Doeren: "It's On Me... I Own It"

NC State head coach Dave Doeren met with the media after the 35-28 loss to South Carolina.

*****

Why did things get so discombobulated?

Well, the turnovers, there’s no excuse. It’s a skill set that we work on every single day. As a staff, we need to look at how we’re coaching it. The first thing at practice everyday is a turnover circuit on both sides of the football, so it is something that is focused on. Not sure what coverage you’re talking about.

We had a blitz on one where we should have had a sack, and their quarterback did a good job of getting outside of it, and we got beat on a post route. That’s the one I remember. Not sure if there was another one. There was one where he made a one-handed catch in the back of the end zone. I haven’t seen a stat sheet yet. I apologize since they haven’t given me one.

What was the impact of not having Prescod and Will Richardson?

Terronne was out there, he played. Not having Will hurt. He’s a starter, and not having one of your best offensive linemen hurts. There’s no question about it. I thought Justin Witt battled, and Joe Sculthorpe played a lot today as well, but that definitely hurt our depth chart.

You doubled them up in yards.

I haven't seen the stats.  You turn the football over and give somebody a short field, they don’t need a lot of yards. That happened a couple of times.

The bottom line is when we lose a football game, it’s on me. I own it, and our philosophy of this program is extreme ownership. Whatever we did or didn't do, we didn’t do it well enough to win.

There were several plays during the game, I’m going to go back and watch it, and our guys are going to go back and watch it.

The one-handed catch their receiver made: phenomenal play, right? Well, there are some plays we could have made and didn’t. There are some calls we could have done better and didn’t. Those are the things that we’re going to critique ourselves on and look at and get better from.

That’s all you can do in a situation like this.

We knew South Carolina was going to be good on offense. We knew No. 1 [Deebo Samuel] was a very good football player.I have great respect for him.  We knew [Jake] Bentley was going to be a good football player. I thought we defended the run game pretty well.

I thought Johnathan Alston in his first game as a DB played pretty good for us and had a pretty nice interception. We needed to get off the field in the first half on some third downs and didn’t. There were just some plays here or there that, had we made, would have been different, but we didn’t.

You got a lot out of Finley and Samuels... how banged up were they?

On the play Ryan fumbled, he tweaked his ankle. I’m sure he’s going to be sore tomorrow. At the time, he said he felt fine.

Jaylen Samuels just had a hamstring strain and was able to come back and play.

After every game, guys are sore. Those guys played hard, and pardon me, I don’t have the stats to know exactly what they had, but they were out there working.

What was your message to the team?

I just asked everybody in the room, ‘Is that our best?’ They said, ‘No,’ and I said that’s what we’ve got to figure out: how to make the one, two, three more plays when we’re in position to make them and as coaches, to look at everything we do. We own it together.

There isn’t a player that’s at fault. There isn’t a coach at fault. It’s everybody in the room all the time. We win, and we lose together as a program. We come back to work tomorrow and learn from it and get better. That’s the only thing that you can take out of a loss. There’s going to be film that doesn’t lie. We’re going to look at it, we’re going to own it, and we’re going to work at it and get better.

There are some young players that played today that will definitely be better next week. When we get healthier at certain positions, it’ll help us down the road.

Freddie Phillips, not having him today didn’t help either. I’m not sure about the degree of severity, but he may be out for a while.

Without having the stats, how do you feel about the running game?

I need to look at it. I don’t know what the yards per carry. The only thing I can think about right now is turning the ball over.

How do you keep your focus away from what other people are going to say?

We’ve already talked about it as a program. That’s why I’ve said all along it’s not a one-game season. There’s 12 games on the schedule for a reason, and we get an opportunity to make as much or as little as you make of those opportunities.

Criticism-wise, I told them in the locker room that everyone that told you how good you are will be the same people that will tell you how bad you are if you don’t play well.

You guys have a job to do, I’m not going to tell you how to do it, so write what you need to write. Our job is to win games and play as good as we can, and that’s what we’re going to try to do.

Giving up the touchdown on the opening kickoff...

We spotted them seven points. Not to take anything away from them, but we had two guys miss a tackle on that play.

We knew Samuel was hard to tackle. It was a good kick with good hang time, but we had two guys that didn’t make the play, and he outran us.

Zero seconds come off the clock, it feels like, and you’re already down seven. It’s not ideal.

How long is WIll Richardson out?

Two-game suspension for a violtion of team policy. It happened last spring.  I don't announce when things happen internally but Will will be back with us after next week's game.