Coach Doeren recently spoke on the Wolfpack Weekly Radio Show, talking about the Pitt loss, previewing the Georgia Tech game, and much more!
Right off the top of Coach Doeren, alongside Tony Haynes, Matt Chazanow, with you, it is Wolfpack Weekly. Coach, what's the saying: "Availability is the best ability"? And you mentioned it in your presser —like, half the defense has been wiped out at this point. No mention of future status and whatnot, but it has been a mash unit. It's been banged up. It is what it is. How much did that affect what's been going on defensively, and did it affect the game against the Panthers?
Yeah, it's taken a toll on everything. Depth is a very critical piece of winning, and it adds up over time. You lose a player —we lose A.J. Richardson, for example, on the second-to-last play in the Virginia game. And so now the players that were behind him move up, and then you lose Sean Brown, and now they move up, and you have special teams and all that.
And what's happening is lines that were four deep become three deep, three deep become two deep, and there's an attrition over time because the rep count goes up for these players that used to be able to break up into fourths and thirds, and your talent changes, right? All at the same time. So the continuity, the amount of talent that you have to play with, the depth that you have to keep them fresh, all of that's real. You can't make excuses.
It's like the next guy in has got to go play his butt off, and that's all we're trying to do. But at the same time, it's not the same team that we had in August, and we realize that. But they have to play assignment sound football, man, and play to the best of their ability to give us a chance to win.
I didn't think we did that. There were a lot of plays that we gave to Pitt. Pitt did a great job, and they definitely beat us. But we also made it easy at times. With things that we did well in practice, and I think that's the thing, I've told the players, like, it's one thing when you line up right, your eyes are in the right place, you play with good technique, and you play hard, and that guy makes a play. Like, he's on scholarship too.
It's another thing when you don't line up right, or you do line up right and your eyes are in the wrong place, and we ran that play eight times in practice and you defended it properly and in the gam,e you just don't. That's really hard as a coach. Because what you show us during the week is a forecast of what we'll see on Saturday.
If you show us you can run a corner out ten times and catch your ball ten times on a corner out, then we're going to run that play. But if we run it and it's incomplete, incomplete, incomplete, we're not calling that play—same thing on defense. When you defend a play well all week, I consider that a dead play. Like, if they run that one, we're going to stop it. We had no chance in practice.
But that's not what's happening. And so it's really frustrating, and with the kids, you try to be patient, you try to be hard at the same time, and you try to continue to get them better. But it's been a unique season on defense, from the ins and outs of the injuries to the staff stuff everyone knows about. So, we've got four games left, and we're going to do everything we can to improve.
I remember you told me after the game that you were very happy with the coverage, especially in the first half when they were moving the ball. But how rare is it to see defensive penalties have such an impact on a game like that?
Going into the game, I thought it would be the other way around. Pitt was the most penalized team in the ACC, and we were the third-least penalized. And one of the keys to victory was, hey, we don't need to beat ourselves because they will beat them. The week before, they had 15 penalties in three quarters.
So I was surprised. Again, I can't criticize officiating, but I thought some of the calls weren't very good, right? And at the same time, we grabbed them three or four times in coverage, and we had good coverage. And I always talk to guys, like, you can play with poise at the moment of truth, or you can panic. And P.I. happens when you panic. And so, that's technique, that's coaching, and we've got to do a better job with that.
I don't want you to criticize the officiating, but we were talking about it during the broadcast. Did you get an explanation for the delay of the game defensive penalty?
I did. I'm not allowed to share.
Is that what you were talking to one of the officials about after that, with Caden Fordham there? Is that what you guys were discussing?
So what that penalty is: defensively, you're allowed to use two words when you move your front. You can say move or shift. Those are the two words that offenses aren't allowed to use, their defensive vocabulary. And when you use those words, you're not allowed to head bob and try to get their offensive line to jump. But, obviously, you have to scream loudly as a linebacker because the D-line's in their stance. They're not looking at you. You have to be loud. And so,
Caden yelled 'shift' like he had many times before in the game without a penalty. And for whatever reason, that ref on that play thought it was different than the other times, which it wasn't. It was just, they're human beings. They make mistakes. But that was third-and-seven that became third-and-two. And those penalties are big things in games. And that's the thing that's really hard because we didn't do anything wrong on that play. There are other penalties we did a lot wrong on.
Jackson Vick grabbed a guy when he shouldn't have, right? He face-masked a guy. That's legit, man. I get it. But when you do it right and get penalized, that's what's hard. And so, it's just for us right now; our margin of error is not very big. And so, we need every little break we can get.
