Dave Doeren: "They're Getting Better"

NC State head coach Dave Doeren met with the media today to discuss his team after the initial scrimmage and with fall camp coming to a close.

NOTE: Click the video above to watch the interview.

To be super hot here, and it hasn't been for most of practice...
Yeah, we'd love to have some fall camp heat. We did for two days, and then it's been, as you all know, like spring weather. You can't control that. You do the best you can.

We had a nice, humid day yesterday. Got the guys sweating, but, as always, we expect September games at home will be warm, the first one being at night helps a little bit, probably. But there's nothing I can do about that.

Any update on how some of the position battles are taking that maybe on the O-line? 
Yeah, I'm excited about the depth and the competition. I'm not going to give you any info. Obviously, that doesn't help our team to help you with that information. So, we have really good competition right now on both sides of the football. I told the staff that yesterday, from the specialists all the way through the position groups.

It's been refreshing, because sometimes when you get to your twos and then your threes, there's a massive drop-off, and we're not seeing that. We're seeing guys know what they're doing. They're playing hard.

They're getting better. So it's been a fun training camp, competitively. 

You talked a lot about coachability with this team. 
Yeah.

Now we're kind of midway through camp here. Are you seeing that play out? 
Oh, yeah. It's a really fun group to coach. They listen. They take criticism well. They want to get better. They're intentional about it. They communicate. There's no egos. It's guys trying to get better, helping their teammates out, coaching guys that they're trying to compete against and with, and so it's been a fun camp.

And the new guys we added. They've just added to the competition and, wanting to prove themselves, and that's what this team is... it's a bunch of guys and coaches that want to prove themselves. 

What were some of the strengths you saw from the scrimmage, maybe any individual players from the scrimmage? 
Last week's scrimmage, well, it was pouring rain. We had 140 plays. We had no fumbles. We had no poor snaps in the rain, which is pretty awesome, in live football.

Defensively, obviously, we want to get more balls out, but I was proud of their ball security. We threw the ball, caught the ball well, and it was back and forth. There was a lot of good plays on both sides of the ball. We tackled well for our first scrimmage.

Jonathan Paylor had a really good day in the scrimmage, so we were excited to see him, because when you're not tackling, you just don't know if I got him, and then it's live, and I may not have had him, and so that was good to see.

CJ, you can see his maturity and experience and how he's playing football and leading now. He's in his voice.

Defensively, Sebastian Harsh really stood out in our opening scrimmage, did a lot of good things. A.J. Richardson stood out in our first scrimmage.

You’re a turnover margin guy, can this defense get interceptions and fumbles? 
Yeah, we've had a bunch of interceptions in camp, doing a lot of things. As you install, you're just playing, and then as you get further in, you can start disguising and starting to set things up off of things, and Coach Eliot's done a nice job, progressing through the system so they understand, hey, we want to show this and play this, and so definitely, the goal with the changes we made was to create more negative plays, more momentum plays on defense. 

You mentioned Jonathan during spring camp, how much growth have you seen during this camp knowing he’ll have a bigger role? 
Yeah, a lot, I think last year was learning how to be a college football player, and learning how to play receiver for him because, as you know, on the offense, he was in, he was doing everything, and so just honing him in on that and then in the spring getting him the ball other ways, and so he's grown a lot since he's gotten here. 

Do you see any similarities between what Nyheim went through with the slot receiver running back and then with Jonathan? 
I think it's very similar. Yeah, I think it's a really similar thing. They were both guys that carried the ball a lot in high school. We had them be a wide out, and now how can we get them the ball in other ways, which is what they did in high school, and there's, for them, it's more comfortable, probably, when they're getting the ball and just running routes where you may get seven or eight a game, right, and so if you're lucky, but it's been a smoother transition, not than Nyheim, but just than I expected, you know. I thought he's done a really good job picking things up.

With your skill players, last year, there was a lot of hype with the transfers of Noah and Joly. Maybe they didn't, like, totally live up to it, but now, like, a lot of those guys are back. Are you feeling like maybe, the year after is the year with that group and what they can do? 
Well, any time, same thing with coaches. Any time you're going into the second season with somebody, you have that year of experience. You have the good things they did, the bad things. You can put things in place to improve them as players.

In year one with a coach or year one with a player, there's a lot of things you don't know, and so there's growing pains that you go through, and then, the players that return have gotten a lot better, in the off-season program, learning what to do with their bodies so they can play at a higher level, understanding the system, knowing their teammates.

It's the same thing with coaches. They understand the routine. They know what the expectations are. They know their players. They know how to coach them, and so I expect a lot of growth in the guys that came back that are second-year players for us from last year.

You have the weather outside. Obviously, you have this indoors, so you have this kind of balance. You're going to have to play games in the rain at some point. What goes into the decision-making process?  Okay, let's go indoors today. Maybe we need to burn some outside in the weather. How do you make that decision? 
It just depends on what the weather is. I mean, if it's an average to, light rain, we're going to be in the rain, but when it was buckets like it was today, you're not going to get a lot of good work, and the guys are going to be falling down, and you can't run your offense the way you want systematically, and we wanted to do some really good situational football today, so, being inside helped us do that. From a scrimmage standpoint, unless there's lightning, we're going to be outside, and we have to play in whatever Mother Nature gives us on that day. 

There are some guys who are implementing yoga and pilates into their training. Is that something that the program could implement as a whole or in the recovery process? And also, what, like, are there any physical traits or changes that you could attribute to that work? 
Well, it's wellness, and I think these guys are finding other ways to continue to help their bodies recover and improve flexibility. As you know, with yoga, there's a lot of mindfulness in that as well, so it's a mental thing for them, and we do incorporate yoga into what we do. Pilates is a whole different world, when it comes to the equipment and all the things you need there.

But, yeah, it's great that guys have healthy habits, and the biggest thing is just not overtraining and understanding what is the right time to do different things so you're maximizing your recovery when you're doing it.