Dave Doeren: "I'm Really Excited About This Group"

On National Signing Day Wednesday, NC State football officially added 19 players to its 2021 recruiting class. 

Head coach Dave Doeren spoke to the media via Zoom about the program’s future, here’s a full breakdown of everything he had to say: 

Opening Statement

I’m really excited about this group of young men. Before I talk about them, I just want to thank first and foremost our coaches. My assistants are on this, at the end if any of you have questions for them they’ll stay on and you can say their name and they’ll get on and answer your questions about any of the specific guys. 

I want to thank them for all their work. Having five new coaches on our staff and not being able to showcase their personalities and system changes and how they coach during spring practice, I thought, was difficult. We had to do a lot of virtual recruiting. These guys did a tremendous job. They worked hard to build relationships and stay in touch with not only the families, but the coaches. 

A lot went into it that was very different in signing a class, very different. And our recruiting staff is unbelievable. It’s grown over the eight years I’ve been here. To be where it is now, Billy Glasscock and what he does organizing things and bringing in the right people to assist and help and put their creative spin on things. There’s so many of them. Merci Falaise is a former athlete here that’s been with us for several years now. Does a tremendous job not only building relationships, but giving the tours and being a former athlete here and student knows this place inside out. 

JJ Daugherty and [Matt Doherty] and [Austin Shelton], Munday Tatum, there’s just so many people that work behind the scenes helping us. What [Chanelle Smith-Walker] and [Emmitt Carden] do graphically and through video to tell our story was the difference. In my opinion, our ability to talk about us and our ability to sell our brand and talk about our coaches, program, the things that we stand for, the things that we believe in, and to not be able to do that in person, but to have to do it through Zoom or through video story. 

I just want to say thank you to that staff. I think they did an unbelievable job. I’m very fortunate to have them here  with us in building this class. Hopefully it’s the last time we have to recruit virtually for an entire class, but we’ll see. 

This is a class of young men that is represented by 11 in-state players, three from the state of Georgia, one from Florida, two from Virginia, one from South Carolina and one from New Jersey. Nineteen total, and one transfer that I can talk about today. And we can get into that as I go through it. It’s a good class. It starts with meeting your needs. 

We always talk about recruiting guys that are like great players that you’ve had or have, or better to continue to improve your roster competitively. But also to bring in things that we may not have, adding more speed or adding more size or more depth. 

All these young men are super competitive. Many of them are all-conference players, 12 of them as a matter of fact. Obviously, some of these guys didn’t get to play this season because in North Carolina, as you know, they didn’t have a high school season. Several of them are captains. There’s some background in the NFL with some of their parents. For us, it’s about trying to get them to understand what we’re all about; what the hard, tough, together mantra is, and finding young men that want to be a part of that. 

Dantonio Burnette and our strength staff normally do a ton of in-person things on unofficial visits. They had to do that virtually through Zoom. They did a great job. I think Ashley Grigsby, our academic adviser that oversees football, did a great job explaining things to parents and young men about how they’re going to be supported here. In a normal setting I’d be showing you video. I guess you guys are going to have to do that on your own. 

But, it’s a class that we’re very proud of. It’s a bunch of guys that fit our culture, and we’re excited about working with them. They know they need to work hard and develop and be a part of what the coaches here and players here have created here from a cultural standpoint. 

How confident are you that you made the right selections? 

There’s a lot of homework that goes into these guys. Most of them we have met at some point in time, whether they were here as an underclassman or some of them we’ve seen a ton of times because they’re in state. We do believe in meeting people face-to-face if possible. So, when you can’t do that, then there’s been a lot of virtual conversation. There’s been a lot of Zoom, a lot of FaceTime. You still get to watch the same amount of tape regardless, talk to the coaches regardless, talk to the counselors, principals, whoever you need to speak to. Those kinds of things happen.

But, being able to size a guy up, there’s a lot of photography involved where guys would send pictures or you’d get a workout that somebody would send to you that you’d watch. We did everything we could. I think that’s all you can do, is your best. Getting to know these guys. 

