WATCH: Doeren Meets with Media Prior to Clash with Catamounts

NC State head coach Dave Doeren met with the media for the final time this week to discuss the Wolfpack's upcoming game against Western Carolina.

NOTE: Click the video above to watch Doeren’s interview.

What are some mental mistakes you want to clean up?
There’s a lot of them. There’s a punt block that we should have blocked. We had a guy lined in the wrong gap. There’s a multitude of plays on both sides of the ball where you’ve got a guy eyeing this instead of this and the targets of where we want to hit in the run game. Some of the protection things, some of the young backs have to do a better job with. Matt [McKay], on his reads, he missed an easy one on a third down.

There’s just a ton of little things throughout the game. Some of them didn’t even hurt us, but some of them could have been first downs and could have been big plays. It’s just taking advantage of lining up right, getting your eyes right, and executing.

Is that something which gets cleaned up from first game to second game?
It should be. It’s the second game in college for some of these guys, and they’re going to see looks that they’ve never seen because, obviously, our opponent isn’t going to just show us everything they showed the last game. They’re going to make adjustments.

It’s the ability to take your system’s offense, defense, and special teams and adjust on the fly, and sometimes, that’s hard for a young player to do. You hope that you clean up anything that was wrong a week ago, and then there’s going to be new things that they have to adjust to.

Is that easier to sell when you win a game and you can ride them harder?
We had a lot of things to be hard on them with after that win, and we were. We were demanding.

Our theme of the week is ‘compete.’ We’re competing to be a better version of us than we were a week ago. That’s the goal for this football team more than any that I’ve had here: we have to improve every week to have a chance.

We are so young, and our version of us can be so much better as we go if we take that approach.

Anything about the four-game rule you made adjustments for?
Last year, I really liked it. We had some guys that were injured and couldn’t play, but we played any of the redshirt guys that were healthy four games. It’s helped their confidence. It’s not their first time playing in a football game. We’ll do the same thing. We’re going to play all of them four games if we can, and some of them, if they’ve proven it, will play in all the games if they’re healthy.

You have to, in my opinion, take advantage of that. I think it really helps those guys, and sometimes, they become so much more confident after you do it that you might have thought ‘This is a kid we’re going to redshirt,’ and now he leaps.

That happened last year with Teshaun Smith. He was a guy that, early on, wasn’t ready at all, but as the season progressed, he got better and better because of so many of the special teams reps he took.

Updates on Joshua Harris and CJ Clark...
They’re not ready yet. They’re getting there. We’re hoping we’d have Josh [Harris] for this game. He’s just not ready yet. As the season progresses, they’re getting close. They’re running. They’re lifting. They’re doing all those types of things. We’ve just got to get them back into football.

Would you feel more comfortable at defensive tackle with the both of them?
It’ll help our depth. Whether we go back to four-down or not will depend on how they can play. Just because we have them doesn’t mean we’ll use them. They have to prove that they deserve to be out there. But it does give us two more able bodies to do more things with, and hopefully, with their size, it gives us that inside depth that we’re missing right now.

How are the young wide receivers doing?
They’re excited for the opportunity. I think Max [Fisher] had a really good week. Devin [Carter]’s been very consistent all the way through camp, so I expect him to be ready to take on that role. Jasiah [Provillon] is the one that really needs to take the next step for us. Dropping that pass, I know he’s ready to make up for that. It was a bad experience but a good one for him to learn from and get better. 

Tabari Hines gets tagged a slot receiver but he can make plays on the outside too...
The thing that you love about Tabari [Hines] is his football knowledge. He can play any position. He knows the entire offense which is really impressive for a guy that came in as late as he did.

He’s a very competitive guy. He’s got a lot of energy on game day. He’s just so excited to be playing. It gives us a utility player that can fit a lot of different gaps for us on offense.

Comparing Tanner Ingle to Joshua Jones...
As far as their playing styles, yes. Tanner [Ingle] and Josh [Jones] were both very quick contact players and can make up for other people’s mistakes pretty quickly. It’s nice having that. It gives you an eraser back there, and from a big play standpoint, they’re able to get some things on the ground that might be bigger plays if somebody else was in the game.

Do you think Tanner has learned from some of his mistakes like Josh did?
Tanner got thrown into the fire last year and gave up some plays. He’s been burned and had to learn from it and deal with failure, and I think it helps. I know it motivated him.

He changed his body in a good way. Not that he was ever overweight, but he’s really leaned up, and it’s helped his speed. I think the more you play this game, the more lessons you have on film to study yourself, the better you get.

How close have you been watching the storm for families from that region?
Very closely. Not just for the guys that are on our team, but we have a lot of friends and family, from the team and the coaching staff, we know thousands of coaches that live in those areas. We’re monitoring it as closely as we can, and like I said in my press conference, there’s a lot of prayer from this state toward all the other ones that are getting it.

Do you address that with the team?
I know our position coaches in their meetings talked with all their guys about it. We’ve been through this unfortunately. Now, it seems like a yearly thing. Our guys kind of know how to handle it and who they can go to on our staff. We’ll see where it goes this week.