Press Conference (Beau Atkinson) Elite Edition August 2

Stick to it now, like, now that I've, like, there's a name for it, so.

Yeah.

But, honestly, it's pretty fun, because, like, I've basically, like, since, I mean, you could ask, like, my parents, like, since I was in, like, middle school, I've never, like, been, like, super, like, I just get really excited, and I just, like, start, like, flexing out.

Like, since I've been, like, 11 years old, I've always done that, and, yeah, there's, like, a ton of high school pictures of me doing it, and, yeah, that's just what I've always done, so it's pretty funny.

I think a big positive for that celebration is, like, normal people in the stands can do it.

which is not the case with some

celebrations.

Even I could do the Bowflex.

It won't look as

cool as what you're doing.

Would

you like to do it right now? Yeah.

There we go.

But I like the way he does it.

He doesn't stand over the quarterback.

He's just celebrating.

Like, dude, he just sucked the quarterback.

It's time to Bowflex.

Have you heard from either Bowflex or Bojangles, our friend here

on the Carolina Inside? I have not.

I mean, I guess I haven't done a great job of reaching out, but, yeah, I probably should.

Let's go.

They should call you.

This feels like it's obvious it's bow time.

If I can't buy the bow meal at Kenan Stadium by Saturday at 8 p.m., do you like the bow

sackinson? It's kind of hard to answer.

It's pretty good.

I

like it.

I like it.

That's actually interesting because...

Cayman actually was the one who made that up last year.

Our first game last year, we played South Carolina, and I had two or one and a half or something like that.

And so Cayman was calling me that last year, too.

So it was pretty interesting to see the origins of that.

Yeah, it just needed a little momentum.

A lot of opportunities

here.

Exactly.

Okay, you've legally agreed to give us 10% of anything we

just talked about.

Good to go.

Were you impressed? Jealous? Or something else with Javari Ritzy's pick six against Virginia.

Oh, no.

I mean, I'm sure you all saw the clip, too.

That was all him.

It was literally like a shallow pass.

It wasn't even like a screen or something.

It was shallow.

He tipped it up, caught it, and then Heisman, the quarterback, while holding the ball like a loaf of bread in the other hand.

I don't know.

He's a freak for sure.

So, I mean, that was just straight impressed there.

I don't know.

I haven't had an interception here, and I don't know if I had any in high school either.

Really? Yeah, that was pretty sick to see him doing that and then running down the field next because I was on the field at the same time.

Yeah.

Were

there any moments where you wondered if he was going to run out of gas?

Honestly, no, just because I, like, I mean, doing, like, the workouts the whole summer with him, like, he's a three-tech, but, like, he's not really, because, like, he's just so, like, he's big enough to do it, but he's also so athletic for his size that, yeah, no, he's a freak for sure.

All right.

Tell us a little bit about...

Growing up, Bo, young Bo, tell us a little bit about your background.

Growing

up, Bo.

Hmm.

I started playing football when I was like seven or so.

My dad played college football at UConn and my mom played college volleyball at UConn.

So they were both there.

And so I always was around athletics pretty much my whole life.

We were like super competitive.

Yeah.

Any time we'd get in trouble, we'd be doing push-ups and

that stuff.

I remember when I was five years old, we'd have a game where my dad would sit on the couch and we'd go back, basically doing one-on-one, playing receiver and DB.

I have two brothers and a sister, so very competitive household.

I started playing football when I was seven or whatever, mostly because my dad would play football and then my older brother...

I'm not sure if you're all familiar with the Pop Warner Super Bowl stuff where you go to Orlando.

So my older brother had done that a couple times.

So after that, I was like, okay, I definitely want to start playing football.

Started playing.

My dad was my coach.

And then we ended up doing the same thing.

We went to Super Bowl twice in seventh and eighth grade.

And then from there is history, high school football.

Where do you fall in the siblings?

So I have one older brother, me, younger brother, younger sister.

What's the game most likely to cause a fight if y'all are all playing?

Oh, definitely basketball.

My little brother was a very big, he was quite the referee during some of that stuff.

He'd always get mad and call penalties.

Yeah, definitely.

I don't know.

We played a lot of basketball.

We had, like, our neighbor had, like, a football.

It was just, like, their front yard was kind of, like, curved.

So we'd, like, play football on that every time.

And, like, you could throw the football over the house for, like, the deep balls.

Nice.

It was cool.

But, yeah, no.

We were always outside growing up the whole time.

Would you beat your little brother up?

um so it was kind of a thing where like he'd start reffing like and it would get me really mad and then like I'd like chase up to him and then he'd like kind of like be like what's that animal that like plays dead uh

Oh,

a possum?

Yeah, he'd be

like a

possum.

He'd just lay down on the ground.

And then I'd kind of, like, get over him.

But, like, I would never actually do anything because, like, I don't know.

I didn't want to, like, actually hurt him and, like, have him go tell my mom or something.

I mean, I didn't mind about hurting him.

I didn't want him to get to tell mom.

Yeah, exactly.

But, yeah, so there was a lot of that going on.

I'm sure he could tell you more.

But, yeah.

You were academic all ACC last year.

Yeah.

And you're in the business school.

Yep.

Both those things are no joke.

How do you manage your time to do all these things

successfully? That's a good question.

I don't really know.

You just kind of, I feel like if you care about something, you can make time.

I'm not sure.

I've always been like a very big math person my whole life.

