Dave Doeren: The Next Man Has To Step Up

NC State head coach Dave Doeren met with the media to discuss the Wolfpack's loss at Miami and the upcoming matchup against Louisville.

NOTE: Click the video above to watch the press conference.

Opening Statements...
Hope everyone's doing well.

Obviously a lot of hurt when you lose a game like that, particularly one where you knew you had many opportunities to have a different outcome. We were two of four in the redzone.  We had two field goals, two touchdowns, and I had said that earlier in the week scoring touchdowns in the redzone was a goal of ours... where we felt like we could swing the game. If either one of those field goals is a touchdown. That's the difference in the game, and you lose by one.

You can find many things. We stop them in the redzone on defense.  They do a snap-down with their field goal to get us to jump offsides, which we had practiced all week.  So that was a huge mental mistake on Cory Durden. He was very upset about it during the game and understandably so, but that was three points that turned into seven. That's four points when we lose by one.

We had a critical drop pass by Devin Carter, the same guy that makes two incredible catches against Clemson.  He has a basic human moment where he dropped a pass that, obviously might've put us in field goal range -- probably would have there at the end of the game.

All these guys that make mistakes, they all feel horrible about it, but that's football, and we lost by one point. We had chances to win the game and all these guys will work hard to respond. That's one thing that I do know about our kids.  They're going to bounce back and they're going to give everything they got.  

We didn't have anything really go our way, and in games like that, we had a muffed punt... weirdest play I've ever seen, Anthony Smith forces a fumble and his helmet gets ripped off. He stands up and... the ball gets refumbled at his feet.  Even though you're not supposed to keep playing, I don't know what person on the planet Earth would not try to recover that ball, and we don't get it back. So when weird things like that happen, you've got to overcome it with plays, and we just didn't.

It's a loss; obviously you never want to lose a game.  But we still control our destiny here. And I think that's the silver lining.

The biggest loss of the game: Isaiah Moore is out for the season, and that to me was the biggest loss in the game. Not losing the game but losing a player of that magnitude, a leader of that magnitude.  

Chandler Zavala, who's been out for awhile, will not return either. Both of those guys need a surgery and both will have an opportunity to continue playing whether they choose to do that here or to move on to the NFL.  That'll be a decision they make later in life, but we're down now four defensive starters: Payton Wilson, Cyrus Fagan, C.J. Clark, and Isaiah Moore... four guys that we think are really good.

So it’s the next man up thing.  The guys will work hard to step up in their roles, just like we have all season, but there's a loss of production.  That does become a concern on defense. 

We've got to do a lot of really looking at what we're doing.  Fundamentally making sure we're putting these guys schematically in the best places we can, and the kids that are playing well will continue to play well around them and make up for those losses.

I'm excited to see the guys step up just like we have this year. I think Jaylon Scott has stepped up and played his best football. Corey Durden has made some big plays for us.  Devan Boykin came in and made some great plays in the Boston College game, and now Devon Betty will have an opportunity to play more for us.  You'll get to see Levi Jones playing more for us.

So, that's the way it goes. My heart breaks for Isaiah. He means a lot to our program, and so a guy that was playing as well as him, has done so much for us on and off the field, your heart breaks for guys like that.  That's life, no one says life is fair, and no one says that good things always happen to good people.  That's just not how it works, and Isaiah is very spiritual.  He's in a great place with God, and I know that he'll take this recovery the right way. You'll continue to be a great leader for our team. I know he will, and we'll be here to support him.  

Going back to the game, I thought the score before the end of the half by our offense was outstanding to get a touchdown. 

They're a very athletic, disruptive defense, and to keep them out of our backfield, the way we did, they only had one sack. We only gave them two tackles for loss.  We had 13 tackles in their backfield. So, to look at how that line of scrimmage stuff happened, we did not turn the football over.  We won the field position battle 130 yards. So there were some things that happened that gave us a chance to win that game.

Unfortunately we just didn't make the plays.  We were not good enough on third down and that's a result of third and long, too many times, there's way too many, third and seven plus situations.  I thought Devin Leary did some really good things. He also had some inaccurate moments that haven't been him... missed on a couple of deep balls. He missed underneath on a couple easy throws. I know he'll bounce back from that.  