That’s one thing we don’t do, is try to sell them anything. We tell them who we are and what we’re about. Our coaches get to know them, and I feel really good about that part of it. They know what they’re getting, and we know what we’re getting. 

The biggest part is when they get here is continuing to work hard and try to prove yourself and start over perse, I guess, coming out of high school where you’re the guy and having to prove yourself all over again. That’s part of the process. These are competitive young men that we are excited about coaching. 

How much has the season you’ve had helped the recruiting process?

It helps. Obviously, a lot of these kids were committed before the games even started. Some of them were in the middle of the season or later, but most of them weren’t. I think the biggest thing that it does is it helps you retain the guys that are committed. 

When you have 15 or so guys commit early and then you don’t win, you tend to lose some of those guys. What it does is it strengthens that connection that they have to the school they want to play for, seeing that they’re going to win. 

Like I’ve said to you guys before, the last four years we’ve finished in the top four in this league three times now. To show everybody that we’re back on the right train and right tracks with this program I think was important. It would’ve been great for us to have spring ball and fall camp for kids to come watch the changes to our system that took place. They had to wait until the games started. 

In some cases, it didn’t matter. Guys were OK. In other cases, it probably hurt us. There were some players that we might have gotten that made decisions early because they couldn’t see what was going to change in our offense, how we were going to run it. And what was going to change in our defense, what would be different about it. 

But, I think you could probably say that for every college out there. I do think the one thing that’s hard about this for us is that NC State, it’s a gem. It’s a beautiful place, and it’s in an incredible city. People didn’t get to see that as much. They didn’t get to see gameday when it’s just crazy in our stadium. Those are things that can help us down the road. Some of these guys have been here as underclassmen and already knew what the atmosphere was like. Some of them are looking at videos of it and kind of betting on that. It’s a unique time for everybody. 

Do you feel good about the in-state players in the recruiting class? 

Yeah, I do. Every year we want to get the best we can from the state. Not that we’re not going to look outside the state. We do. We recruit outside the state hard, but we always start within our borders. I feel really good about these guys. They wanted to stay home. They wanted the families to be part of the process. They’re excited about what we talked about. And really the thing that we can sell to them is the factual evidence of the success that our in-state kids have had here, compared to in-state kids that leave and play out of state and don’t get on the field, don’t make it to the NFL. 

Our kids have had a higher percentage of success by staying home and letting their families be a part of it, a part of our developmental program. That’s the nice thing about when you’re at a school as long as I’ve been, you’re not talking about things that you can’t give them data on. 

How will the new transfer rules impact recruiting? 

Well, it hasn’t passed yet. Right now, people are just assuming it will. Once it is official, then we’ll just have to see how it changes things. I think it really just becomes another form of junior college recruiting where you’re trying to fill in spaces on your roster that, for whatever reason, aren’t full. Maybe you had a junior that got injured and now you have a senior and two freshmen and you want to put another guy in there that’s a little older. It just becomes that stop gap, if you will, where you can get a guy. It’s really going to be a different form of it. 

Until I see it in full flow, I can’t give you a great answer. I think there’s a lot of things, unfortunately, about the portal that are misleading and really not well thought out right now. There’s not enough scholarships out there for these kids that are going into it, and we don’t have enough initially to sign the number of kids that are going to leave programs. There’s going to be a lot of guys out there right now that aren’t going to get scholarships. We’re just going to have to see. I think there’s gonna be a lot of things that have to get tweaked NCAA wise to make this system work. 

What do you like about transfer offensive lineman Chandler Zavala?

He’s very physical. Very aggressive. He’s a finisher. He’s obviously a very decorated player at the school that he’s at. His mom actually works at NC State, so he’s a young man that wanted to be here. He had family ties to the university. We were looking for an experienced guy that wants to compete at a high level, comes in with a chip on his shoulder. He has all the tools. 

