Dave Doeren: 'It’s Good To Be Back On The Field'
NC State head coach Dave Doeren fielded questions from the media today with the Wolfpack closing in on game prep for Wake Forest. Check out what all Doeren had to say.
NOTE: Click the video above to watch the Zoom meeting.
Opening Statement
It’s good to be back out on the field the last couple of days. Obviously, you guys are aware that we had our stoppage, and the guys came back excited to practice. They had a good lift and meeting sessions today and then back to the field tomorrow. I felt like coming out of our scrimmage, it felt like a month ago but it was 10 days ago, there was a lot of excitement.
Then we had to shut down with all the things going on on campus. Once we got out of that window, players were chomping at the bit to get back to work. It was fun for us to have that opportunity. Now, obviously, we are closing in on two and a half weeks before a game. I’m excited about the announcement of our game being at 8 p.m. with Wake.
Each day it’s kind of one of those deals where it’s unlike any other time for all of us. Things change daily, not just with the COVID virus but the contact tracing that comes with it, not even when a kid has it. Sometimes a kid just wakes up congested and lets the trainers know, and you have to go through all the things that go with protecting these guys when they have roommates. Day in and day out the numbers change, so you’ve got to be creative and work with the guys that are there and Zoom call with the guys that aren’t, and you hope you get through it. That’s kind of where we are.
Is there frustration with not knowing what the benchmark will be for a team with COVID cases or contact tracing to be able to play?
I think there’s just a lot of unknowns that are frustrating. We all want to win. We want to give our players and programs the opportunity to be successful. There’s a lot of limiting factors on a daily basis that are out of our control, and none of us as coaches like that. We like to be able to limit the number of things that can cause us to lose. I think we all share [Virginia Tech head coach] Justin [Fuente’s] frustrations.
I don’t have any answers for you because that’s really a discussion that I’m not in. I’m not sure what the exact number is. There’s been a lot of talk about it. I think it’s more about position decimation than it is about numbers. When you end up where you don’t have a position group that can function, that’s a bigger problem maybe than having 11 guys where it’s one in every position group. If you lose seven of your eight offensive linemen that you travel with, you’re not going to be able to play. Where if you lose seven guys with one from each group, you are. I don’t think there’s a perfect answer to that question. I do think that’s a frustration and a tough thing for us to deal with right now because on a daily basis, your lines can change quite a bit.
How much cross training is the team doing with guys playing different positions?
A lot. It was a conversation we had at the beginning of training camp and now it has come to life. I’ve already talked about how we do that on the offensive line with tackles, guards and centers, but we’re doing it in the secondary where corners are learning safety positions, safeties are learning nickel, or a Sam linebacker has to learn Will linebacker, or a Mike linebacker has to learn one of the outside linebacker positions.
You just have to have enough double training where you are able to sustain your depth chart as things progress. We’ve done a lot of things that way, so if you have the issue on game week or in the middle of game week, you’re not starting from ground zero trying to train somebody for a new spot.
How much of it is a mental workload with guys learning multiple positions?
I think it’s kind of on us to pick the guys that are capable of handling that. If there’s a young man that struggles with learning just one spot, then we are not going to put more than one spot on them. There’s certain guys in our programs that have mastered their positions mentally, and we feel like it’s not a lot for them to handle. Those are the players, the more experienced guys, that you feel like you can do that with.
If we end up in a situation where we don’t have that luxury, then that’s something where we’ll have to cross that bridge when we get to it. Our plan is a guy like Thayer Thomas or Emeka [Emezie], for example, they are capable of learning multiple spots. They’ve played a lot of football. You don’t do that with a true freshman. You’re just trying to use your older guys that have played a lot, that aren’t thinking a lot and put a little bit more on their plate that way.
Is this a new level of things being out of your control?
The only thing that you do control is the fact that you don’t know what is going to happen every day. We’ve challenged each other as coaches in our building, and we’ve challenged our leadership council. I think the team that handles change the best has got the upper hand right now. You almost have to embrace that. If you can embrace that and daily roll with the curveballs that are coming at you, and you deal with them better than somebody else is and not become negative by it because I think that’s hard too. I think a lot of people focus on what they don’t have instead of what they do.
That’s really been our focus. It’s ‘Here’s what we have to work with today. Here’s the amount of time we get. What’s the best way we can use this time with the guys we have?’ You just go that way. I’ve never been anywhere where you are planning practices by the minute. We’re usually weeks out with what we want to do on the field. You can’t operate like that right now. You just have to embrace what you have and do the best you can with it.
What are the challenges of shifting your game planning to Wake Forest after planning for Virginia Tech?
It probably isn’t as bad as it would have been the other way around because we play Wake every year. At least we have some recall on that team. If we were opening with Wake and then had to flip flop to a team we haven’t played in a long time, that would have been a little more challenging probably for our players and staff. We know what Wake does. It’s a matter of just adjusting how you’re going to defend them, how you’re going to attack them and getting back into their film. It does take a toll on you mentally as a coach.