And luckily for the business school here, that was like the big criteria is like you do the math.

calculus and the stats and the econ so that was kind of right up my alley and then also having like good friends to be around like I'm sure y'all know Will Hardy and Connor are both in the business school with me too so like we've kind of been on the same track our whole career which has been pretty cool and been nice to have like other people around you to help you get better and stuff so yeah

That sounds like a very intelligent household you guys have.

Yeah.

You guys just like Friday night or Saturday night after the game, everybody's like out, and you're like, guys, look,

we got some econ we need to do.

We're going to go home and celebrate like normal with calculus.

Yeah, I guess so.

I guess

so.

What do you like to do outside of

football? Recently I've gotten – into fishing a lot more, which has been cool.

My girlfriend has a beach house.

They're from Moorhead City, and so I went fishing with her dad and stuff, and it was really fun.

I don't know.

I like to do very spontaneous things all the time.

I'm sure I can talk to you all more about that later, but...

I don't know.

I don't know.

But,

yeah, I don't know.

Me and Connor will do a lot of interesting, fun things.

I don't know.

We played a lot of pickleball and that kind of stuff.

I don't know.

We did, like, a whole scavenger hunt one time.

It was funny.

I don't know.

We did a lot of stuff like that.

But, yeah.

Fishing with a girlfriend's dad can be some pressure because you want to do well, but not too well.

How did

you handle that? He was legit.

He's lived there his whole life.

I was not legit.

I caught maybe two fish the whole time, but it was fun.

Sometimes the great thing about fishing is more of just being out there and the peaceful vibe was almost better than... actually catching sometimes.

So I thought that was pretty cool.

You set up a scavenger hunt?

Well, actually, Connor and Will set it up.

And then he just randomly, like, so me and Connor were roommates.

Will was not at the time.

And they just randomly put a note card outside my door.

And then me and Cade Law, if y'all know him, And we had, yeah, they just did a whole spontaneous scavenger hunt.

And, yeah, it was fun.

Did you take all day? It was, yeah, it was at like 6 p.m.

or 7 p.m. And we finished at like 10 p.m.

So even and

active.

Yeah, it was fun, though.

It was very, very creative by Connor and Will.

So,

there's been a lot that has happened with this team this year, both on the field and off the field.

How have you guys tried to manage all of that? I mean, it's a lot to happen to people.

How have you guys tried to manage that, maybe individually and together?

Yeah, I think it's definitely everybody handles it a lot different.

I mean, just a lot of different, especially like obviously all the stuff with Ty Lee can be very tough.

For me, I just try to keep focused on my goals and trying to individually work to get better, like and focus even more on football and in school and stuff.

And I don't know for other people.

I think I think that's kind of like the mindset of the whole team is just we want to move forward and in the right way.

And I think That bye week was very important for us to kind of like take a time out, reset mentally and lock back in.

And I think that showed pretty well these past two weeks.

You're talking about that first bye week?

Yeah, the first bye week.

What's the best advice you got during that time?

I think kind of just that like just focus on what's important and like not let the outside noise affect you too much and almost like just shut your ears off to the outside noise and just focus on the next thing ahead of you and Coach Monachino talked a lot about like you know you have like the high beams on your cars and like just turn the high beams off just focus on what's in front of you right there and yeah I think that was pretty good advice.

He seems like a really good coach to me.

Have you enjoyed working with him? No, he's

awesome.

He's

awesome.

What has that relationship been like? What has been beneficial for you?

What's been beneficial? The amount of knowledge he has is pretty insane.

Obviously, he was in the NFL for a long time and coached some pretty dang good players.

But just being able to watch film with him and be able to look at different tells.

He does a big run cut up every week for what the team's main runs are.

Obviously, this week we were playing Wake Forest and they do the big mesh stuff.

Yeah.

I don't know, just like little details that a lot of people don't tend to see that we can look closer as, yeah, he helps a lot with

that.

Coach Brown has talked a lot about, and this has been a heavy topic for a lot of the year, particularly with the defensive line, about rotating you guys in more so that the amount of snaps that everybody plays isn't as high at the end of the year.

So maybe instead of playing 70 plays early in the season, somebody was playing 40 or

whatever.

Mm-hmm.

Do you think that's been beneficial? Can you tell a difference? Do you think your teammates and your fellow defensive linemen can tell a

difference? I mean, there's definitely a big difference.

I think last year I was averaging like 15 snaps, if that, a game.

And then now these past few weeks I've been getting like 30-something.

So for me, I mean, I can't speak to the fact of playing too much and then your body hurting because that wasn't the case for me last year.

But I'm sure that guys like Kamen and Dez probably feel that a lot more.

So being able to...

Stay fresh is a big thing.

Say you're playing the game for 60 plays and they're throwing the ball and you can't even put your best stuff on film really because you're tired and you're gassed.

That doesn't really work well for anybody.

Playing more plays does not necessarily equal more production, I would say.

Defending that slow mesh feels like it would be tough.

Yeah.

What's one or two things I can look for when I'm watching on Saturday that'll help me try to be able to figure out what they're doing?

The biggest thing Coach Collins has talked about is just like penetrating.

Like if you sit there, just sit on the block and just let them do their thing, it's going to put a big bind on the guys in the back end.

And because like they have to play the run and the pass that whole time.

So for us just being able to penetrate and we have some really big, strong defensive tackles.

So the quarterback will like step up really far when they're riding that mesh.

So for them to be able to get through the line and get in the quarterback's face and, again, like with him stepping up, like getting your hands up was a big thing too.

But for us on the edges, just getting off the ball and trying to get to him as fast as we can, that's a big thing.

Putting the pressure on them versus letting them dictate us.

That's probably the biggest thing I'd say.

All right, three weeks left in the regular season.