Dave Doeren: "It Was A Heck Of A Team Win"
NC State head coach Dave Doeren met with the media today during his weekly press conference to recap the Northern Illinois win, preview Wake Forest, and much more.
NOTE: Click the video above to watch the press conference.
Opening statement
I just want to say that we're praying and thinking a lot about the folks. The recent hurricane Helene has devastated here in our state. It's just been crazy seeing the images more and more coming up with so much, you know, Wi-Fi down and people's phones not working and I think the damage is so much worse than people even understood and all the people, the homes, the businesses, communities, state parks that have just been devastated by this flood. It's really sad and tragic and so we are here praying and thinking a lot about the folks in the western part of the state. It was this weekend my son Connor's team ETSU was driving from Johnson City to the Citadel and their bus got stranded. Their entire team had to sleep in the bus that night. They couldn't get off the road so they were flooded in at a gas station. We were trying to call Coach Trevathan and I trying to get a hold of coaches in the county where they were stranded seeing if they could get into a church or gym to sleep and none of them had power. Most of the people we got on the phone couldn't get out of their homes.
Thankfully their team was able to get out and then you see what's going on in Boone. Obviously I have a son there and talked to Coach Clark up there today. They have players that apartments are condemned and they're trying to find housing for players and they got two coaches whose homes have been condemned and so just a really tough time in the state. Saw pictures of Chimney Rock wiped off the map and Lake Lure which is just a beautiful, beautiful spot. It's just full of lumber and boats and debris. It's really tough in the town of Asheville. Power outages and contaminated water and businesses and everything. I would ask that everybody pray for those folks. I know there's still folks missing and it sounds like everybody's working really hard to help those communities. We have players on our team, Aiden White's family in Asheville, Zack Myer's family in Asheville, Isaiah Shirley's family in Boone and their families are safe but I know that was a scary time for them. Before we talk about football, we need to talk about that.
Today Davin Vann's family reached out. They own a moving company and Davin and his family are putting together a truck that we're going to send over, that they're going to send over to provide relief for those in western North Carolina affected by Hurricane Helene. We're going to park a truck by the Close King Indoor. It'll get here today at 3 p.m. and we'll leave sometime tomorrow in the evening. We have a bunch of items. I know we're going to list this on social media as well but drop-off times on Monday from 3pm to 8pm, Tuesday from 12pm to 8pm and Wednesday from 12pm to 8pm. Cases of water, electrolyte drinks, baby formula, baby wipes, hygiene products, toothbrushes, toothbrushes, toothpaste, deodorant, feminine products, hand sanitizer, diapers, shampoo, flashlights, lanterns, batteries, blankets, sleeping bags, shelf table food, stable food, pop-top canned food, anything that anybody wants to bring over, we would love to have to fill this moving truck to take over to those folks. We're really proud and thankful of Davin and his family. Davin probably just came off the best game of his career as well. For that to be what's on his mind today, I think says a lot about that young man and his family. Joyful Movers is the name of the trucking company that the Vann family owns and they'll gather the goods and then they'll be delivered to Durham Rescue Mission for dissemination.
So with that, I'll move forward here and talk about the game. I thought it was a really good performance by our football team. It was a heck of a team win against a really good football team. I have so much respect for Thomas Hammock and his staff and the way his players compete. That was an old school football game. It was a defensive battle. It was a very physical football game and we won because we won the turnover margin and the field position. Our offense ended every drive with a kick and they weren't always field goals and touchdowns but there was no turnovers and that was paramount. The way Caden Noonkester punted the football, seven of eight punts inside the 20, two inside the 10 for a 48-yard net.
It was maybe the best performance I've seen by a punter. He was a weapon. We had a fake punt that continued to drive that led to our first touchdown and our defense was dominant. They played really good football man. They set edges which we didn't do the week before. Something we really worked hard on. We played where we were supposed to play. Guys were fitting the run. They had good eyes. We played a lot of players. We were stripping the football. We had two more that we could have got. One of them bounced into the end zone and they recovered it for a touchdown. Another one somehow landed in the offensive lineman's hands on Davin's second strip. But we forced four turnovers and scored our third touchdown on defense. It was awesome. Especially when you're coming off of maybe our worst performance the week before defensively, to see them respond that way made me really proud of those guys. As a team, it was complimentary football. It really was.
