NC State Safety DK Kaufman: "It's Really All About Us"

NC State safety DK Kaufman is very familiar with Tennessee from his time at Auburn. He recently met with the media to discuss the matchup and much more.

NOTE: Click the video above to watch the interview.

About Communicating on defense…
Yeah, you have to. I mean, communication is key. If you don't communicate, it's over with. But I mean, you could be wrong, but as long as everybody wrong, you're right. So you have to communicate, communicating is always key.

And then obviously lose, well, Caden had a kind of an early exit game. How big is it gonna be for him to be able to play a full game and have him in the middle of that defense?
Yeah, that's huge. I mean, he's definitely a leader coming back. He can play a whole lot of football at that Mike position. So we need him there for sure, it's gonna be big getting him back.

Obviously, there's a balancing act, you guys wanna play better than you did Saturday, but at the same time, you got the dub.
Yeah.

Sort of describe that feeling, I guess, where you did, in one hand, you did what you had to do, but you need more.
Yeah, I mean, a team like this, we’re happy about the win, it's hard to win. So good thing we did get that win, but it definitely wasn't the way we wanted to. So we was happy about it, but at the same time, there's a lot that we needed to correct. It was really a lot of self-inflicted things that we did on our part. Not taking nothing away from Western Carolina, cuz they definitely came to play. But yeah, it's definitely something that we wanna get corrected, and we need to this week, playing a team like Tennessee. If we do that, we're gonna get embarrassed.

What were some of the growth areas going into this week that y'all singled out?
Really just communication and assignments. Just, I feel like it was also the first game, so a lot of people had to settle in, including myself. I didn't probably settle in until about the middle, second quarter. So just settling down and communicating, and really just playing 11-man football. Everybody's doing their 1 to 11, and we'll be good.

How are you simulating the speed and talent that you have to deal with this week in practice?
Yeah, so we're doing a good job at that. I was just talking about just trying to get everybody to hurry up and get back to the ball, even with me to skelly, just trying to get everybody to hurry up and run back and get into position. It'll be easier in the game, because we all know where the ball will be placed on the hash. When we're in practice, they switch hashes, so it's really even harder at practice, honestly. 

So you feel like if you master it at practice, you'll be able to handle it Saturday? 
Yeah, for sure. Practice is always harder than games. At least it should be. Here, it is, so yeah.

What are some of the players, or some of those schemes, anything about Tennessee that sticks out to you?
Really the biggest thing is just that tempo. They try to hide a lot of things with tempo. But good thing that we have coordinators who have played this offense before, so they know, you feel me? So we're really being able to adapt and just pick up some things that they did do, hopefully, in the past, and see how that'll go.

You come to NC State to play games like this, I'd imagine? Yes, sir. How geeked are you?
100%. I mean, I'm just excited. That's in front of the world. The biggest thing for me, I just kinda keep telling the guys, it's really all about us. I'm really just excited to go and put that on film, play with my brothers in front, everybody. Yeah, it's gonna be great.