Clemson. So you have to take kids who you know will fit into your system. If you have a guy who's not going to fit in your system, he can be disruptive. So this goes back to recruiting and recruiting character. It goes back to recruiting guys who will give you effort day in and day out, guys who are all about team.

Then you bring them in and put them in an off-season program. That's where the mental part of it starts. If they're willing to work, and you work them hard enough, and they're tough, then once they get to playing and get out there on the field, they feel like because of their off-season program and what they did during August, they will believe that goals can be achieved. There's a lot of mental preparation from the off-season to the time they come in and meet with coaches.

At the University of Alabama, I think coach Saban gets that out of his football team. You don't see them have big lapses where they're up and down week in and week out. They're always consistent. When I was coaching at Alabama, it was the same way. We were always consistent. We weren't worried about where we were ranked offensively. We always wanted to be good defensively. But we weren't worried about all those stats, except one thing - rushing. If you were going to out-rush your opponent, play good defense and not turn it over, those are the stats we felt like that counted.

Every week that we've gone out since the Maryland game, Clemson fans don't have to guess how this team will. Every week it's been consistent. The thing we have to do is keep our focus, keep doing what we're doing, follow the direction of the head coach and we'll be fine.

Some people have said that the Miami game was the turning point in the season, but I don't feel like it was. I feel like the loss at Maryland helped us regroup. We had two weeks before we played our next ballgame. That gave coach Swinney time enough to focus on the things he knew we really needed to improve on.

We had a lot of discussion in house on how we were going to flip this thing and get it back on the right track. And then the coaches took it to the players. They made the players believe in what had been discussed prior to the season. Coach Swinney did a marvelous job of getting everybody back on the same page. From that point on, everybody has seen the production that we've had from week in and week out.

You go back to the beginning of the year. The offense was struggling, but the defense and kicking game kept us in it. At some point the kicking game has struggled, but the offense and defense kept us in it. Saturday we had penalties on some drives that allowed them to score, but the offense answered. That's what it's all about it. It's about team, not just one individual. Now we have some guys on this team that are very good football players. You start talking about C.J., Jacoby, Mike Palmer who has been very consistent, Kyle Parker who has done a very good job, but then you can't count out the other guys on offense. It's gotten better.

On defense, those guys have been cohesive all year. A couple of ballgames they haven't played up to what coach Steele wants them to play up to, but they've always responded and come back and done their job. Ricky has made a lot of plays for them over there. DeAndre McDaniel? every time it's time for someone to step up, he steps up.

The whole focus has been on team, even though we've got some great individual players. I guarantee you, all those great players, if you ask them, they'll tell you that their focus is on the team. I think that's why we have been able to put together the string of wins that we've had. And these kids have a swagger about them now. Every ballgame that they go in, they feel like they can win the game. I've watched them on the sideline, and no matter how bad things have gotten, they always think they're in the game.

When I came here in 1983, we went up there and I think we scored 50-some points on them. But coach Welsh came in and changed the whole mentality of that program. They were able to recruit better and keep guys in the state of Virginia. When I first got here, Clemson was able to go up there and recruit well. Penn State always came into Virginia and recruited well, too. But after he got that thing going he was able to keep a lot of guys in the state. They got good and competitive. While I was here then, Virginia had never beaten Clemson. But whenever you played them, it was a tough, hard-fought football game. They had us beat up there one year, but the cornerback didn't line up on one of our receivers there at the end. We had a running play called, but threw a ball out there to Chip Davis and he caught it and scored. That saved us from getting beat up there that day.

Coach Groh, when he first got there, he had some good years. Right now they're struggling a little bit, but there's no doubt in my mind that they're going to come in here and give us a competitive football game. They've been pretty consistent on defense. Offensively, they've been struggling some, but the thing we have to do is what coach Swinney has talked about all season, and that's us focusing on us and the things we need to do. If we do that, we can finish this thing out and be where we want to be.

- Woody McCorvey

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