NIU's defense has now held three teams under 200 yards. I don't know if I've seen that in today's age. That's an impressive thing that they're doing on their field. Obviously, a lot of things we need to get better at and will continue to work at. Positives on offense, obviously we didn't turn the ball over. We were 100% scoring in the red zone, two touchdowns and a field goal. We thought Dante Daniels went in the game and did some good things for us at tight end. Jacarrius Peak played his best game on the O-line. We started with our first possession scoring a touchdown, building a lead, which was positive in that game, against a ball control offense to have a lead in the game. We maintained the lead throughout the game. From a negative standpoint, we've had some penalties. They're calling more holding now than I've ever seen. We've got to be able to play well within that and know how they're calling it. We've had three in that game holding penalties that were drive killers. Especially when they're positive plays, you have a 15 or a 20 yard gain. Instead of first and 10, it's first and 25, first and 20, second and 15, whatever it ends up being, it's a drive killer. We've got to be better fundamentally at not having our hands in positions where we're getting called for those. I thought we were deferring at the kick and getting the ball there to start the third quarter. I was disappointed we didn't get points in that first drive and just not enough explosive plays. We've got to be better there. Third downs obviously were atrocious for us, one of 11. A lot of that's the down and distances that we're playing in. That goes back to efficiency, which you've heard me talk about a number of times.
There's a lot of positives on defense in that game. Four takeaways, setting edges, tackling, playing with passion, pressuring quarterback, and making plays in the backfield. We had what we call bombs, 16 plays, 12 tackles for loss, and four quarterback sacks, which two ended up being fumbles. Three of them were fumbles. Special teams-wise, it was a great game from a field position standpoint. Caden Noonkester responded, did not punt the ball well the week before. He's a returning starter. Challenged him to be what he is, a really consistent guy that can hit the football, and he did a great job. Our coverage units were good. Guys tackled and pursued. Collin Smith continues to get touchbacks for us. I thought DK had a nice kickoff return. Unfortunately, we weren't able to get our punt return game going. Their punter just did not kick the ball to us, so that was kind of a non-factor.
Now on to in-state rival Wake Forest and Coach Clawson. We've played against each other a long time. Got great respect for Dave and his staff. A lot of continuity. A lot of the same coaches he's had for a long time. They have systems they believe in, and they're good at operating them. They play hard. They have a lot of returning starters on their team. I think their defensive line, in particular, is very tested and has played a lot of football. It's a game that goes back long ways, and traditionally, these are close games. They're a unique offense. It's been talked about for a long time. Experienced receiving core. I think their receivers are a strength for them. The running back got banged up in the game. I'm not sure what his status is, number one, but he's a really impressive guy on film. He's fast. He has patience. He's tough. Offensive line is big. Their quarterback is a transfer. Only had four games on him there at Wake. I thought he had a good game last week. You can see that he has a good understanding of their offense. He can move around in the pocket and make plays with his feet.
And defensively, like I said, their front is really impressive. Their defensive end, number 30, has 23 career sacks and over 100 quarterback pressures. He's a force on the edge. Their inside guys, #91 and #55, been there a long time. They're tough. They're disruptive. They play with really good technique. I think their defensive line coach does a really good job developing defensive linemen. Kids play really hard. They play square. Their kids force a lot of turnovers. They always have. They're good at punching the football. We got to be really good at protecting the ball in this game. As a team, I think we've learned a lot about ourselves and challenged our guys. It's been stated. We're getting better. I look forward to another week to get better again and grow in places we need to grow.
There's a ton of football. October starts tomorrow. We've got seven games with two bye weeks and two months, and it's going to go really fast. We just got to stay really mission focused on the day we're in and have a great week of practice. I'm excited to get back on the field with the guys, see their energy. They were really good in the team meeting yesterday. They've learned a lot. Like I said, this is a team that had a lot of new players on it. We've had the embrace growing together. I feel like this team is doing that. It's definitely been a challenge, but a fun challenge for me and our coaching staff. I appreciate the willingness of this team to continue to fight.