Zyun Reeves is a very intriguing prospect, he played basketball and came over to football. Can you talk about the product you saw on the field from him in this one year? 

I was at the State Championship game a year ago. They were playing Cardinal Gibbons, my son was on that team. So I was watching the game and this kid just kept making plays. So I’m looking at the roster and I’m like, ‘Who is this guy?’ I had a list of players to watch in the game from our recruiting staff. He made a bunch of plays. As the game went on, I’m texting [Billy Glasscock], ‘Who is this guy, number whatever he was at the time. He’s making plays and sacking the quarterback. He looks gigantic.’ They had him listed at 6-7, 6-6, whatever it was. 

And then we got the background that this was his first year playing football and I’m like ‘We’ve got to get some detail on this guy, because he’s really athletic, he’s long, he plays hard. He’s got a great upside. So as we got to know him and learned the story, he’s just a guy that was on the basketball court that a good recruiter at the high school figured out that they needed him on the defensive line over there at East Forsyth. So we were able to get in on him early, and coach [Charley Wiles] did a nice job getting him to understand what it takes to play that position. He wanted to be with coaches that could develop him. I think between Thunder in our weight room, his staff and coach Wiles with what he’s done with defensive linemen, this was the right fit for him.

Have you ever offered a guy who’s only played one year? 

Yeah. There’s been several guys over the course of my career that you kind of find that way, particularly when I was 1AA, you would take more chances on guys. But there’s quite a few of them out there that go from basketball to football late and end up being really good. 

You mentioned the success that guys have had in this program. When you look at what guys like Bradley Chubb and Nyheim Hines are doing in the NFL, how much does it help to be able to point to that in recruitment? 

I think it helps. When you’re showing the vision for the program, it’s a blueprint and you can show before and afters, you’re not selling anything. This is our program, here’s the guys that have been through it, here’s what happened to them, here’s where they are now. I can do it in life, I can do it in academics, I can do it in the NFL. We can do it in a lot of ways. Moving a player from offense to defense or defense to offense and how that worked out. Position changes, how that worked out. 

We’ve got a lot information here over eight years that tells our story and helps these young men, I think, make informed decisions as opposed to just listening to someone. I think that’s really good. If I was making a decision like these guys are, I would want a lot of really strong information to make it. So we try to provide that and have the substance behind the things we’re talking about.

North Carolina players haven’t had a season yet. A lot of them are just going to forego that year. What are your concerns about them transferring from a junior year of high school to Division-1 football?

You’re going to have to get the rust off of them and see how in shape they are. Some of them have probably trained hard some haven’t. So it’s probably going to take a little bit to get some of these guys going. I really feel for them, first of all. I think all the high school kids right now are missing out in a lot of ways. The social growth, the academic growth, the athletic growth, the competition, the adversity that they get by playing sports. The team building that they aren’t getting. So I feel for them. 

I’m hopeful that all these young men that are going off to college and going early can find success, walk in and understand how hard it’s going to be. It isn’t easy coming in early, going to college, period. That first semester is a challenge. It’s a big transition of your life. So we’ve got a lot of people here to help them with that. But there will be some things in their development. Any time you miss a season of sports, regardless of what year it is, it’s going to be a little bit different on the back end of that. So we’ll see how that goes. 

Without having seen it and what it really does, it’s hard to give you an exact part, but I do think guys missing their senior year of high school has to have some kind of impact on them. Some of them would have been captains this year and had that experience as leaders. Now they’ve missed that. So there’s a lot of things they didn’t get. 

Several ACC teams have opted out of bowl games, are you guys going to play? 

Oh, yeah. We’re playing. Our guys are excited. They’re excited to play. Our coaches are excited to play. Unless COVID takes an opportunity away from us, we’re planning on playing and we look forward to playing. 

Can you talk about the quarterback, Aaron McLaughlin? 

