POP-TARTS BOWL: Doeren, Klieman Speak at Joint Press Conference
NC State head coach Dave Doeren and Kansas State head coach Chris Klieman met with the media Wednesday morning ahead of the Wolfpack's clash with the Wildcats in the 2023 Pop-Tarts Bowl.
NOTE: A transcript of the joint press conference is posted below.
Opening Statement
CK: We're excited to be here, thanks to the Florida Citrus Sports organization, Steve Hogan, for the invite to come to play in a great Bowl game against a great opponent in North Carolina State. I know our guys are extremely excited about the opportunity. K-State has never been to Florida before for a Bowl game, and it's a lot better than being in Manhattan with the weather. We had some snow there last night as I understand. So the guys had a little sunshine. Sun came out yesterday, which was nice. We've had good practices down here, and college football has changed a little bit, so you're going to see some different guys for us that maybe aren't the household names that you've seen. But that's kind of the world we're in right now. I'm excited about a lot of the veteran kids that will play, and honor those guys in 2023 and we'll get a little glimpse into 2024, as well with a number of young guys that are going to play as well. Excited for our guys to have the opportunity, and appreciate all the hospitality everybody has given us here.
DD: Yeah, second everything he said. It's a great experience. And for the players, all the activities that they have had an opportunity to be a part of. I think the way that y'all set up this itinerary, there is a great blend of free time and allowing us to be flexible with our work time. I know the families really appreciate all the hospitality we've got and the children being able to go around the theme parks and just see the joy in all our families. Yesterday was incredible. Got the opportunity to serve in the community. It was great to have that, as well, with the teams. Can't thank all of you enough to bring NC State down here. We've been wanting to play in this Bowl game for a number of years and so thankful to get to play in it and the opportunity to play against Chris and his team. I have great respect for Coach and that program. I think you guys know I'm from Kansas, and growing up in Kansas City, was able to really watch that program with Coach [Bill] Snyder take off not once, but twice, and have so much respect for what he built there and what Coach has continued to build. You know, two similar football programs that really believe in fundamentals and toughness, togetherness. I think when you watch both our teams play, they play hard. They are teams that play till the end. They fight. Their physical. I know our guys are excited to play. Not just because we are playing a great opponent but just an opportunity to go out and compete one more time with a group of young men, for us, that really came together in the middle of a season and won five straight games to elevate our program into the top 20, and kind of out of a real tough middle of the season into a great finish. So an opportunity to continue to do that. Like Coach said, there's going to be some players out there that are getting expanded roles. Some of them, their first time being in some of the roles they have. And, so, excited for them. They have served our team in other ways and now they get a chance to be in that role with Payton Wilson not playing, to get to see now Caden Fordham play a lot more for us, a young man that we are really excited to see out there. You know, for this team, a chance to really play one more game together and for the seniors that we have that are playing, an opportunity to honor them and do it on a great stage. So we do appreciate the opportunity, the hospitality and obviously everything that y'all have done for us down here.
Happy new year, gentlemen. Coach Klieman alluded to -- about the state of college football a little bit but this question will be for both of you. What do you think or how do you think you guys represent parity in college football, you two being in this Bowl game, you two having lost to a team that participated in a conference championship by three points both on your schedules, how do you guys represent the parity in college football and how much do you think the portal in all that has made that happen for the sport?
CK: Well, I think Dave hit it. We are both developmental programs. Every game that we play, we feel we have a great chance to win and our kids feel that. I think that's the biggest thing is that when you have guys that are in the program for four, five, six years, it tells you an awful lot about the character of those guys, the competitiveness of those guys, and we're going to continue to see parity in college football. Yeah, there's people changing addresses all the time, but you know, the core of your foundation, the core of your team, needs to be there for four or five years now.
Six-year guys are going to be gone pretty soon, but the four- and five-year guys, that's what we are trying to build at K-State. I'm sure it's similar at North Carolina State. Build the culture with your four-, five-year guys and blend in the young people and have that great foundation. I think both of us feel like on any stage our kids are going to compete their tails off and have an opportunity to win every game.
DD: Yeah, it's unique. When you get into your training room in January, I know last year for us, we had 43 new players on our football team including all the walk ones we added. And so it's a massive challenge when you talk about building continuity and chemistry, and you do lean on your elder players to teach them what the program is about. I think that's what's cool about this game. You don't have two teams playing. You have two football programs. We have been winning for a long time and so have they and so there's a standard of behavior and expectation of how we work and how we practice, how we lift, and our older players hold the younger players and the new players to that standard and try to elevate it every year. It will be no different this year. I think every coach in college football has the same challenge and opportunity. Used to have your 20, 25 seniors leave your team, you get 20, 25 new guys and you just kept it rolling. It's a lot different now. It's doubled, really, your outflow and your inflow. So how you bring them all together I think is really the magic that you have to have, and it helps when you have a foundation that's so strong like these two teams.