That's not a break. That's helping the home team on that one.
Okay, so you mentioned something that got inverted there with Pitt's trend of penalties. One that was really positive, I thought you'd tell me how you feel about it. But Pitt came in as one of the league leaders in sacks on defense and tackles for loss. No sacks, and it was three tackles for loss, only three.
That's pretty good, actually. Yeah, and they're the top ten rushing defense in the country, and we rushed for 160 yards. So, like every game, there are positives. We connected on some deep balls, positives, right? That week before, we didn't do that. We defended the run well. I mean, they have a great tailback there.
And we defended the run; they had 36 yards rushing by the tailback. So, there were some positives, but man, you can't give up that kind of yardage in the pass game and have that many explosive plays down the field uncontested with loose coverage. And so, a lot to work on and a lot that we are working on right now as we get ready for another really, really good team.
You've talked about it repeatedly, how much you have loved coaching this team. And I heard you address the team after the game. You made that point to them in your 31 years of coaching; you've enjoyed being around these guys as much as anybody. That's a great positive intangible, yet does it also show us how difficult it is to win a game even when you've got that going for you?
Yeah, like last year, we were winning some games, and kids on our team were pouting and complaining because they weren't getting the ball, and I hated coaching that team last year. There was so much selfish stuff on that sideline. We don't have that on this team. We got a bunch of guys who actually really care about each other. They practice hard, they're coachable, and they want to win.
But for whatever reason, there are penalties, or a guy makes a mistake at the wrong time in a key moment that's helping the other team. And we've just been really good at beating ourselves this year. In the first four games that we won, we found ways to win and overcome mistakes.
And we haven't done that in these last four losses. So a lot to take away. It's still four games with the same guys in the locker room, and I'm going to enjoy every minute with them, man. Like every day, I get to see Isaiah Shirley, Caden Fordham, Hollywood Smothers, and all these guys —man, CJ. It's just a fun group to coach, and we want to help them win. We want to help them get better.
It's a group going up against a top ten team this Saturday that has won very close games on the road. Single-digit games in two of the three road wins that they've had, and they were close in Durham. What have you seen from Georgia Tech? Haynes King jumps off the film. Pack fans know him from last year. Unique player, a running quarterback, a guy who runs for a lot of touchdowns.
Yeah, they have a really well-coached offense. You start there with a leader at quarterback who's an alpha that plays really good football. He's throwing the ball exceptionally well this year, too. And so, last year, because of his shoulder injury, he was more of a runner. This year, he's a balanced quarterback.
He's very accurate, doesn't turn the football over, and still runs the ball exceptionally well. A lot of eye candy, a lot of design. They do a good job with their offensive system. He's had a lot of the same coaches throughout his tenure, so you can see they've been able to build with the same quarterback now for three years.
Same offensive coordinator, three years. And they've got good skills. The running backs and receivers are good players. And they're all drinking the Kool-Aid right now, man. When you're 8-0, everything you say as a head coach is gold. Defensively, they play really hard.
They're not really complex on defense. They're fundamentally sound. They play with good effort.
They tackle well. They've got a good depth rotation on their front. And so, their kicker's really good as well.
He's got a really, really good field goal kicker. So, yeah, it's a big test. And, obviously, we get them at home. We get them at homecoming. And the thing I told the team, and it's real, like, any time you put the ball down in college football, anything can happen, man.
And you've got to go prepare and do the best that you can to play as precisely as you can and take the scoreboard out of it. How many plays in a row can you play together and have the fewest mistakes in a football game, and see what the score is at the end?
Haynes King, their leading rusher, has 113 carries, 25 more than the next guy, a running back. He's a tough guy, a physical guy. So let me drop this one on you. See some similarities with a guy you had at Northern Illinois, Jordan Lynch.
Similar offense, too. Jordan was a lot faster. Jordan ran 4.50 at the combine. Like, he could really, really run. Haynes is taller than Jordan, but their play style is very similar. Between the tackles, a patient runner can see things. He was, he's a long strider. Jordan had a really fast turnover when he ran.
Jordan's more of a running back, almost, body type. But the offensive system is very similar. Power read and all the jet motions, misdirections, quarterback counter, quarterback power, play action game off of it.
So you see a lot of that. And just tough, like really gritty, tough dude, and Jordan was a lot like that.
Where is he now?
He's the head coach at Mount Carmel High School in Chicago, yeah.
Thank you, Coach. Thank you very much for your time.
Thanks for having me, guys.
