coach going to go right side third row sort of in the middle hey coach uh jery granison ESPN Charlotte your last stop was with Penn State defensive coordinator I just wanted you to talk about your current defensive unit and maybe what you want their identity to be going into this season well the identity of this defense has traveled uh from Penn State through Miami Mississippi State you know throughout my entire career um we want to create a high volume of negative plays um it's important to us to lead the nation and tackle for losses um those are Drive Killers there's a reason behind that that puts people in third down and long uh you get no one turns the ball over more than they do on third down along um what everybody everybody knows that turnovers win had do you create turnovers so um It's always important that we're the top of of turnovers created I think we led the nation in Sachs last year so um it's a play it's a it's a scheme that the players love to play in because who doesn't love sacks TI for losses interceptions for a defensive back I think we love the nation in pbus at pen last year in or two years ago in quarterback hit so it's just it's a playmaking defense um um it's it's it's predicated on attacking front play you know playing some man coverage on the back end um but but more than anything it's 11 guys trusting each other to do their job playing with great effort great toughness and and great fundamentals coach left side your next two questions right in front of you Royal how the juice Network coach um how important was it for you to shed the sour taste after Mike O left the program and to pretty much establish your culture and pedigree with the players that stuck through the hustle and gr and be underneath you well look it's always difficult when there's uncertainty right um I think it was maybe a 13-day uh window where there was not a head coach at Duke and and that's a that's a um a lifetime in especially in the in the current cycle of college football so I give a lot of credit to the players um for for hanging tough um I give a lot of credit to the to the staff that was at Duke at the time still preparing the team for the bowl game um but it's something I I think it's that ideal of what Duke is in general our guys want to be a Duke uh they love being a Duke they love the student athlete experience at Duke they love what it means to be a a a student at Duke what what it will mean to graduate from duke and and I think the power of the place really helped in that transitional time stay on that first row coach just to his right your left Dan toror I wake up called dt.com coach we know your familiar face here in the conference and obviously your time that you spent at Miami for the Duke Blue Devils for you what was it that spoke to you more than anything else about this program we've seen it have success we've seen stint of success what made you believe that this was the right fit for you personally and that there can be sustained success at Duke yeah I think everything starts with alignment and so you know I mentioned you know knowing phy was here hearing some of the commentary from some of the coaches on the staff last couple years that I had worked with previously I had some inside baseball on what was going on and cont contributing to their success the last couple years um but that wouldn't be enough without the the dedicated um support starting from the president Vincent Price through our ad Nina King Duke wants to be excellent at football they want to sustain Excellence at football and I do believe look everyone's aware of the turbulence in college football right now and I do believe that Duke is uniquely poised in a way that other schools aren't um because as I mentioned before generally speaking the parents who drop their young men off at our doorstep as freshmen it's very important to those families that those young men graduate from Duke University so we still have a chance to develop a roster now we got to take care of our guys we we got to be smart and and make the student athlete experience worthwhile to stay but but if we do our end of the bargain our players want to be a Duke and what that allows us to do is that allows us to build a roster the way that it's been done for a long time that right now the forces of college ball are always trying to tear apart coach from the podium as a followup what does accomplished greatness mean to you well accomplished greatness is what we talk about at um uh Duke is to not um it's about Mastery you know and it's about a a pathway to Mastery uh we talk about you know trying to not confuse success with excellence and I feel like greatness comes in the same way to not confuse success with greatness um what I mean by success is Success can be determined in the short term uh we're a small sample siiz Sport and the ACC the one thing I can promise you they we're going to play a lot of fourth quarter close games that's just what the sport is um and sometimes the success in the short term can mask what is excellence in the long term um and so whether it's you know what whatever term definition you want to use greatness Excellence um that's what we're dedicated to Du to do at Duke right side coach first row Jim Wilson CFB Nation first off coach how are you doing today I'm outstanding how about yourself I'm doing really great thanks for asking so obviously with this being your first off season as the head coach of Duke I want to ask what are the most important things that you learned about your team this off season what I learned um that you you would imagine to be true but until you're on the inside of Duke um as a coach you're always trying to um impress upon your team the the the virtues of hard work um of sacrifice of discipline you can't have a great team without that you're going to hear every coach come up on this Podium and say we got to do all three of those things um that's obviously true at Duke what you realize at Duke is you can't even get into Duke unless you were raised that way so there have been times in my career and I take great pride of this as a coach where I've been the first person in a young man's life to try to teach them discipline they were never raised with discipline and that's a big thing that we take very personally as a coach that we get to instill these values that that they they were not raised that certain way you can't get into Duke if you don't understand the value of hard work you can't get into Duke if you don't at some point you had to sacrifice something as as a young man when your friends in high school were doing this and you knew you had to finish your homework you knew you had to study you can't just lock into the grades it takes you can't Talent your way to get into Duke and so as a coach how great is it to be able to inherit a team that has those things because now you can spend your time coaching football you have to spend all your time saying hey guys if you really work hard it'll pay off and and they wonder whether that's true they know it's true coach right over his right shoulder the gentleman in the second row yes Jean Gall Chad Journal coach tell us a little bit about the locker room upgrade you just had and what that means to the team well what it means is you know I mentioned that that uh phrase student athlete experience right and if you want to be first class if if you want to um say you're have a big time program well you got to be big time in all things you do and there's nothing more important than the players home in our building which is the locker room um you know as I mentioned to the players um they get to be the beneficiaries of a lot of teams that have come through Duke that have not had that um the support we had from from our our donors um the the previous football staff that helped push getting it through um it's really important and now we get to recruit to that we get to to be in there every day it's it's a great blessing for our guys but we should be a little bit humbled at all the players that did not have that exact same thing before and take care of it with a with a a reverence of of how lucky we feel to have something as special as that coach from the podium your defenses have been a force behind the line of scrimmage ranking in the top 10 nationally in tackles for a loss each year is the tfl the unsung hero of defensive stats it it is it is in our in our U building um and again it's we don't just do it for vanity um you know there there's a lot of analytics if you couldn't create a negative play on a drive the points per Drive goes way down it's hard to overcome by Common Sense a negative play creates a long yarded situation if you can create negative play on first down you're you're behind the chains on second down and the game is all about either avoiding third Downs or what the down distance is on third down football is not complicated people are complicated ball is not complicated so the more we can leverage people into third down along situations then the more the arrow turns you know to me it's like um it's like Blackjack you're trying to turn the the odds more into your favor when you're sitting at the table and that's why I think the tfl is kind of something that enables us to do that coach your last question will come in the first row just to your left coach when you look back at mentorship for you as as like you said discipline teaching these guys discipline and and a lot of cases being the first person to do that who taught you that responsibility that discipline some of those mentors that you reach back from into your tool box for that wisdom when you need it well I I think first you're taught how you're raised you know I mean I mean my parents um are the the first lesson you're ever going to receive is from them you know so um the first credit goes to them uh in this profession in particular uh you know I I'm I'm I'm so fortunate to break in at Florida State in the late 90s you know and and to sit there when football staffs were so small back then I was like one of 15 in the staff room and and you got Bobby Bowen at the end of the table you got Mickey Andrews and Chuck Amato to your right you have Mark Rick as the offens coordinator to your left I mean holy cow I mean what a room of people to to to learn from and so to be with Coach Bowen for three years to go to NC State with Coach Amon for six years so really the first nine years of my career was raised in the Florida state way then to go to Middle Tennessee with Rick Stockdale who really again is a coach Bowen disciple so over the first decade of my career three jobs really all taught from the Bobby Bowen way the guy won more games I think anybody ever so um it was a it was like getting a PhD in what it takes to be great at football [Applause]