Dave Doeren on NIL, playoff expansion, recruiting, more

During breakout interviews at the 2021 ACC Football Media Kickoff, NC State football head coach Dave Doeren spoke to the media about name, image and likeness, recruiting, and much more. 

Here’s some highlights of what he had to say.

NOTE: Click the video above to watch the interview.

Are you using name, image and likeness in recruiting? 

Not yet. I really need to watch. This thing just got dropped on us. I need to see where it goes before I’m recruiting with it. Right now I’m just learning, trying to be a resource for our players. Trying to make sure they don’t put themselves at risk. There’s a lot of fine print in some of these things with these guys, and as you can imagine, people want to take advantage of them. So I just want to be there for them through it and hope they get the good side, not the bad side. 

How prevalent do you think NIL will be in college football recruiting? 

You can predict the fact that some teams are going to have guys that make a ton of money, and they’re going to walk into a home and say ‘If you come here, you could be like that.’ You can predict that that’s going to happen. How much is that going to happen in the ACC where one school has it all and the rest of us have nothing? I don’t know. I’m just trying to coach football right now, help my guys deal with all this stuff. We’re still in COVID. It’s not gone. We still have to manage all that. There’s a lot of other things that we’re more concerned about. 

How have you seen Devin Leary grow as a leader through having to sit out last year? 

I think he has a lot of respect for [the game]. He takes it very serious. He loves it. He’s tough. He’s growing. He’s learning how to speak. I think that comes with being a good player. Early in your career you want to lead, particularly as a quarterback, you’re used to leading. You get to a school where you haven’t made enough plays yet, and now he’s done that. I think he’s learned the value of all the little things that you take for granted. When you become injured, you can’t do all the things you used to do and might have even complained about. Now he’s just excited to have it all back in his grasp and we’ve talked a lot about what’s next. He’s grasped it this summer. He’s done a really good job of stepping up for his teammates.

What do you see in this team that makes you think it’s a special team? 

I don’t know that it is yet. I think we have to get on the grass and prove that we’re better or not. Last year was a fun team to coach. We had great chemistry. We overcame a lot of adversity and did a lot of good things together. A lot of them are back and they want to be better than last year. I can’t tell you we are, but that’s what’s next. 

Did you meet with the commissioner yesterday about the College Football Playoff expansion, and what are your thoughts on the 12-team format? 

We did meet yesterday. Jack Swarbrick, the Athletic Director for Notre Dame, presented not just the 12-team, but the entire process of how it got there. They were tasked to study the halfway point of the four-team playoff. So they looked at the four-team playoff, a possible six-team playoff, seven-team playoff, the play-in game, eight-team, 12-team, 16-team. These guys work really hard. It was really interesting to listen to. I learned a lot listening to it. No decisions have been made. There’s a lot of questions that we asked as coaches.

There’s a variety of concerns, the current bowl system, the academic calendar, the additional games that our players could potentially have to play, the damage that could cause them not just physically but academically. So there’s a lot of things they’re going to continue to study. I’m really thankful the commissioner did that so that we got a little more insight. We were the same as everybody. We were just reading about it and not getting to ask questions or get insight. So there’s a lot to come on that. 

Am I against it or for it? I don’t know if I’m either yet. I was part of the 16-team playoff twice at Montana, and we went to the National Championship twice. So I understand the length of the season and how that played on our roster. But in the FCS level, as you know, you don’t have the playoffs and bowls. So now are we going to expand the playoff system and have bowls? There’s a lot that needs to be studied, so I look forward to learning more about it and seeing how it plays out. I think we still have four more years of the current system. So even though the stories are today, the changes aren’t going to be for quite a while. 

Being around Zonovan Knight day in and day out, what do you see to explain how he’s gotten so good?

He’s blessed with talent, genetically, through God and all the things that go into that. He’s got a great work ethic. He’s humble. He’s got good vision, he’s fast, he’s tough. He’s a guy you love to coach. He doesn’t say a whole lot. He shows up the same every day and he’s super competitive. He just has all those things, the intangibles and the talent. It’s nice to have players like that. 

Last year you were able to train some guys to play multiple positions or get reps for guys lower down the depth chart to play multiple positions anticipating losing guys to COVID, and it ended up helping you with injuries. Do you anticipate doing that more going forward? 

Anytime you can get what I call development reps, so the third-string group of guys reps, it’s valuable. Unfortunately our bowl game ended up being a lot of that, because we had a lot of guys out. [Payton Wilson] was out, [Drake Thomas] was out. We were missing some key components in that game. So you played some younger guys in some spots, and then in practice you do the same. Our training camp’s always built to give our ones, twos and threes reps, so we’re trying to get our three-deep ready to play. 

And then throughout the season, if you came to our practices, you’d see us on Thursdays and Fridays doing developmental periods with our younger players to get them ready in case there’s injuries or in case one of them is way different in week six than he was in week one, because he’s just learned the offense or defense and he can now play. I think it’s paramount. Can we do it all the time? No, we can’t. We’ve got to get ready to win the game with the best players we’ve got. But whenever possible, you try to develop your roster.