You spoke on it a little bit. Just talk about the impact that Coach [Collin] Klein made in the short time he's been in the coach's room and talk about how Coach Riley is stepping up as offensive coordinator.
CK Yeah, obviously Collin did some great things for us here. Had another opportunity and took that, and great respect for CK. But now it's time to move forward. Coach [Conor] Riley has gone a really good job putting him in an interim role of the OC. I've been with Riles since 2012. We were assistants together at North Dakota State. Brought him here in '18. So I've been a little over a decade with this guy. I think he's the best offensive line coach in the country, and he earned the right to have that title for this game and to be out in front of the guys. So I'm excited about what he's going to bring. I know the players are excited. It tells you everything about Conor Riley when you see the amount of six-year guys that came back, they were all on the O-line. We had Seth and we had a couple of guys in Daniel Green, but most of these guys are O-linemen. That tells you everything you need to know about Connor and so excited for his opportunity.
What would you say now that Bowl prep is just about over, what's impressed you most about the way Avery has handled his situation going into his first start?
CK: The fact that there is not a quarterback coach, really, in the room, there are some people that are really helping him. He's very calm. Everybody knows he's a competitor. But his leadership has really taken off, and it's neat to watch him interact with some of the older wide receivers and O-linemen, and they believe in him. We believe in him. We trust him. He's going to make some mistakes. He's a young player but he's going to make some splash plays just like he did this year. I'm excited for his opportunity because he's earned the opportunity. You know, he played a lot of football for us this year and played on some big stages, and so now he's just getting that chance to start and do it. Now, he did start one game. We played two quarterbacks in one game to start the game but he's going to have that opportunity now, and the team is so excited for him. It's not going to be all about him. We've got to be really good around him, too.
Coach Doeren, you mentioned toward the beginning of the month a few weeks ago, you were pondering the idea of chasing a Pop-Tart with a bourbon if you win this game. Is that still on the radar?
DD: Yeah, a hundred percent.
Do you have a bourbon of choice in mind?
DD: Where's my buddy at? We had some Kentucky Owl that made an appearance yesterday. We'll see if it can travel. I'm all about the brown sugar. Pop-Tart and a bourbon maybe at the end. We'll see. Isn't it funny that the stupidest stuff we say is what I get asked about all the time? (Laughter) No one wants to ask about Brennan Armstrong or Payton Wilson. They want to know about the bourbon and the Pop-Tart.
How do you balance, Coach Klieman, when you talk about being a developmental program, how do you balance preparing for a game like this, a Bowl game like this, and also developing your players for the future seasons in Bowl prep?
CK: The way the calendar lays out, once your season is over, you're on the road, and so then on weekends we bring the guys back together and practice. For the first couple weekends, we brought them back and did nothing but K-State versus K-State and development; and given those teams that have been on scout team the entire year to play on offense and play on defense, and just let them go and let them learn. We continued to do that almost every day leading up to yesterday when we had our last practice of -- it's the inexperienced guys, whether or not they are freshmen, redshirt freshmen or whatever, they just played stay K-State versus K-State. You have to do that. Those guys are the heart and soul of your team, and for 12 weeks, they are reading off a card and that's hard to do. The season is long for those guys. So you've got to give them some opportunities to continue to grow and get better and develop. We also know as coaches how far they have come along throughout the fall as we lean into the winter and spring.
We talked to the players last week, and I found it so interesting that every single one of them felt it was so important for this tenth win. And they were so locked in. Obviously a Bowl experience is fun, but they all talked about how important this game was and just being locked in. What does this say about this group and the road you guys have been on?
DD: We talked about being different at the beginning of the season and being different what that meant, different choices, different obligations, different sacrifices, and also, you know, a different ending. And we had been on the nine-win thing several times. And for the kids that are on our team that were a part of the Holiday Bowl that didn't get to play because of what happened, there's that extra motivation. You know, walking down to the training room for your final meal, finding out you don't get to play in a Bowl game was pretty tough. So to be back in the seat here with an opportunity to compete for that tenth win is meaningful. I think with young people, sometimes they can't see past the day they are in and so you know, your job as a head coach is to preach the big picture, as well, and at NC State there's been one team in the history of the program that's won ten games or more, and so this is an opportunity to be different than 136 other teams that played in this uniform. So it's meaningful and these guys understand that meaning and what kind of things have to go into preparing to do something that's different.
With the transfers and the opt-outs and Coach Klieman with Collin leaving, how have the preparations been for this particular Bowl game and differences, too, from what you were used to?
