QUOTEBOOK: Dave Doeren's Monday Press Conference

NC State head coach Dave Doeren met with the media to discuss the upcoming game against Florida State.

Opening Statement...
I'm excited for our homecoming week here at NC State and 3:30 kick, sold out crowd... look forward to having a great crowd of our fans and students' section. It's good to be back home after the road game... it's nice for our guys to play in this stadium and be able to play in front of our fans.

Obviously disappointed with the outcome of the football game that had a lot of offense in it for both teams. We dug a hole early in the game and was proud of how our guys battled and fought ourselves out of it. We had the ball with the chance to win the game and didn't get it done.

I'm proud of the players' grit and their resolve and the way they continued to fight and show heart.  Because of that, I know we went a lot of football games. That's the one thing that I'm proud of our guys about.

I thought Germaine Pratt, Kelvin Harmon, and Ryan had big games, made a lot of huge plays.

Obviously we didn't get off the field on third down and had some costly pass interference calls that put us in a position of playing catch up quite a bit in the second half. To get them in third-11 plus situations and not get off the field was hard to overcome.

We need to continue to work hard on our pass fundamentals defensively and finishing on third down, which we've been good on that down to distance defensively and offensively. We were not in that game.

Offensively I thought we moved the ball, and I like how aggressive we were. I thought we made some explosive plays. We have to continue to stay aggressive and do our best to protect Ryan.

I thought there was a couple of points in the game where we didn't do that as well as we have and it hurt us.

Obviously played without four starters in that game.  We had some young guys get some serious reps in the football game and I thought Teshaun Smith played the entire game against a team that threw the ball like that. He had the two penalties which hurt us, but he's going to get better and he's a true freshman. That was his first college start.

Tyrone Riley play his first full game with Witt being out and obviously Ricky didn't play and Steph didn't play. We expect all those guys except for Steph to be back. I'm not sure when, I think with a Nick and Witt will be back this week. Ricky, we're still waiting to see where he's at as the week continues, but he is progressing and looks good.

Steph, unfortunately, will be out for the season and is going to have a small surgery to repair a high-ankle sprain and we expect a full recovery for him... he'll remain with our team as a captain and a leader and I know he will do everything in his power to return to full strength and expect them to.

Florida state is a very, very athletic offense. When you look at their skill players, it's what you would expect to see. Francois is a very good quarterback and a has a great deep ball. The tailbacks are experienced guys, Akers is a very good running back. The receiver, Terry, is a very good player, very explosive. He's big and causes concerns. Their slot receiver, Murray, can make a lot of plays after the catch with their quick game, screens, and an uptempo offense.

It's without a doubt the best pass rushing defensive end in the league right now with his production, Burns, No. 90.  You have to know where he is. I think he's a really good pass rusher, and they have big guys inside.  They rotate quite a few guys in the middle and are athletic.  They play a lot of man and quarters coverage but they are disruptive up front... they forced 11 turnovers and have 25 sacks. 

Looking at the pass defense, do you see it as you just played the two best quarterbacks you'll play in the league or we have major problems on our pass defense that we need to fix?
Well, I think you have to look at all of it, and anytime you lose you're going to look at every single thing... I look at it like there's a lot of plays that we've got to make and why aren't we making them, whether you win or lose?

We had three freshmen playing in secondary at one time in that game. You've got true freshman Tanner Ingle,  true freshman [Teshaun Smith], and I guess one of them is a sophomore, Chris Ingram.

The past game fundamentals have to improve and that's something that we got to continue to work hard with. The guys were in really good position on some plays, and I think that's something that happens with young players.   Instead of playing the ball, they get nervous and they grab an arm of receiver and that's something that you see a lot of young defensive backs and as they play more, they get more and more confidence and they start playing the ball better.

We just have to keep working on those techniques and those fundamentals... but it wasn't really an issue in my opinion of doing the wrong things. It's we need to do the things we're doing better, we need to mix things up, give them a little more help, and we need to get more pressure and all that ties together. But it all goes back to fundamentals and like you mentioned to me, we played two pretty good offenses, but that's not an excuse. We need to play better and that's something that our guys take personal and our coaches take personal and that's what we'll be gearing up for.

