State DC Tony Gibson: "I Think We're Going To Be Really, Really Good"

Going into his second season as NC State’s defensive coordinator, Tony Gibson’s group should boast a wealth of talent, depth and experience.

While the Wolfpack will have to replace stud nose tackle Alim McNeill, NC State will return its starters at pretty much every other position, including linebackers Payton Wilson, Drake Thomas, and Isaiah Moore, safety Tanner Ingle, and defensive end Daniel Joseph. 

Inside Pack Sports recently caught up with Gibson to discuss NC State’s defense for the 2021 season, and here is Part I of the interview!

I know everything’s kind of kicking back off, and to start, I wanted to ask you just a couple of general recruiting questions. First of all, how good does it feel to finally be able to see some of these kids in person again, and then the second part of that, I know with you and coach Doeren, it’s not just about good football players, it’s really important for you guys to see these guys, meet them, get to know what they’re about, and make sure they’re a fit for your culture at NC State. So how difficult was it from the recruiting perspective not being able to meet these guys? 

The biggest hurdle we had was trying to do everything by Zoom. We had a bunch of guys that were getting measured, height and weight by Mom and Dad, trying to film it and give it to us. So it was a different experience, but any time that you’re recruiting a kid and you want him to commit and come to your school, you want to feel good about him and his family, being able to meet them, sit down and make sure that they are the right fit. We work really hard to try to build the culture here with great guys – and not only great players but great people. So it’s been a rough go around the last 10 months, but now it’s opened back up. Getting kids on campus again with the family and being able to really dig into their DNA and see what kind of people they really are, it’s a relief for us and exciting times again to get back in the recruiting. 

Everybody wants great football players. That’s a given. I’m curious, what are some to the attributes away from football that you like to see in kids? 

This is going into the nuts and bolts of it. We want to see a kid around his Mom and Dad and see how he talks to them. See how he answers questions, looking you in the eye. That is a big reason why we like them here. How do you talk to your Mom? How do you talk to your Dad? How do you answer questions face to face? And just make sure that their communication skills are good. Because obviously defensive breakdowns on the field, when you give up big plays, if you really study it, sometimes it’s ability, but sometimes it’s miscommunication. 

So that plays a big role. And then the other thing is you want guys that are high-character guys. You want guys that are smart in being able to handle adjustments on the sideline, be able to watch film with them sitting here talking through it and kind of explaining your defense, and then let them explain it back to you. That’s very important for us. Sometimes guys can get by with ability, but we want to make sure that this kid’s work ethic, his character, how he can really spit back the information we just gave him and making sure he understands everything. So those are critical for us to be able to find that out from a kid. Ability only goes so far, so we want to just make sure the communication piece is there and how well he understands what we’re really telling him. 

I wanted to ask you about Tanner Ingle. He’s a huge piece of your defense, and he had some issues last year with personal fouls and staying on the field. As a coach, how do you ask him to dial that back, or DO you ask him to dial that back? How do you manage that when you have a player that plays so physical, but at times that can put him in a situation where it takes him off the field?

The easy part of that is we still want him to play as physical as he can play, but we don’t want him to play reckless. I think at times, he gets reckless. He has no regard for his body the way he plays. So what we have to do is not dial his physicality but dial back the recklessness, I guess, that he plays with, and make sure that he’s hitting in the right direction. It sounds simple, but see what you hit. I think if he’ll do that, then we won’t have to worry about that. It goes back to my first game here, just when I was coaching in the back end, East Carolina. He hits a kid over the middle on a slant, they reviewed it for targeting, waved it off, it wasn’t targeting. About two plays later, he does the same thing and I’m like wow. He plays at a whole other speed and plays physical. I love that about him, I don’t want to take that bite out of him, but we need to teach him the correct way to see what you’re hitting, and I think that would take care of a lot of his issues. 

For you guys to get Daniel Joseph back, he could have left. You have some players that could have entered the draft and then you add some transfers in Derek Pitts and Cory Durden, Cyrus Fagan. How do you feel like adding that depth is going to impact your defense? 

We went position of need where we needed the most help. Obviously losing Alim and adding Cory, we feel good about that. We needed some more depth in the secondary; that’s where Pitts and Cyrus come in to play. Those guys have played a lot of football. Obviously the relationship that I have with Pitts, coaching him, recruiting him out of high school, came to West Virginia with me. So he understands our system and what we want. But those three guys, we’re really counting on them to kind of get us over the hump and add depth and be factors right now for us. That’s kind of what we looked at. Those guys all fit what we wanted. 

Obviously Payton Wilson had a breakout year for you at linebacker. When you evaluated his tape and his season, what are some areas you felt like he could maybe improve? 

I think at times in coverage he can get a little better. And I think at times too, again with him, playing under control. He missed a lot of tackles. It wouldn’t have even been close. He led the ACC and I think finished third in the country in tackles and missed two games. But even in those games he missed, just in the nine that he played in, if he would have just made the routine plays he makes every day, he would have blew everybody away from a production standpoint. So just getting him under control a little more, making sure he understands the whole scheme. 

He just needs to get some rough edges off. That was my selling point to him coming back was ‘Look, let’s love the process and do what you need to do to be a first or second round draft pick.’ He’s done a great job right now preparing to do that. 

I wanted to go back to last season and, for me, I don’t know if you agree, but based on the circumstances that State faced all year, I thought it ended up being an overachieving season, especially on the defensive side. When you look at the injuries, you were just beat up at defensive back. You had some self-inflicted problems with guys ejected. But to come out of it 7-3 in the ACC and 8-4 overall, how proud were you of the effort last year? 

The one regret and the one thing that bothers us as a defense and a staff, that Miami game. That was probably the worst we played all year long. We should have won that game. When your offense scores that many points, there’s no excuse for losing that one. But other than that game, I thought that our kids and what really, if you really think about the last four or five games of the year, I think on defense we gave up like 15 points a game or 16 points a game when you average it out. I thought our kids just got better and better and better. Not being able to do anything, no spring ball with a new system going in. And I get it, the year before, we were the same structure, but we weren’t doing the same things. It’s totally different, the way we call stuff, the way we do things, the multiple coverages that we play now. 

So I think that those kids got better and were playing with a ton of confidence throughout those last four or five games, and really after the North Carolina and Miami games is when we really started turning it on. So I was really, really pleased with the effort they played with, and we were physical, we got a good handle on what we were doing. So that brings exciting times now, because I think we’re going to be really, really good.