As far as injuries go, I'm not going to discuss anything. I don't have any updates. We meet with our trainer today at three o'clock. We came out of the game pretty good. Most of the stuff in our game was cramping. We'll see where we're at when we get out of our staff meeting this afternoon. Questions?
I know you just said you don't have any updates, but I was just curious about Grayson and his status for this weekend.
Yeah, I'm not going to discuss it. So when he's ready to play, he'll be out there and that's where we're at.
As for a non-injury question, you've said multiple times just now that you guys have learned a lot through these first few games. What is the biggest thing that you feel like this team has learned?
Our brand of football. You get 40 new players in and they come with all their habits. Some of them are really good. Some of them are how they practiced, how they went through their game routines, what the demand is from our staff, what the expectations are, what the former players have established as an identity here. Sometimes you think you know what a guy is about, but game day is where you really find out. We've had to challenge some guys to be tougher, to fight harder, and they've responded well. We just played a really tough football game and our guys that we challenged stepped up. I think it's a different time in college football. You can do as much as you want to do in the off-season to build the chemistry off the field, but the on-the-field chemistry takes games. It does. Sometimes those games don't look good. For us, there's been two that haven't and three that have. The kids know what we're about now. I think that's the best thing that you can have. It's an identity and it took a while to get it. Now it's about consistently being that way. For us as coaches, it's knowing what guys are doing well. Now, how can we get that guy the ball in a different way? How can we do this? This guy's doing this. We didn't know he could do that. This safety is a really good blitzer. Let's find some ways to bring him. We're learning about these guys every day. We are. Game day is the biggest eye-opener for all of us. As coaches, we have to evolve. I think the best thing we did last year was evolve as the course of the season went on. We're going to do the same this year.
Yeah, Dave. I know in the off-season, you said you made it a point to retool your wide receiver room. You brought back KC. Just through five games, how would you evaluate what you're getting from those guys?
Yeah, it's pretty hard to evaluate our pass game. It hasn't been what I was hoping for. I think part of that is what's transpired, having a freshman quarterback and not blaming CJ at all. CJ is getting better. But you can't put the entire system on a freshman either. You are a little bit more restricted in his first start at Clemson and what you're going to ask from him. Last week, like I said, we played a really good defense. Those guys did some good things that made it hard with their pass rush. We had some guys open. He couldn't get the ball to them. There were some throws that he could have made that would have been better. He did some good things too. But I think that's a work in progress right now. It needs to get better. We need to find more ways to spread the ball around and let those kids make plays for us. I'm really impressed with the outside receiving cores blocking. I think that's an area that we've never been this good in. That's going to help them in the pass game. That's an area of our team in general. It's not the kids' fault. We just need to play better collectively so we can get those guys the ball more.
Just to follow up, you referenced Davin's game earlier. It seemed like a lot of guys in your front had better games or gave you more than they'd been giving you. Did you guys kind of evaluate it like that once you watched it back?
Yeah, it was a really good game in the box. It was a phone booth game. That's just how NIU's offense is. There were a lot of plays in the box that they could make. A lot of times they're playing hard, they're doing good things, but the ball's out on the perimeter or the ball's thrown quickly. They're not as much of a factor in games like that. In this game where it was more between the tackles with drop back play action passes that take some time to develop, the D-line was able to get some things going in there. I thought they were really disruptive. It wasn't one player. Davin obviously shined with his statistics, but I thought Isaiah Shirley, Noah Potter, and Travali Price. All four of our defensive ends were effective in this game. Brandon Cleveland continues to do good things there. Chazz went in there and gave us some valuable reps as well, but the front strained. It was a game that if you didn't play that way up front, it could have been ugly. They're a really good football team in the box. What they do running the football with all the misdirection and 14 personnel, 22 personnel. It was like a Big Ten, old school offensive game. The box is where it was at.
Schematically, is Wake Forest, I know they've had some turnover, but since Colson's been there, are they similar to what they've always been?