You’re locked in on a certain team, you put a lot of time into that, you’re game planning and then all of a sudden with a snap of a finger you’ve got to drop that one. What we did was said ‘ok, let’s make sure we take advantage of the time we’ve put into Tech because we will play them in the second game. Let’s not forget about the things we had and write all this stuff down and document it, and let’s transition.’ Having the break in the schedule at the time we got it probably wasn’t a bad thing for the staff because they were able to use their time without being on the field to reallocate their time to Wake Forest.
Was the time away a needed break for all the players?
I don’t think they looked at it that way. They were disappointed. They had a long break already from us, from March until they came back. The way we spaced out our camp, it hasn’t been our traditional camp where they are worn out. We’ve taken a lot of time because of the amount of time we had for the first game to have our recovery that they needed and the lifting. I do think the mental part was probably better for them than the physical. I think they really want to be out there training right now.
But with all that’s going on from ‘we’re gonna play, we’re not gonna play, we’re gonna play, we’re not gonna play’ and then all the things that are happening socially, there’s been a lot mentally that these guys have had to deal with. So, that part probably was healthy for them to have a little bit of a break.
Will NC State going to all online classes limit the team’s exposure to COVID-19?
I think it can. Leading up to the students’ return we were really good. We tested for two and a half months and had three positives. Once the students came back, just like you’re seeing across the country, obviously when you take 25,000 people and drop them into however many city blocks it is here, and they haven’t been here, that’s an influx of germs. What comes with that is what comes with that, and we’re now having that leave.
I hope that we can return to where we were. We were doing really well. As we get onto the backside of this thing and students are leaving campus, you would hope that it protects the so-called bubble that we’re trying to have with our guys.
How does contact tracing work?
It starts with our student health. Julie Casani is the person on campus that oversees that area. As soon as we have a positive test, our head trainer has contact with her and with Rob Murphy from our athletic department, and they go through the steps; who do they live with, who have they been around? They’re not only asking the trainer, but they communicate that with the student-athlete. Anyone that is in that contact tracing is then quarantined, and it’s a 14-day quarantine.
That’s really the biggest challenge. If you have four people living together, for every one positive you are losing four players. In our case, a lot of times, only one of them is sick. There’s a lot of people that come out of your workforce every time that happens. The bigger problem probably has been that there’s so many symptoms that people look at that are symptomatic to this. We live in a pretty allergy popular place, I guess you would say, so our guys wake up with allergy-type symptoms, which are also similar. Now they’re going to be pulled out until we can test them, along with their roommates, until they come back clean. Day to day, you can feel like you’re going to have three quarters of your guys and you end up with half of them, and then the next day they come back.
It’s challenging. I think the contact tracing part of this has been the most frustrating is the word, but the hardest part because these kids want to be out there, and they’re being told they can’t. They feel completely healthy and in some cases are, but that’s the safest thing for them. So, we’re following the CDC guidelines and medical advisory board suggestions. As a coach, I can’t do anything about it. We don’t get the right of veto in this one. You just stand by and they tell you what to do, and then we support them and move forward with who we have.
Where does most of the contact tracing come from?
I think the difference on a field or on a court is that you watch these athletes and they’re not around each other. As you add the seconds up on the field, they’re not around each other very long. In a two-hour practice, guys could be around each other for maybe three minutes total. You’re in and out of contact. Plays only last six seconds, so you might be around a player for one second on a play, whereas you could ride in a car with me for 15 minutes and you are done.
The game and the practice hasn’t been the issue, it’s been what happens in a roommate scenario, dining scenario or car ride scenario that is giving a lot of the contact tracing positives.
Did the team need to take a step back conditioning-wise after the break?
We did. We came back and the first day out were just in our helmets. Our strength staff had the guys that morning as well, so we got a good workout and a good sweat in that way with them. And then we went out on the field for about an hour. Normally this time of year, your practices would be much longer than that.
Again, you don’t want to come out of an eight-day layoff and then just crush it in one day and then you’ve got a bunch of guys with soft-tissue injuries. You kind of have to look at it from a long-term perspective. Each day we add a little bit back, we do some position-specific conditioning at the end of practice with guys. We’re trying to get their cardio back to where it was.
Do you have a player or two who’s taken the leadership role in saying ‘We need to do this right if we want to play football?’
I think our team has done a nice job with each other holding each other accountable to the right and the left. There’s a lot of leadership on this football team. That’s one of the things that makes it a fun team to be around. I think position by position, you guys kind of know who they are. It’s the older players, the guys that are in their final year that really want to have a great season and go out on the right note that you see speaking up and holding guys to a place where they can play because they’re not putting each other at risk.
How much of a setback is being away from practice for eight days?
It’s a setback. It is. We were making good progress. We had our first full-contact play since the spring, and then you have to step away. Football’s a game of repetition. You can’t create the winning habits you want without repetition. And you lead up to those with maximum reps. It takes stacked days for guys to learn how to get muscle memory in their fundamentals. To take an eight-day break, it’s a setback. It’s longer than that for some of these guys. They’ve been out for 14 days because they’re quarantined. So everyone’s going to deal with that part of this thing. And there isn’t a fix. When you get them back, you do the best you can to try to get them acclimated and back into the muscle memory and the repetitions that they need.
