Joe Sculthorpe: "Winning Football Games Is Really Hard"

As he wraps up his fifth year in the NC State football program, NC State redshirt senior guard Joe Sculthorpe will be one of 12 players honored as part of NC State’s senior day festivities before Saturday’s game against Georgia Tech. 

Sculthorpe spoke to the media via Zoom this week, and here are some highlights of his interview:

Saturday is senior day, but seniors have the option to return. Is that a conversation you guys have had, and do you know what you’re going to do?

I’m not really looking forward to anything until I get through the season. My number one priority is to finish the season out strong with the team getting our eighth conference win and setting the record for the school; leaving a legacy in this program. But after that, that’s when I’m going to start having the conversation with family and coaches to try and figure that stuff out. But until the season’s officially over, I’m going to hold off until that moment.

With this possibly being your last senior day, what are you looking forward to about possibly running out of the tunnel that last time?

I’m looking forward to the chance to play at Carter-Finley one more time, especially with the season we’ve had and putting a good ending to a story written for 2020, the year of playing football in the middle of a pandemic. I think it’s something that I’m going to be talking about for the rest of my life, telling my kids and grandkids. Hopefully I can just end it off with a sweet victory and getting to enjoy it with my teammates.

Coach Doeren said that if you told him between the pandemic and the injuries you guys have suffered that if you would win the amount of games this year, he would have laughed at you. Do you guys as players feel the same way?

I think winning football games is really hard. I think people always kind of take a look at people’s records and take everything based off of that, especially on the level we play at in the ACC and Power Five conference, and you kind of see across college football. Anything can happen, winning games. A team can be undefeated and lose a game to someone that hasn’t won a game yet. It’s just how the game’s played. Sometimes the best way to figure out if you’re going to have a good season is just putting the ball down and playing the game in the first place. 

I wouldn’t say I’m surprised. I don’t think anyone should be surprised by success. I think it should be something you expect out of yourselves. But like I said, it’s crazy times having to deal with the pandemic and having to deal with injuries as coach Doeren pointed out. It’s an interesting situation being able to tackle that and being able to play as well as we did. I’m really proud of myself; I’m really proud of my teammates to put together the season that we do have so far. But I wouldn’t say I’m surprised, I would just say it’s more of an expectation we set for ourselves with the standard around here in the building. 

There are teams that had expectations and nose dived. What is it about your team that you guys came together and are succeeding under the circumstances? 

Under the circumstances, I think people had one of two options. You could put everything on hold and be like, ‘You know what, I don’t even think we’re going to have a season, I might as well enjoy my time off, I’m not going to prepare.’ I’m referring back to the middle of summer in the offseason, especially early spring where everything was so questionable. Or teams like us, where we said ‘You know what, we don’t know if we’re going to play, we don’t know if we’re going to have a season, but we’re going to prepare like we are having one.’ 

We chose to do everything we would normally do in a situation provided with our context to be able to get the work in and get the preparation in, so if the ball does get put down, which did end up happening, to be prepared and prepared ourselves for every situation. That, I think, is kind of why you’re seeing the success we’re having, because we prepared like we were going to have a season in the offseason, even though some people didn’t.

How cool would it be to get yourself into a really good Bowl Game?

Bowl games are what every college team wants. They want to be able to play in the postseason, get a chance to get a bowl ring, and get a chance to play another team that you probably wouldn’t get a chance to play, play against some really good competition and really solidify your spot within a position of dominance in college football. But the big thing for us is just coming back from the season we had last year and having more wins than we did last year, really showing everybody that put us down and out in the preseason that you know what, we’re a legitimate football team. We might have had a bad season last year, but that’s not who we are as a program; that’s not who we are as a team. We’re really solidifying ourselves as a dominant program within Power Five football.

When you look at a Georgia Tech team that’s struggled throughout the season but played well the last couple weeks, what do you see defensively that you’re going to have to match up with?

They have some good talent. They are explosive, they have an explosive offense, I thought. Their defense is really good. I don’t think their record exactly showcases the talent that they do have on defense. We’re obviously in the first early days of game planning Georgia Tech, but looking at their defense, I think they do have a lot of talent on the defensive line. I think they have a lot of talent in the linebacking room. I think they have talent in the secondary. We’re going to do some things to try to get after them and put up some points on them quick, change things that happened last year so that we do end up coming away with a W.

But more specifically, I think they have a good run defense. I think they have some pretty good pass rushers on the edge and in the interior game. They do have some nice blitzes that are hard to identify and point out. But I think we’re dialing them up pretty good so we can give ourselves the best opportunity to beat them on Saturday.

You line up across from Alim McNeill a lot in practice. What’s it like practicing against him, and what does he do so well at that position?

Playing nose tackle in an odd stack defense that we do have, it’s not a glorious position in terms of getting a high amount of tackles, high amount of sacks, high amount of hits or hurries on rushes off the quarterback. It’s a position that is designed to eat up blockers and let the linebackers flow and make plays. I think he does that extraordinarily well. This is coming from experience going against him, he requires a lot of attention on the offensive line. Design wise, you’re going to want to put more than one blocker up on him, because he has been known to beat one-on-one blocks. You see that in his game play. If you do leave him an offensive lineman solo on him, he usually makes a tackle on the line of scrimmage. So that requires a lot more attention.  When you put two, I’ve even seen teams triple team him, it frees up linebackers to go make plays and gives them opportunities to shut down other teams’ offenses very well. I think he does a very great job at requiring a lot more attention, and if that attention isn't given, he takes the opportunity to make a play solo. 

How much has coach Doeren’s leadership meant throughout this season? 

I think college football, especially being a head coach, is a position where you either adapt or you die. The programs across the country, they’re going to change to get better. If you don’t stay on top of that, you’re going to fall behind the curve. Obviously, with last year’s performance, we had to change something. With that, coach Doeren, we had a great offseason opportunity in the winter time, to bring in someone to talk to the program, where they brought experienced leadership positions in from various branches of the military, especially the Marine Corps, and they brought us in and taught us how to lead through various drills and situations. 

We did so much stuff, I’m not going to get into all that stuff. But they really did bring in guys to give us offseason leadership. It really brought us closer, speaking from a player perspective, and even from a coach and player’s relationship. I thought he did that very well, and then bringing in great coaching hires to give us the best opportunity, scheme wise, to go out and win some games. … He’s always trying to adapt and change his offseason approach so that he gives us the best opportunity to win in the upcoming season.

You said coach Doeren’s been able to adapt, but how have you seen him progress as a coach in four or five years? 

Throughout your lifetime as a player, you get access to a lot of coaches. You take little tidbits from them and insert them into your game to give you the best performance. I think coaching is a similar process. In the offseason, coach Doeren goes to NFL camps, and is just trying to see how they lead from different fields, whether it be military or other football teams. Taking that and how he can apply that to his coaching style. We brought in a group called The Program, and not only did they work with us as players, I know they worked with us as coaches. 

I’m not really sure what they did with the coaches separately from us, but he was able to take that learning opportunity and pass it down to us, and giving us as players, especially players in leadership roles, opportunities to take the reins a little bit more and giving us a little bit more control of the team and letting us lead by example. I don’t want to say he’s stepped back, but he gave us more power which then allowed us to rise as a team, if that makes any sense. But to give us more control over our team and letting us lead, but with the expectation just as high as he left it. I think coach Doeren does a great job. I think he’s grown from 2016 to now, I think he’s always accepted change and always pursued the next best opportunity for our team.