Yeah, there's not much of a change schematically for them. In the run game, schematically, a little different, more zone and gap schemes in the past. You can see a lot more pullers up front maybe, but the mesh and the RPOs, the receivers are really good. He's had a good receiving core for a while now. His kids are experienced. Donavon Greene and (Taylor) Morin are both really good receivers, proven guys. Tight end does a good job. It's the same stuff. Obviously, Hartman was in the system forever, and so it was like clockwork with him in there. A different quarterback, we're still learning about what he is. We don't have as many games, obviously. But systematically on defense, it's four down. They stem their front. There's a bunch of games inside, quarters coverage, cover three, some cover two, and no blitz. On third down, they have a bunch of different things that can happen, and they do a good job being multiple on third downs. But you know who you're getting, and you get a team that plays really hard, plays really fundamentally sound, that knows what their systems are. They do a good job punching at the football on defense, and so they're going to be in the places you think they're going to be. You've got to go make plays.
Second for me, sir, so many pundits and fans follow stars and recruiting and such. What it is in terms of traits and characteristics that teams like Wake Forest that tend to do well every year but maybe don't get those kids, what is it about them that they have that make them successful despite maybe not getting those?
Well, they develop players. They have a good system of identifying the type of body types they want. As you know, kids that go to school there, they go there not just for football because of the degree and their retention. Even though they do lose kids to other teams, they retain a lot of their players. So they're able to develop guys and play them, and the kids know the system inside and out. You see that with their D-line. Those guys have been together a lot. They've played a lot of snaps next to each other, and so they've been able to develop guys, and they're good coaches. I mean, they get guys in the right positions. They teach them what to do. They show them what the strengths and weaknesses are, their defenses, their coverages, and they play to them, and they play really hard. I think there's just a standard of play similar to us and other teams that have been able to sustain success over time. They have systems they believe in, and their kids are coached well in them.
After the game, CJ talked about maybe the offense wasn't matching his energy that he had on the field. Is that something you saw when watching it back, and how do you kind of try to correct that or improve that moving forward?
Yeah, it's hard for me to say. I mean, I didn't feel like our performance was a lack of energy on offense. The bigger problem is beating ourselves with penalties, and the penalties we're getting aren't because guys are cheap-shotting people or throwing guys on the ground. I mean, we're two of the blocks. The guys had their hands inside and pancaked somebody without turning them, twisting them, and the Icky would have had 100 holding penalties if that was a hold back when he was here, and so just they're calling it more, and that's for us. We just got to know that. We got to be able to play within what they're calling, and drive-killing penalties, they're real for us right now. I mean, we've gotta get out of our own way that way. I didn't see an energy thing. Guys were playing hard. I mean, those guys want the football. They want to run hard. They're trying to block hard, but we've got to make sure that we're not beating ourselves, and there's no doubt CJ has great energy. That kid has that every single day, and I appreciate that about him.
Tamarcus stepped up in a big way Saturday. He's obviously from right down the road. What does it mean to you? What does it mean to this program when you bring in a guy from Raleigh, the surrounding area, and have him contribute in a meaningful way to winning?
Yeah, really proud of Tamarcus. Played really well in a lot of ways. In the box, sat in edges, fitting the run, but then in coverage, had a number of pass breakups. Obviously, had a big interception at the end of the game. Did a good job fitting a lot of formations and surface areas. There was a lot going on there communication-wise on motions for a young guy to have to manage all that. It was impressive, and to your point, it's great that he's a local guy. Again, when you're recruiting and guys have opportunities to leave our state all the time, but when they see their guys they grew up with, that they either went to school with, trained with, were on seven-on-sevens together, ran track against each other, and they see him staying home, making plays in their backyard, I mean, that's good for recruiting. It is. And for the young men that get to do that and have their families close by watching it, their coaches, their mentors, it's good for their quality of life that they can get so many people around to watch them. They don't have to fly and get hotels and drive all over the place to see them play.
You talked after the Clemson game that you felt like your captains didn't really step up, and Saturday was a completely different game. Was that something that you specifically challenged them with, or was it just something that you expected them to do because they were captains?