I’ve seen Aaron for a long time. He was at a different high school prior to being where he is at Denmark. The first thing you notice is his size, his arm strength. He came to one of our camps early in his high school career and ran really well, ran in the 4-6s. So he’s very gifted from an athletic standpoint. When he transferred to Denmark, he came up and visited and I asked him about it, since Buford was such a powerhouse program down there. He looked for an opportunity to go somewhere, and it wasn’t about the name. It was about him helping build a program. That stood out to me. You don’t hear that from kids his age. 

Then, when coach Palmieri got a chance to coach him for Mallard Creek, he went down there and became his head coach this year. I’ve got a history with him and he had great things to say about Aaron. Aaron had great things to say about Mike. It just seemed like a great fit for our program. Obviously I know coach Beck’s excited. Coach Roper knew a lot about him prior to that. I’ve been recruiting him on and off since he was in ninth grade. So we know quite a bit about Aaron. We’re grateful that he opened his recruiting back up and came to his senses to join the Wolfpack. So I’m excited to have him with us. 

How does the free year of eligibility help the numbers going forward? 

That’s a question I can’t answer. I think the NCAA’s going to have to help us with that. It doesn’t impact our 85. So any of the kids that were out of eligibility that now have a year and are coming back are just extras. Obviously, the school, it impacts us financially, paying for those scholarships. But I don’t know how many of our guys are doing that yet. It’s not official with anybody. Really, where it gets tricky is we have 18 freshmen in this class coming in,, and then last year’s class is technically considered freshmen again. 

So you have two classes in the same classification. So it’s really how is that going to play out over a five-year window with your numbers? So the NCAA’s got a lot of things they need to look at. They’re the ones that granted this year, and now they’ve created kind of a log jam, I guess you would say, on how we’re supposed to classify and look at our numbers. We’ll see what they end up doing. Until then, we’ll just keep on going. 

You have three sets of high school teammates, and a lot on your current roster. Is there something to that? 

I haven’t thought about it. I do think, in some cases, we try to recruit from winning programs. So if we get a kid from a place that wins and there’s other good players there, we keep going back. In some cases, we really respect how things are run at that school. East Forsyth’s a great example. I think coach Willert does an unbelievable job. You have success, and you get a player from there, you love how he’s built and how he’s wired. Those kind of things tend to lead to other players. Sometimes there’s just kids on your team that help you recruit, ‘Hey man, my former teammate really wants to look at you guys.’ So they end up wanting to play together and they kind of help the recruiting process because of their friendship. But when it comes to brothers, sometimes that one’s a little bit more that Mom and Dad want their sons together. But it’s interesting how that works out. I haven’t really studied how many kids we have from the same high school on our team, but it’s something for us to look at.

I was watching the film from Thornton Gentry, and in the very last clip he catches a touchdown pass. Is Ikem Ekwonu in trouble for that spot of pass catching offensive lineman? 

I don’t think Ickey’s in trouble. He’s got really good hands. I think that’s a play that we’re going to have to probably wait a couple years to run again. But we’ll definitely have it back in before Ickey’s gone. We need to get him to the end zone. Hopefully Thornton can be the next one. It was great when we got Garrett Bradbury a touchdown in his last year here. Anytime we can get a big man in the end zone, I think it sends a great message to those guys that work so hard but don’t get much credit. So we’ll have to try to get with coach Beck for the bowl game. Maybe we can find a way to come up with a big man touchdown here down the stretch. 

It’s probably to have a single player ranked nationally in the top 40 as a corner and top 25 as a wide receiver. You’ve got Micah Crowell listed as a receiver, is that the position he wants to play? 

That’s what he is. He’d be a big corner. But he’s a very versatile guy on offense. He’s a really good receiver. He’s big. He can do a lot of different things at that position. I think he’s also a good runner with the ball. You can see him carrying the ball a lot if you watch his highlights on jets and out of the backfield. So there’s a lot of versatility there with him.  And with his size, it allows you to be creative with him and do some different things around the box too. So that’s definitely where he’s going to play.