Doeren: "It Is Anybody's Conference"
NC State head coach Dave Doeren sat down with the media at ACC Football Kickoff. Here is a lot of what he had to say on a variety of topics.
"I will just go to my thoughts instead of [UNC head coach Larry Fedora’s] thoughts on [CTE], is that okay? I think in the game of football -- I said this next door a second ago -- there has been a tremendous amount of resources, time, money, and effort by....the head physician that works for the NCAA to study concussions and best practices for us, and player safety is paramount. It is. Not just for football but for all sports."
"I think you will find that we try to get as much information as we can to allow our players the best opportunity. To play football. If I was coaching another sport it would be that sport."
"My job is to develop young men. I think we do a good job of that at NC State, on and off the field and I can’t develop a player if he is not on the field -- he’s injured. We are going to take the data we get. We are going to do the best we can with that data."
"[Clemson is] the team to beat. They have got the most players back. They do. I can’t speak on Florida State yet because I need to see kind of where they are. I think Willie [Taggart] is a really good coach. Obviously, Florida State always has great players."
"I was laughing about this when I walked in this morning actually as I walked into the hallway. I think Lamar Jackson has been at this every year that I have been a head coach. It is like he is finally gone. I don’t have to see him."
"That is the thing when you look at our league. There are seven coaches that are in the top-10 or the top-20 for college football, in the ACC, so the level of coaching that is in this league is elite. It is up for grabs every year."
"I don’t care what you say. Nobody would have thought that we would have potentially beat Clemson two years ago. You can get on a run and get going and great things can happen. The team you thought was going to win hav key injuries and they are no good. It is anybody’s conference."
"For us [to beat Clemson] it is just executing in the final two minutes of the game. Missed a kick two years ago, had a couple of penalties [in 2017]. That is us. That is not them. We have got to execute under pressure better. Period. We have just got to do as many things as we can to get over that hump."
"The same thing happened [against] Florida State two years ago. We should have beat them and we didn’t put them away. We beat ourselves at the end of that game and then we got over that hump [last season]. Same thing with Louisville. We got over that hump. It is just a matter of belief and confidence and making the plays, and having the players that believe they can make those plays -- which I do think we have now."
"I wasn’t sure what he would do. I was sure he would be very thoughtful and he would gather all of the data and information that he could. I was impressed not only with him but his family and how they all went through [potentially leaving school for the 2018 NFL Draft] talking to everybody they could get information from."
"It boiled down to, for him, it is his team now. If he left early he could never say that again. It is his last time to lead a college football team and this is his team."