Payton Wilson: 'We want to look like we've been playing ball for 12 weeks'
On Monday, NC State head coach Dave Doeren called his starting trio of linebackers “the heartbeat” of the defense. One of those three, Payton Wilson, could be the favorite for ACC Defensive Player of the Year this year.
Wilson spoke with the media ahead of Thursday’s season opener, and here’s a full breakdown of everything he had to say:
How excited are you to play in front of a full Carter-Finley Stadium?
It is exciting, you know, to have the best fans in the nation back in the stadium again. We as a football team really think that our fans help us out tremendously when we play at home. They’re loud. They’re crazy. They’re rowdy. It’s going to be awesome to have all 65,000 back in the stadium. But last year we kind of got blessed with being able to communicate really well on the field and being able to understand calls and even be able to hear the coaches on the sideline. That’s definitely not going to be an option this year, so we’re definitely going to have to be more locked in and have more detail on the field and more discipline and know what we are doing at all times.
Did you have any sort of relationship with USF quarterback Cade Fortin while you guys were in high school?
I don’t actually know him at all. I think kind of when I decommitted from UNC is kind of when he hopped on the boat. I didn’t really get into contact with him much, so no, I don’t really know him at all.
What was it like to play in a mostly empty Carter-Finley Stadium last year?
It took some adjusting, I would say. But in between plays you don’t really think about the fans as much. The first couple of games it was definitely really weird. And then when we went to places like Pitt and Syracuse, when they had zero fans in the stadium, there was no crowd noise at all. So it was kind of hard to tell which team was making a play. Most of the time if the home team is making a play you are able to tell because if someone is throwing the ball all the way down the field and as a linebacker I’m blitzing, I’m able to tell if we had a PBU or interception or if they caught the ball. You couldn’t tell that at all last year. It wasn’t hard to be motivated, but it’s definitely a lot easier to be motivated when you have 65,000 cheering you on.
What have you seen from South Florida?
I think that they are athletic all across the board. South Florida, that’s usually what they are known for. They have a lot of speed and a lot of threats. They have a lot of transfers that came in as well. It’s kind of the unknown right now, just looking to see what they throw at us and throw our best back at them. I think the biggest thing that we have to worry about is speed across the board. Even the O-linemen move well. The quarterback does a good job of leading his receivers, letting them run a lot. They run a lot of jet sweeps. It’s going to be containing that speed and hopefully doing our jobs at that point.
How has coach Doeren changed during your time around him?
When I first got here we had that pretty bad season. We lost a lot of guys, and a lot of young guys had to play. I think the one thing that we see from coach Doeren is kind of the same thing every day. He’s very consistent. He’s very motivated every day. You know he’s going to bring the same energy to the table. But one thing that he’s really done, a lot of credit to him, he brought us from a 4-9 team to a team that’s back in the conversation. In 2019 we were a bottom-tier team in Power 5 football. For him to just stay on us and develop us so well and to get us to the point where we are now, it really says a lot about him and who he is as a coach.
Coach Doeren called you, Drake Thomas, and Isaiah Moore the heartbeats of the defense. How seriously do you guys take your responsibility of the leaders of this defense?
We take it really seriously. Me, Drake, and Isaiah have had the opportunity to play beside each other for a long time, so we have a lot of good chemistry. We really know who makes the calls and when the calls need to be made. We’re at film every single night. We take it on ourselves that if someone messes up on the defense, it’s because we didn’t give them the right call or we didn’t tell them the right tendency. We really put a lot of pressure on ourselves to get people in the right spots. Isaiah and Drake, they do such a great job of being students of the game. They know everything that is coming. They know every tendency. They know where everyone is supposed to be. They’ve helped me out so much, and they’ve helped the team out so much.
How did the defense grow as a unit last year, and how does that give you guys an advantage heading into this year?
I think it goes even further back to last year. I think after that 2019 season we, as a defense, we sat back and we needed to change everything. We needed to change how we played, how we prepared, how we entered the game, how we finished games. We really took that personally. We were one of the worst defenses in the ACC. That was pretty embarrassing. The defense itself has grown so much at just trying to become the defense that we know we can be. In 2019 we were plagued with injuries so a lot of young guys, myself included, had to play. We got really close with that, having to play through that. And then last year with COVID, I feel like teams either split apart from it or grew really close together. Credit to coach Doeren again, he did a great job of keeping us in touch. We were on Zoom calls every day. We had accountability partners. Our team grew so close with just that idea in the back of our head that we would one day be able to play again, and it was, would we be ready or would we not be ready?
How important is it to get the first win of the season and start the season 1-0?
That’s our whole mentality all season, is just that 1-0 mentality. Focus on game one. Don’t look ahead. We definitely want to win all of them, all 12 that we play and even some more. It’s definitely really important to start the season off on a good note. We have been preparing really hard and really well, and we have a lot of detail and discipline in our game plan. I think that getting that first win under the belt is just to get that train moving and get that momentum going.
How did you and Devin Leary get so close and become roommates?
Me and him go back to junior year of high school. We met out at the Nike Opening. At the time I was committed to UNC and he was committed to NC State, actually. It was almost kind of like a friendly rivalry there. But he was one of the main guys that just kept talking to me throughout the recruiting process to try to get me to come to State. When we got here we just clicked off. We think alike. We work really hard together. We just gel really well. Ever since we got here we’ve been great friends. After this past semester, in December I started living with him and our friendship grew so much. We started talking ball all the time. We’re just growing together. We’re becoming better football players together.
Do you guys talk about what you’re seeing from the offense and what he is seeing from the defense?
Yeah. It used to be when me and him would talk it would always be a competition. We were younger, and back in the days it was like ‘oh, the defense whooped the offense today.’ But I think now, this fall camp we would come back from practice and he would be like ‘hey man, I see this going on with the defense. If you don’t get it fixed, that’s gonna hurt y’all this season.’ And vice versa. I think that just shows the maturity of the friendship we have and just the maturity of the team as well.
You guys are coming in as such heavy favorites. Is the expectation to dominate or is there an understanding that this is week one?
We want to come out week one, and we want to look like we’ve been playing ball for 12 weeks. We want to look like we have no rust that we need to knock off. The goal is definitely to dominate all game, but it’s college football. Anything happens. As long as we do our job and everyone does their job and they don’t try to do too much and everyone is playing with great effort, then I think all things are going to go well.
What are your individual goals that you know you need to reach this year in order to help this team succeed?
This might sound corny and it might sound cliche, but I honestly don’t think that way. Coach Thunder tells us every day that with team success comes individual success. Nobody has higher expectations for myself than me, obviously. But I think that my whole focus, if I go out there and get one tackle but I help the team win, that’s way more important to me than if I go out there and have 20 tackles and we lose. The whole way that I look at the individual goals and individual success is that with team success comes individual success, and that’s been proven in the past.