Dave Doeren: "Don't Tell Me It Doesn't Mean More, It Does"

NC State head coach Dave Doeren met with the media after the Wolfpack's 35-30 road win over rival North Carolina.

NOTE: Click the video above to watch the interview.

Opening statement…
All right, well, really a hell of a football game, first of all.

I wish Mack the very best in his retirement. Really enjoyed coaching against him. As I mentioned before, he was a great mentor to me when he was in the Big 12 and I was in the Big 12. When I first got to NC State, he was an announcer and then we became rivals, and so I consider myself blessed to coach against him, a Hall of Fame coach, and proud of the way our guys play.

I don't think there's a lot of teams that could go through what we've been through. We've had a lot of crazy stuff happen this year. And you lose your, you know, your starting quarterback to start the season. You lose your middle linebacker. Two really good football players. We lost some tough one possession games. Some fluky things just happened. I mean, everything that could go against us at times has. And the guys just fought. And that's the DNA in our program is adversity's going to happen. Life's not fair. What are you going to do about it? And these kids just get up and fight. These grown men get up and fight, and I'm proud of them.

Every time they made a play on their sideline, we responded with a play on our sideline. And, Noah's going to talk in a minute. I'm proud of you, man. He had two drops in the second quarter. He could have gotten down on himself. He made the key play in the fourth quarter to set up that touchdown, and that's what it's about. It's about when young guys make mistakes, will they learn from them? Will they own them? And will they make up for them? And I thought our football team did that tonight, you know.

We were playing with our third and fourth corner. We were playing with our backup safety and then another backup safety, our backup nickel, and so there were a lot of guys in that game that weren't listed as starters. Some of them weren't listed as backups and had to go in there and play.

So proud of the resiliency and the grit. And it's great for, you know, guys like Davin who've won four in a row. I love that for you, man. That's such an awesome thing for him and his class to be able to have that, 20, 30 years from now, they come back for player reunions and they're going to be able to brag about their record against their rival, and, man, is that awesome. It is awesome for them.

Love the way we ran the football. We had 240 yards rushing. I thought our O-line dominated their D line. Our tight ends were a part of that. Our backs ran really hard. Our wideouts were straining, and it's not the funnest game as a receiver at times when that's what you're doing. But it pays off over time. We had a really good crack corner that Dacari made a play on that comes off of a run, and so I thought Coach Anae and the offensive staff made some good adjustments at halftime. In the second half, we didn't punt. We scored every possession in the second half, and so when you do that, man, it's fun. It's a lot of fun. So a heck of a win. 

On the growth of the young players on the offense…
Yeah,  it's a lot of young players. Had Hollywood up here, redshirt freshman. Obviously, CJ, true freshman. Noah, redshirt freshman.

So there's some guys with reps, and when you get reps, you get better. And then you're learning from the experiences of those reps, and the game all of a sudden starts to have recall from other games that you played in.  You can look at things differently because you've had those live reps in games, and even if they don't think about that happening in a previous game, it's in there. You know what I mean? They can go back to that.

So I love the way that those guys have come on through the year. They've stayed coachable. It hasn't been easy. There were struggles offensively throughout the year, and then we put some things together. Obviously, tonight, the second half, put it together in a big way. 

What was the biggest change the Coach Anae and his staff made to get the offense rolling?
Well, we ran the ball. I mean, every time we ran the ball, it was five or more yards. And so you're playing with efficient down and distances. When we threw it, we made catches. We secured the football. We had protection for CJ. He wasn't rushed back there at all. He made some plays with his feet. It's just having efficient drives. It's giving yourself manageable third downs. And then making field goals, scoring touchdowns.

We had a really good play call in the red zone for Dante Daniels. Got him wide open for a touchdown for him, which was really cool, but guys just made plays. KC started to make some plays there in the second half too. It was good to see him get involved because in the first half, we just didn't do a good job throwing the football. We threw for 19 yards in the first half and 200-plus in the second.

This game is important to you every year, but how important was it knowing that you needed it to go to a bowl game? 
I wasn't even looking at it that way.

I know that seems weird to people, and I'm thankful that we won six and that we're bowl eligible because of the reps now that we get put into these guys. But beating Carolina mattered more than winning a game to be bowl eligible to me, and that may sound weird, but when I got hired, they didn't say win six and go to a bowl. They said whatever you do, beat Carolina, and we did that for the fourth year in a row, and that means a lot. To me, it means a lot to our program.

There's a reason I haven't been able to wear blue for 12 years. For real. I'm not allowed to wear the color blue, and so this game is deep. And when I said it's the biggest game of the year, it is the biggest game of the year. Our players know that. Our fans know that. Our administration knows that, and it's meaningful, and I don't say that to brag. I'm just saying that because it's a rivalry.

It's the oldest rivalry in the ACC, so don't tell me it doesn't mean more. It does. It means a lot to our fan base and definitely to me as the head football coach. To say that I'm 8-4 now in this rivalry means a lot to me.

With all the injuries to the defensive backs, what's it like to see Jackson Vick to make two of the biggest plays of the fourth quarter? 
I'm proud of Jackson, happy for him. He's been a guy that's stayed coachable, stayed patient. This year really has helped us in a lot of different ways on the special teams. He got a chance tonight on defense to help us and came up with a big sack, and there's a lot of backstory to that that I won't tell you guys, but that was awesome for him, to get a sack in that situation.

So you love it when guys like that get in the game and make a big play, man. I mean, the guys were all cheering for him in the locker room. 

Could CJ have made that pass in September to Noah? 
Oh, I don't know. You think he could have made that pass, Noah? 

I mean, has he grown, obviously? 
He's grown. Oh, no doubt. His confidence is through the roof, but so is his humility, and that's what makes him a special guy. He cares deeply about the program, his team. He was in it to win it today, man. He was fired up to play in that game. 

This program's motto is hard, tough, together. What does that mean to you, and how do you think the team embodied that today?
What does that mean to me? Well, that's our DNA. It's the identity of our program.

Phillip Rivers said it best, the Wolfpack's not for soft people. We try to recruit tough guys. Sometimes we got to teach them mental toughness because that's part of it. We try to recruit physically tough guys. We teach them how to be great teammates and great men because we want them to play together. And I always feel like, you know, the teams that are the tightest find ways in adverse situations to hang in there, and our guys have done that.

The additional piece of that was playing smart, you know. And I think it was hard today to play smart. There was a lot of stuff going on between the whistles with their guys, and that's an unfortunate part of the game, but we knew going into the game that we couldn't beat ourselves in a game like that and win it, and we were able to do that today. 

UNC goes up late in the game. How would you describe what the mood was on the sideline? Was there any doubt? 
No. I said, we're going to go win the game.

I was standing right next to one of the defensive coaches when they got those points. I said, don't worry. We're going to go win the game right now, and I have total belief in our offense. I knew our two-minute, like the last four weeks in practice, has been really elite, and so I felt great, in that situation, particularly knowing we only needed a field goal to win.

Different, obviously, if you're no timeouts and need a touchdown, but we had two. We had a lot of time on the clock. In a way, it was a blessing that they scored fast because we had plenty of time to go down to the field and do what we needed to do. 

When Noah Rogers went up and made that catch, what was your view of it, and how long did it take you to sort of process that he had made the catch with three players right there? 
Yeah, I couldn't see the final. There were bodies all over him. I couldn't see. It looked like he made it to me. The way he got up, excited, made me feel like he made that catch. But nobody on the headset. Usually I'll get somebody and say, hey, go fast, go fast. I mean, look at this one. Nobody said anything, so I felt good.