NC State edge Isaiah Shirley recently met with the media to discuss the ECU win, looking ahead to Virginia, and much more.
NOTE: Click the video above to watch the interview.
When did football become a game that people played in shorts? It seems like those pants are getting shorter and shorter.
Yeah, no, I don't even know. I wish they wouldn't be that short at all for now. But, yeah, no, I don't know.
What's kind of the confidence level right now for you guys coming off your first game? It was dominant at times, and then it became kind of a nail-biter.
Yeah, I think the confidence is high. Everybody, at least on defense, on the team in general, we expect greatness every day when we come out here to play. And, we have the utmost confidence and are ready to go. We're playing in the Murph, and the Carter. We find our fans who rally behind us, and we're just ready to go.
You guys gave up 30 yards on the ground against East Carolina. How much does the defensive line pride yourselves on stopping the run?
Oh, I mean, a lot, I'd say at least. I mean, when you can stop people on the run, that's when you start, getting the gift of pass rush, right? You have to stop the run first, and then you get the rush to pass rush. So we take a lot of pride in that. Coach Wiles, Coach Shaw, the whole D-line, it's a big deal. We're all about knock back. We want to stop the ball, stop the runner, excuse me. And, yeah.
What do you think was the biggest key to stopping that rushing attack last week?
I think the biggest thing is just understanding our assignments and then doing it to the best of your ability and getting that knock back, like I said. Not back is the number one thing that stops runs, and I think we did a lot of that up front between our edges and our interior guys, which we didn't play with technically sound and executed everything.
You guys had a lot of QB pressures and TFLs last week against ECU. What's it going to take for you guys to turn that into sacks this week?
I think it's just, getting guys, obviously coverage helps us, right? I think just continuing to win on the edge. And then when you get there, reach for the ball. Reach for the ball. It's a game of inches. It's that one little inch that we need. When you turn your toes a little bit tighter, reach for the ball just a little bit longer. And I think, as we'll see, those pressures are going to turn into sacks very soon.
I'm sure when you first arrived, your goal was just to get on the field. But now, as an older player, have the goals changed? What is the mindset for this year?
Yeah, I mean, when I first got here, I wrote down all my goals that I wanted, Coach Thunder has them in. It's just the more you play, the more you get to say, okay, this is my goal for this year. This is my goal for this game. This is my goal for today. I think you take little goals and then, go through my big goals that, I obviously wanted to do, play the next level, ACC, all those things, right? But, you have to handle these daily goals before I can even touch those if that makes sense.
DJ Eliot talked about just, like, this team this year being kind of a group of the right people kind of coming together, all kind of a shared mindset. Are you seeing that, and if so, how?
Yeah, no, I think the guys, like he said, I think the guys that he brought in, they fit here. They fit the hard, tough, together mindset. They came in right away, and they meshed. We all meshed with them great. I think that's why we're able to play so fast together, so free together, and we enjoy playing with each other, and I think that's the biggest thing. We're going to win again.
