Roof Happy Back In The Triangle At NC State
Ted Roof is getting acclimated and reacclimated.
The one-time Duke head coach and newest assistant is settling in as the associate head coach at NC State following his hire as the program’s 10th assistant coach in the offseason.
Roof also is the co-defensive coordinator and, along with Aaron Henry, will work with safeties. He came to Raleigh after spending the last five seasons at his alma mater, Georgia Tech.
While the defensive coordinator at Duke in 2003, Roof was named interim head coach following the dismissal of Carl Franks after the Blue Devils were throttled at home by Wake Forest in the team’s seventh game of the season.
His first game in charge came a week later on October 25th at home against NC State. The Wolfpack, in Philip Rivers’ final season at quarterback, nipped the Devils, 28-21, at Wallace Wade Stadium. While he coached Duke through the 2007 campaign, the two programs have played each other only three times since with each coming after Roof moved on.
Now Roof has returned to the Triangle after more than 10 years away. He excited to be back.
“It is fantastic,” Roof said. “It is a great place to live. There is enough of a city to give you the wonderful things that go along with the city, at the same time not being overwhelmed by it. It is a great combination. There is just good people here and a lot of things to do, for everybody not just one group, so there is a lot of versatility socially for folks.”
Roof has a bevy of experience as a defensive coordinator, including a three-season stint at Auburn that saw the Tigers win a national title in 2010.
While he is the co-defensive coordinator at State, along with an associate head coach, he will be primarily a right hand man for long time Wolfpack defensive coordinator Dave Huxtable.
His roots in the Triangle, and more importantly the Atlanta-metropolitan area in Georgia are also strengths that NC State head coach Dave Doeren plans to draw from.
“He has coached multiple positions,” Doeren said of Roof. “He has been a head coach, a coordinator and a position coach. He knows the state of Georgia and Gwinnett County as well as anyone. He coached out there and recruiting and [he] is just kind of a sounding board for people in the building because of his experience, all of the places he has been and the things he has been through.”
“Dave [Huxtable] is our coordinator and Ted’s role is to really be his right hand and help him.” Doeren added. “When Dave has questions or when Ted see things that he thinks he can add in, they’ll have those conversations that you want to have constructively.
“Dave will call the plays. I know he will lean on Ted at times for input. That is why you have the 10th coach now. You are able to add that 10th person with expertise.”
For his part, Roof is familiar with Huxtable and has watched Doeren from afar. He is eager to get going with his new cohorts.
“Coach Hux and I have known each other for 20-something years,’ Roof said. “I have gotten to know Coach Doeren a little bit so there is a lot of respect for him. As coaches you kind of follow guys too, whether you know them or not sometimes and I know that he’d been successful everywhere he has been, both as a coordinator and a head coach. Hux is a very detailed, very thorough football coach that I have a lot of respect for.”
There will be a learning curve for Roof over the spring and summer as NC State prepares for the 2018 campaign.
There is plenty ahead in the area of gaining familiarity of the personnel and settling back in to the area that he has not lived at in over a decade. The bevy of the work ahead for Roof, however, will be focused on mastering the defensive vernacular at NC State.
Scheme-wise, there is not much difference to what Roof has worked with in recent seasons.
“There is a lot of similarities but it is like learning a new language,” Roof said. “If we called it ‘apple’ where I had been at the last 20-something years here they may call it ‘orange’ but it is the same techniques, same things like that so it is just learning new language. That has been good.”
With Roof, NC State is getting a long-time coach that is eager to add to what the Wolfpack has built over the past four seasons.
So with a nice mixture of open-mindedness and eagerness to start a new adventure coupled with confidence from years in the coaching industry, Roof begins his time at NC State ready to see what the Wolfpack has to offer during spring drills.
“It is not the first time I have done this so what you do is you come in and dive in,” Roof said. “These guys were well-coached before I got here. It is getting to know them, understand the strengths and weaknesses and also understand the scheme and how it all fits so you do the best job you can coaching.”