Senior safety Jalyn Phillips sat down with the media this week ahead of Clemson’s homecoming game against Syracuse on Saturday.
Before the start of the season, Syracuse was predicted to be last in the Atlantic Division of the ACC. However, despite those odds, they remain undefeated and are ranked 14th in the nation after defeating NC State this past Saturday.
“ I am not surprised at all, I don’t even get into the preseason stuff because you just never know what is going to happen,” Phillips said.
“They have a great running back, one of the best in the nation, so we’ve got to really prepare for him,” Phillips continued. “The quarterback, he likes to run and throw. We know that they’ve got a lot of weapons, so we’re going to have to prepare for that. There’s definitely going to be a lot of things on our hands, and we better prepare well for it.”
Quarterback Garrett Shrader, a junior from Charlotte, has made the most of his second year with Syracuse, throwing for more than 1,400 yards and 12 touchdowns. He is a dual threat on his feet being physical and difficult to tackle, which contributes to Shrader rushing for more than 300 yards and five touchdowns in the Orange’s first six games.
“We know that he is a great quarterback that likes to use his feet,” Phillips said. “You know we have to be able to match routes throughout the plays and things like that. We’ve got to contain him. It’s going to be a great challenge this week. He is very physical. We’re going to have to really tackle him. He is not going to slide or things like that, so we’ve got to be aware of that.”
This past weekend, the Tigers had a 20-point lead over Florida State heading into the fourth quarter. However, the defense ended up giving up 14 unanswered points in the fourth, whih made the game a lot closer than it should have been.
Phillips said that, going into this week, finishing is the main focus at practice.
“That is the main thing that (head) coach (Dabo) Swinney preached to us,” Phillips said. We’ve just got to finish well. We can’t really play to a scoreboard. That’s one thing that we’re going to take into consideration after this week.
“The No. 1 thing for this program is effort. You know just giving great effort, you never know what is going to happen throughout the play, so just finishing the play no matter what.”