Thoughts on Steph Louis getting an additional year...
We've called compliance about that. I don't know if it's real or not and we won't for awhile. What I told him was let's get you healthy.

He won't play this year because it's a procedure to keep them out for the year. It'll be 100 percent probably sometime in January or February.

Whether we get a sixth year for him or not, I have no idea.  We just found out today that he was having surgery so we'll just have to see where that goes. He may not want that, may be ready to move on. We haven't had that discussion.

I just wanted to make sure he was okay mentally and that he felt good about his plan and know which doctors to go to and all those kinds of things for him.

Thought on the rush defense... 
There's a couple of runs down inside the five-yard line that we've let go in too easy. We were out of a gap on the last play of the game against Syracuse and the game before that, Clemson... we were out of our gaps a couple of times.

I think it's just your guys trying to make a play down on the goal line instead of just fitting it like they did out in the field because they wasn't anything magical.

But the numbers are good there. It's not like scoring defense is No. 1, turnover margin... the things we really, really care about. Redzone defense, third down defense, but we can't be 14th in pass defense.  That's something we obviously don't want to see.

Thoughts on throwing over 40 times and only one win with Finley at QB when doing that...
Well, it helps because you can be balanced like you talking about. The last two games we were down by a bunch in the first quarter.

I thought Eli did a good job of not getting into two-minute offense too early.  We kept running our offense and moving the ball down the field with different schemes. We weren't just in four-wides and throwing every snap.

It's good to have your play-actions and boots be able to come off your run game. It's hard when you're down 21 to be in that mode and throwing the football 40 to 50 times isn't ideal. But we had a chance to win that football game doing that because we were scoring points and on a couple drives we settled for field goals.

Where is the team mentally?
The guys are good. This is a great group of guys, that's the first thing. I told the guys that after the game and again when we met yesterday. They're such good guys and you love coaching these guys because they care so much about the school and this football team.

Let's get back to what we do. It's 1-0, and this is the first of five that we have left and focusing in that mentality of what can we do to make a few more plays and what can we do to score a few more touchdowns?

Is Germaine Pratt's performance one of the best you've sen since you've been here?
Definitely here. I thought he was everywhere. Tackling and pressure, when he did rush. It's unfortunate that he had an interception called back too because that was a great play and that would have helped us.

Do you think no he's moved into a position where he could be called one of the best linebackers, not only ACC, but maybe the nation?
It's hard for me to say that when I don't get to see the nation, but I think in our league he is no doubt one of the best linebackers. 

I don't know what's going on outside of our conference because I don't get to watch it. Bu comparing him to the ACC, there was no question about it.

More on improving pass defense...
I think what we're trying to do with our particular dime packages is give the quarterback different looks and not let him know who the rushers are all the time... create different one-on-one matchups for guys based on the protections that we're getting.

We've gotten some good pressure on some of that but you can't always blitz, you know what I mean? You have to be able to drop in coverage and our drop eight coverages have been good but they weren't on two of those 3rd-11s in that game. We were playing underneath, two-man coverage and the receiver got inside of a guy that's supposed to be inside trail technique and he won on that twice.

We just got to look at what's most successful and how we can again help our guys to be in the best places they can be athletically to make plays.

You've now played games against four ACC teams and are 2-2. Is that something you've mentioned to those guys?
I told him the other day, I didn't mention Top 25, but I just said I think we've beat two really good ACC teams and we've lost to two good ACC team. Now we've got five games left, and where we go from here is how we handle each week of the season.

At the end of the year you can look back and be proud of what you've accomplished or disappointed in. You don't want regret as a football player... I think they understand they've played some good football teams, but we expect to win every game.

That's our mentality. We were prepared to win and practice the right way so we can go out there and make the plays.

We were without four starters, and that was a good environment. Syracuse had a lot of crowd noise, and it was really loud down in that stadium. I thought their fans were very energetic, and they made it hard. But our guys handled that noise better than we did the week before. So that was good growth.