Yeah, I mean, your best players, whether they're captains or not, and your most experienced players on good football teams, they play that way all the time. And, you know, sometimes they give speeches to help with that. Sometimes it's just in their day-to-day, how they hold kids accountable, and they're showing and leading the way. And I think anytime you lose a game the way we did that day, nobody led well enough, starting with me. You know, I mean, I got to demand more from them. They have to respond, which they did. The players around them have to support them and not put all the strain on them. There's a lot of different types of leadership, you know, and if you're not a leader, then you need to follow the right people. And that's what we do as coaches. You know, you try to mentor that, and you try to grow that in your program, and sometimes failure occurs, and you use that failure as a lesson for growth, and we did that. And I'm proud of those guys for how they responded, and, you know, they'll keep learning and growing. I mean, that's what this is.
Dave, you talked about a fit earlier. D.K. Kaufman, he's come in and made some big plays for you guys, multiple games. What'd you like about him when you were evaluating him in the portal?
Oh, you can tell he loves the game. He's very competitive, very intelligent. He loves studying the game. He loves talking about the game. I didn't know he would play as hard as he does. I mean, in practice, he's 100 miles an hour. He's a high-effort guy, and you don't learn that in the portal. You know, it's something you get after the fact. But just in the conversations with him, his mind was in the right place. He was looking for the right fit, and he had a lot of questions. He wanted to go through a lot of things. It wasn't just, hey, they called me, you know. I mean, he and his family, you know, were very, very intuitive, asked a lot of good questions, great eye contact on the visit, and just enjoyed, you know, being around him. You could tell day-to-day he was going to be a fun kid to coach.
Coach, I believe you guys blitzed more against Illinois than you had in the past few games. Was that just the product of, you know, winning more on first and second down and keeping them in third and longs, or was there anything else you guys noticed that you could take advantage of?
Yeah, well, I mean, there were so many run fits in that game. We felt like you can slow your guys down, you know, just being base, base, base, base. We wanted to be aggressive. We wanted to chop up the runs. We wanted their big o-lineman to have to block movement. And so some of them were blitzes. Some of them were stunts. But that was definitely part of the game plan, you know, when we knew that we had to take away the run game to have a chance because play-action games is not very good when the run game is not working. And with all the bootlegs and play actions that came off those runs, we felt like pressuring them would give them less time to get open on some of those down-the-field shots that they had. And obviously, it was a good game plan. It worked really well.
You talked about Kaufman, but, you know, Kerry Martin stayed ready and he stepped up. You know, Ja’had Carter has been in and out of the lineup. You know, what is it like to have these older defensive backs who you know you can call upon when you need them, but they also stay ready?
Yeah, I mean, those guys have come in and they've dealt with some things injury-wise since they've been here. So it's been harder. Opposite of DK, who's done a good job or had better luck maybe of staying healthy. But, yeah, it's nice when you're in a competitive situation in a lineup with the guys you mentioned because they have a lot of experience that they can get in the game and they're not big-eyed about playing, you know. And so having that rotation because we're going to need it. You know, Wake averages over 80 snaps a game on offense with their tempo. We're going to need that depth and that rotation. And as you know, that depth chart can change pretty fast sometimes when guys go down. So that was the whole point of recruiting some older guys. We feel like we have some really good young players in the secondary behind our starters, and we needed that bridge to get those kids ready. And when you look at some of the freshmen, Ronnie Royal, Brody Barnhardt, Jivan Baly, and then Elijah Groves at linebacker, Zane Williams, there's some good freshmen on defense that are down there. And it's fun watching them, and they're getting better and better. But, you know, when you go from a starter to the true freshmen, sometimes you have to suffer through that. And that's why we added some experience, you know, not only to become a starter like DK and Ja’had in some games and Kerry in this game, but to have competitive depth every day. And if there's an injury, a guy that can go in that's tested, you know. And we felt like we had that in some position rooms, but not others. In the secondary with Boykin being out, we really needed to add that age in that latter part of the recruiting stage. So that's why we did that. And obviously it's nice, you know, from a coaching standpoint to have that luxury.