Q&A with Tom O'Brien

Q&A Thursday evening with N.C. State football coach Tom O’Brien:

Q: A lot of guys said that when your injured starters returned, it would benefit you because the younger, inexperienced backups would have played. Has that come to fruition?
A: You don’t want to be in that position where younger guys are playing. It’s a product of what happened. Certainly the younger guys got better with the opportunity to play. You only get better by playing, and you only get better by playing in a football game. A lot of guys stepped up and they gave us good effort and everything, but certainly the return of a handful of guys has made a difference to this football team.

Q: For depth purposes, do you feel more comfortable putting those young guys in there because they’ve played?
A: Yeah. Because they have played. What it does help, it helps your scout team get better because your scout team is giving a better look. You’re getting better reps at what you’re trying to get done.

Q: You had a couple close calls with punts (almost blocked) last week. Is that the result of some sort of schematic breakdown, and if so have you worked on that this week?
A: We always work on punt protection, and they (Duke) came after us. A lot of people haven’t done that before. So we got the ball and we got it off. And that’s still the key. Close doesn’t count.

Q: Is it the discipline that makes Wake Forest so impressive?
A: They’re very skilled. They’re a very fast football team. They’ve played awfully fast. They’ve played very quick. And that’s been the key to what they’ve been able to do the last couple years, is they’ve out-quicked people. Certainly our focus all week has been, we’re going to have to play awfully fast against these guys.

Q: (Kicker Josh) Czajkowski, can you talk about him? He has quietly had a really good year for you guys.
A: It’s good, because you haven’t been asking me questions about him. He certainly has. As we said a year ago, coming out of spring practice he was our kicker until (Steven) Hauschka came, and Hauschka has proven to be a pretty good kicker. . .in the NFL. Josh benefited from a year of watching him. Hauschka was really a great technician kicking the football.