How much more difficult has this made it to develop a backup quarterback?
It’s challenging. We can’t practice with the same number of guys because of what we’re dealing with. So your practices are set up differently. I think coach Beck’s had to be really creative. But every position’s that way. You’re trying to have depth; I think depth is probably going to be one of the biggest storylines of the year, to be honest, how teams sustain these losses with guys being removed from their roster. Now it could be game day that you lose your quarterback, because we’re testing them on Fridays.
Is there a specific pecking order behind Devin Leary?
Bailey Hockman’s our second quarterback right now and then it’ll be Ben Finley.
How do you deal with talking to the players about dealing with the protocols?
We’ve had a lot of team meetings leading up to our scrimmage. After that, as things were starting to pile up, we had a team Zoom, just because we weren’t allowed to meet in person at the time, just about what was going on and how they could handle it the best they could. Obviously at that point we were learning that campus was going to be going all online and students were going to be leaving. It’s a Q and A thing too, the guys do a good job.
They’ll text me at night like ‘Hey coach, can you talk to the team about this? Some of the guys are asking.’ People want to know about their fans or their families being able to come to games. There’s a lot of information we’re still learning day to day. So it’s trying to be as transparent as I can. Like I tell them, I don’t know the answers, but I’ll try to get them. Just ask. That’s almost every day. You’re trying to update them on where this is headed, because obviously there’s no script.
Who stood out in the scrimmage you guys had?
The best part of the scrimmage was how it went back and forth. Sometimes you get in these scrimmages and the offenses will dominate or the defenses will dominate. It was back and forth in the deal. So the defense would create a takeaway; Drake Thomas had a really nice forced fumble. Then the next drive, the offense scored so they responded. And then the defense came back and had a stop. So it was a really good back and forth day. That part was a lot of fun to see. It felt like a year ago now so I need to go back and thing about the big plays. Ricky Person had a nice day for us out there. I think he continues to show us some things.
Rakeim Ashford, the safety that transferred in here had a really good day defensively. He had a lot of nice tackles, a big pass breakup, an interception. So he did some nice things in the scrimmage that day as well. But it was really good just to get in there and see the guys play. It’s been so long. As a coach, it’s hard to feel good after a scrimmage, because one side of the ball inevitably lets you down. But that was what felt good about that day. We came out of it healthy and there was a lot of back and forth production.
How do you talk to guys on your team about speaking out on social injustice and fans disagreeing with them on social media?
I’m proud of our guys. I’m very sensitive to their pain. I let them talk to me about those things. We have great conversations. I have talked to them about focusing on the positive things that you’re doing. I think sometimes we get caught up in some of the negativity and lose sight of the positive things that we are doing.
I know that Isaiah Moore and Pack United and the guys on our team have done a lot of really good things to impact change not just in our locker room but around them. Then you lose sight of it because somebody’s being negative. In every conversation you have, some people are going to get a lot out of it, and some people aren’t. You’ve got to choose who you want to focus on at that point.
For them, I just keep counseling them not to be frustrated. Not to lose sight of the positive things that they are doing that there is growth and there is empathy. But there’s always going to be people that don’t want to grow, and you can’t let them impact the platform you have or make you want to quit because of that. I think just trying to continue to embrace my ability to support them, love them and help them through this. Show them that there are positive things happening. I think a lot of times we all focus on what we don’t have instead of what we do. These are great young men and I stand with them and will continue to. There are going to be people that disagree with us out there. That’s the world we live in, and you have to understand that.
Have you actually had half your roster out?
Yes, and it’s not like they’re out because they’re all positive COVIDs. Like I said, it’s quarantining that’s getting a lot of the guys. It’s a real number. The dorm got us early when the campus had all the students back in the dorms. A lot of the dorm guys got quarantined, and so that’s a lot of players. That’s 33 guys that live in that dorm, so that’s a big chunk of people. But there’s days where that happens, so you focus on the ones that can be there, and you try to help the ones that can’t mentally through the Zoom ability to teach. Right now, we’re gaining a lot more back than we’re losing, so that’s a good thing.
Is it ironic that you guys are getting a prime time game with no fans?
It made me chuckle. We usually have a noon game to start the season and everyone goes crazy about it. Now we have an 8 p.m. game and no one can be there, so that’s OK. I know our players were excited to have that opportunity.
Will you guys have another scrimmage and are there areas that you’re looking to see growth?
We would like to. The biggest thing we need to do is get the situational stuff going: red zone, goal line, short yardage, two-minute, things like that that you need scrimmage type environments to really see the outcome. So the situational football is an area that we would really like to get a lot more reps of that leading up to our first opportunity.
Everything’s day to day. There’s days you’d like to do it, but it’s going to come down to do we have the right number of guys to make that a good practice.