Dave Doeren: "It Starts and Ends With Me"
NC State head coach Dave Doeren met with the media following the Wolfpack's 59-35 Textile Bowl loss to No. 21 Clemson Saturday afternoon.
NOTE: Click on the video in the player above to watch Doeren’s press conference.
On C.J. Bailey’s performance...
I'm proud of C.J., for one. I thought he prepared well for the game. He did some good things. He came out — I don't have the exact number — but I think he was [seven-for-seven or eight-for-eight] to start the game. He did some good things. Obviously, when you're turning the football over three times, it's not good. I don't think I've ever won a game when we've been minus three in the turnover margin. C.J. is not to blame for the loss; I can tell you that. He did some good things, and that's a tough environment for a first start. He was not intimidated one bit. He had good energy and good spirit when he made a mistake. He stayed the same way as he did when he made a play. He's going to grow a lot from that game. Lex [Thomas] came in and did some good things at the end, and that's it. I'm not going to talk about the rest of it because I don't have any new information on the other part of it.
On his assessment of the defense...
[There were] explosive plays, guys not fitting the run properly, not tackling well, and playing soft coverage. It's not aggressive. It looked like we were on our heels, and I'm not sure why. Obviously, they had a bye week, and they had some new things, but we didn't use the rules of our system well, and so we’ve got to be better than that. That's not who we are on defense. I know Coach [Tony] Gibson is sick to his stomach right now about it. The film's going to tell us a lot.
If he believes playing aggressive comes down to the mindset...
Yeah, it's a mindset. We've done that this year. We've played tough defense at times, and obviously, we've given up some big plays. We've played two really good offenses, and we haven't played well enough. Particularly, the first half in both of them were killers. You give up explosive plays, and you get behind like we did against a team like that in their stadium, it's not going to turn out well. There are eight games left in the regular season. I know that our staff will do a good job of looking at our personnel and our schemes and get back to work.
On Clemson’s offense snowballing...
We continued to fight in this game. I was happy with how we did that. Obviously, they didn't challenge us a lot with their offense in the second half, but our offense got things going. They ran the football well. They threw the ball around a little bit. We got to see some younger players get some really valuable time. We had to move a lot of pieces on the O-line, and I thought those guys performed well. That's a lot to ask. You move your right guard to right tackle, your right tackle to left tackle, and you bring your backup right guard in the game, and you play better than we did in the first half. I'm proud of those guys up front for that. There's not much else to say.
On the similarities between this game and the Tennessee game...
You get behind early in both of them for different reasons. We were in the Tennessee game going into the half, and then the pick six just flipped the complexion of that. We weren't in this game. They jumped out on us fast in the first quarter. They’re different games, you know. I thought we learned a lot coming out of Tennessee and got a lot more physical. I thought, in the Louisiana Tech game, we did a lot of good things; we held that team to 33 yards rushing. Obviously, that didn't translate to this week. Without watching the film, I can't give you 100 percent on what we got to work on, but there's a lot. One thing about this staff is we'll work on it. We'll get better.
On remaining calm despite the loss...
It's a long season, you know? It's a long season. People wrote us off last year at 4-3, and we ended up winning nine games and had a good season. I told them, “We’ve got eight games. We got a lot to do and lots of play for. There's a lot in front of us, and we're going to find out who wants to fight and who wants to get in there.” That's what happened last year. The guys said, “No más,” and a bunch of guys stepped up, and we started playing better. This will be another truth serum when we get in the film room tomorrow. It's going to be a tough Sunday for them.
On what he saw from his captains...
I don't know that I [saw them step up], to be honest. I never saw a big play made by somebody in that role. Obviously, Grayson [McCall] didn't play. It wasn't a game where there was a guy I can single out and say, “He had a great game today.” We didn't have a guy like that today. We just didn't. Give Clemson credit: they outplayed us today. When that happens, they out-coached us, right? Like I've always said, it starts and ends with me, and we’ve got to get better. No, we're not going to panic. We're 2-2. There’s a lot of football left in the season. We do have some good players, and we need to get back to playing better.
On Anthony Belton’s ejection...
I’m disappointed in him. I didn't see what happened prior. He said the guy spit on him first, and he spit back at him. Our guys know: when you retaliate, you're the one that gets the flag. I don't know if that happened or didn't happen, and it really doesn't matter if it did. We can't respond that way. We have to respond as a mature adult, walk away from the situation, tell the head coach this happened, let me tell the ref, and then get the guy later in the game for something. Anthony was disappointed in himself. Obviously, I was disappointed in him. He'll learn a lot from that, but that's not him, and that was a bad response on his part.
On the mismatches and misfits early in the game...
I’m very surprised, for a team that's been top three in rushing defense for three years in a row, to misfit a bunch. It wasn't like they put in a bunch of crazy run game. I mean, the quarterback counter out of empty was a good play design by them. Other than that, it was plays we've seen. We have to be able to get off of blocks.