CK: For us, it's been as normal. Probably because of the routine that all these guys have been in for the last three years most of us have been together in '21, '22, 23. So I don't see it changing much. We're running the same offense. We're not changing that in midstream. And so the preparation has been very normal. Routine is really important, I think, for players and coaches alike. You know, we are having some new kids getting some opportunities, just like Dave is. But those kids know the routine and they know the expectation, and that's the key thing is the standard and the expectation is not changing of we're preparing to go try to win a football game. And we know we are going against a great opponent. We've got to execute at a high level, and so we'd better execute during practice at a high level if we want to win on Thursday night.
DD: For us, it was more the depth of the roster that really took the toll. We have been able to really two-platoon our scout teams even with the roster that we had going into the season. And so when you lose, you know, 20-some guys, it changes your scout teams a lot. They weren't starters, really, for us. There was one starter. So that changed. It was that part of it. So we had to be smart. Similar to Coach, we had the same routine. We hit the ground running. The guys that got reps, were excited and we had to slow thins down just to water the scouts down because we couldn't sub them. Sometimes we would be in a one-hour practice that might take an hour and a half, just because we took a few more breaks just to let the lift teams get rested and be able to run around and give us the looks we needed.
You've had a couple new true freshmen work their way into the two-deep. How helpful is this stretch of practice for evaluating your freshmen class and what have you seen out of them?
DD: Yeah, it's been great. The rule changed. It was a great rule change, allowing the Bowl game not to count as one of the four games that they can play in as freshman, has been huge. I think with the opt-outs and your normal guys that choose not to play, plus the portal, there was a huge reduction in numbers, and I know some teams probably would not have been able to field a team if they didn't do that. So I thought that was a good change for our roster management. To be able to see Kelvon McBride who is on the scout team with the twos at linebacker, it's been really good to see him run around. That's just one guy. Zack Myers, one of the DBs, same thing, got a ton of reps, and Zack played in four games on special teams. Kelvon didn't. So he got soaked in this Bowl prep with Payton not playing. We were able to elevate him and get him a ton of work. And excited. It's a guy that's put on almost 25 pounds since he got here. He looks really good and is running around and makes plays in practice. It's kind of a precursor to your off-season program. It allows you to sit down with a guy like you might after spring ball and tell him what you saw on film, where he can get better, and to be able to do it leading up to your off-season program, just to gain that window of improvement. I think for us and Coach, I'm sure developmental programs, there's meetings that take place that are really, really important meetings when you talk about developing a player. You identify their strengths, and then you have them talk about their weaknesses. Then you, you know, sometimes add more to that and then you create a map for them on how these weaknesses can get improved. And that's the goal for each player is to get better each opportunity and you have to give them the information. And if you don't have the practice opportunities, you can't give it to them and that's where Bowl games are so important for teams. Teams that don't go to Bowls have a major disadvantage in my opinion when it comes to development of the roster.
For Chris, without Ben [Sinnott] and Phil [Brooks] out there, seems like there will be quite a few new targets out there for receivers. Is there anybody you're really looking forward to getting an opportunity there? And for Dave, after Chris is done, could you rack your brain, and if there's any one memory of a game you've had playing against Kansas State that stands out in your mind?
CK; Well, we are excited about Garrett Oakley. Oaks had a really good season behind Ben as a backup tight end. He was injured early on in the season and has really come on, big, athletic guy that can really run and he's a redshirt freshman and he's really excited about him. Swanny will play more plays. Will Swanson will play more. And then it's allowed us to probably move Jason to the slot a little bit more for Phil. Seth Porter is going to return punts. He's going to play in the slot. Seth is a six-year guy that K-State means everything to him and I'm excited for Seth in his last college football game to get an opportunity to play slot for us and play some meaningful snaps and as well as return for us. But that's -- it's no different in having an injury and the next man up. But those guys have prepared for the moment and it's not like, you know, all these practice reps, ultimately, you want to use those practice reps. So I think the preparation that these guys have had with occasionally and Seth and some of those other guys, I'm excited for them because they are ready for the moment.
DD: So my four years at Kansas, I got to witness a lot. Unfortunately I was on the receiving end of Darren Sproles, and being a linebacker coach defending him, man, what a great player, and that was kind of the first year we were there. I think they beat us 63-0. By the time I left four years later, we had gone from worst defense in college football to the No. 1 defense in college football. I don't remember the score of the game but I know we won and it was a huge accomplishment. Our head coach, Mark Mangino, worked under Bill Snyder. So there was a lot of respect, and I know that was a big moment for him. So I was proud to be a part of that turnaround with Coach Mangino and part of that rivalry. It was a great rivalry then and it probably still is. That was a huge, huge game. A lot went into it.
North Carolina State fans have a little less to travel but after your long plane ride here, you're still in Big 12 country. What do you expect from the local fans, cheer down the conference line or get a little grief since you beat UCF this year?
CK: It's crazy that you say we're in Big 12 country. But you could go out to California and be in ACC country (Laughter). It's the landscape of college football. I look at it, there's two really good football teams. And consistency is what I think of when I think of Kansas State and North Carolina State and probably underrated, probably not recognized enough about what the programs have been able to do and sustain. And that's the biggest challenge in college football right now is sustaining success with all of the things that we have been talking about. So no, I'm excited. I know that K-State fans will travel. I know it's a closer trip for NC State but K-State fans will travel, and it's going to be a loud and fun environment.
I know a lot of the fifth year, sixth year guys, how do you keep the emotions in check? Some might be their last game; some go on to the NFL. How do you keep the emotions in check knowing what's on the line?
CK: It happens every year with emotions in check like it was the last couple years with Skylar Thompson, and last year with Deuce Vaughn, and this year there's another crew. I'm enjoying that I am too. I've had more fun on this trip with those offensive lineman. I mean, BB and I have given each other more grief. Gilly and I have had a blast on things. CT had a great message to our team yesterday. Watching him grow from when I first got here and he was a redshirt, and he would tell you he was a knucklehead. That guy is a grown man and a very mature guy, and sets the example for all of our younger guys to live up to now. So I'm taking it all in. I'm enjoying the heck out of those guys because they are why we are here. You know, you think of where we were as a program after the pandemic, and it was a tough year. 2020 for a K-State fan wasn't a whole lot of fun. They changed the culture in that locker room, beginning in 2021. You know, we won a Big 12 Championship last year. Won ten games with those guys. That's why it's so important for us to honor those guys Thursday night by going out there and playing our tails off and trying to get a big win for those guys playing their last game because they have given so much to K-State.
Both teams win so many games. Just briefly talk about what it is that the other team does so well and what's the biggest thing that you've learned doing your homework on the other team?
CK: Well, our defensive staffs have been together. They did some clinic-ing together as recently as last year, so I think there's a little bit of familiarity on both sides. Physical defenses, guys will run and hit you. On their defense, they are very athletic. You don't get explosive plays on these guys. So we are going to have our hands full in that respect of just trying to sustain drives because that's what we've been. We have not been a big-play team. We've been a sustained drive team. That's a concern. Then offensively, a veteran quarterback, a lot of different personnel groupings. They have got really good skill kids and really good up front. Trying to keep the explosive play to a minimum and they have been able to get some explosive plays, and that's probably been the area that we have struggled a little bit this year. And so that's the challenge for us is to try to find a way to get one or two on offense and try to prevent them on defense.
DD: Yeah, carbon copy defenses. Obviously the coordinators probably have their style, but their staff on defense does a great job. And schematically, I think we are both built the same way when you talk about the disguises that you can present. Trying to get cornerbacks to not be able to know what's happening until after the snap; the ability to play some coverage zones that help out in the secondary with a lot of eyes that can come back and make plays and tackle. And then the movements and the pressures and the disruption that can come out of these schemes. I know when we made the switch to it, it's everything that we thought it would be, and obviously Coach sent his staff out to be a part of it with us and it's helped them. When you watch them on offense, a lot of blocking schemes. They do a really good job, not just with their personnel up front. But the physicality and the angles, the different pulling schemes that you see, the way that they try to get guys hats for the quarterback and extra blockers and formations you have to adjust to; the playactions that come off of it. And just, when you look at these two teams, we are plus 11 in turnover margin. They are plus ten. That's two teams that know how to steal the ball back and protect it, and as always, that's the most important stat in football. I think when you get into these Bowl games, that's always what I worry about are the things that sometimes in a gap like you have between your last game and your next, your Bowl game, you know, just the little fundamentals and taking care of the football and your special teams are so important. I think you have two really fundamentally sound football teams, and when you get out on the field now with the new pieces, how do they all come together. But it's going to be a fun football game. For people that like this sport, you're going to see two really well-coached, hard-playing teams that fight. I think that's going to be a lot of fun to watch.
You mentioned Brennan earlier. What's it been like to see him have this week and tomorrow's game with everything he's gone through this year?
DD: I couldn't be happier for anyone than Brennan, what he went through, how he responded, what type of human being he was to his teammates during that time and the way they rallied around him when he took the ball back to run the football, run the team, the way that he's played through some pain and the guy is just a warrior. He's a great teammate. And just to see the joy that he's had, not just in these last five weeks but at UVa they didn't get to go to Bowl games for a while because they had some things with COVID where they didn't play and then obviously the tragedy. So it's been some years. I think the last Bowl game he was in was the Orange Bowl. And so he's excited just to be that postseason game and it's been fun watching him interact with the guys. Can't say thank you enough to him for what he's meant to this football team and the way that he's held not just himself together but these guys on our offense and the way that the team has rallied around him. It's been a joy to watch and be a part of.