I already mentioned the drops. I thought we played their run game well.  We were in their backfield a lot. We tackled well, we just gave up too many big plays, seven passes over 15 yards, and they hit us on a couple of big plays on short yardage with play-actions.  You got to give them credit for executing those. Their quarterback made a couple of throws with guys right in his face that we didn't think he could make, and he did.  Good job by him, but we did not get any takeaways on defense, getting the ball back, something we need to do. We’ve been doing it well... we were leading the ACC going into the game with eight interceptions, and we didn't have any. I thought our special teams were really good and gave ourselves feild position on both sides of the football.  We pinned them back there twice.  We had good punt pressure. We had a couple of opportunities to have some big returns in the kickoff return game and there we were close.

Trent Gill continues to punt and kickoff at a high level. Probably the thing that went understated last in that game was Chris Dunn became an all-time leading scorer in NC State football history. So for a guy that has done some incredible things, that's had a tough year because of one game, he definitely put his mark and his legacy on our program and was three for three in the game.

I thought our punt coverage by Anthony Smith and Delbert Mimms was really good. Our fake punt was very well-executed, was a big momentum play in the game and led to a touchdown on that drive. 

Now we're on to a very impressive football team.  Louisville had a 28-14 win and overcame four turnovers on offense and still won by a two-score margin. Their quarterback is an outstanding player. He's not just an athlete, he's a really good quarterback and he's got 12 rushing touchdowns. He's operating their offense. You can tell he's played a ton of football for them and managing the game, just throwing the ball around and getting it to his receivers.

Louisville always has good skill on the perimeter and they do again, the tight ends are good players. They move them around. They use shifts and motions... the run game, there's not a lot to it, but they're really good at it.  The wide zone, stretch, stretch lead, and then inside zone and split zones, have great play-action pass series that comes off their run game and a naked series that allows the quarterback to be an athlete with the pass game.  They protect them well, and some of that's him getting out of things, but they've only been sacked one time per game, but they're running the ball. They rushed for 331 yards last week against Boston College. That's hard to do against a BC team, and they've rushed for 200 yards, three-straight games. So a great opportunity to play a very physical, good football team here.

Their defense leads the conference now [with] nine interceptions, and they give you a lot of looks, a lot of pressures, multiple fronts, and they play hard. Their kicking game is very sound, and they're a physical opponent. 

You definitely talked about this a good bit just now, but does it give you comfort just seeing the way that your team persevered last time they dealt with this? When you lost at Mississippi State, it was a similar step back, lost two important players, came back, won four in a row.
Yeah. We're going to have the same demeanor. The kids, everybody was hurting yesterday, but by the time we're done meeting with them and talking, they know what we got to do and I trust them to do it.

Differences, you're doing it with less than you had the last time you had to do it.  Last time we were missing two starters on defense, now we're missing four.  So again, it's a challenge. It's also an opportunity, and we'll look at it as the latter with our football team.  That's where we're at.

Moving forward, do you cross train Drake or Jaylon and put them in the middle beause they have more experience?  Maybe Betty outside, or is Betty showing enough? He's, he's looked well in flashes to hold on that middle spot for you. 
Tony's going to have to teach them all how to play.  Jaylon already knows how to play all three spots.  Drake has played Sam and Will, Levi has played Sam and Will. 

He'll have to cross train one of those guys like you mentioned, and then we'll see how it plays out. I know he's going to toy around with it this week a little bit. The goal is to get your best three out there and then have one that can spell guys, so that's kind of where we're at.

I'll have a better feel by the end of the week on what we're going to be doing there.

Devon Betty had seven tackles against Miami, a safety at Boston College.  Assess his play so far.
He's done a nice job.  

He's been very productive. He made a couple coverage mistakes in a game... things he'll learn from. That's the difference, right?  There were times when Isaiah was a young player, he'd make mistakes and he learned from them. 

Betty's going to do the same thing. The thing that I will say about him, he's a very conscientious guy. Study's hard, he's ready to play. He'll do everything he can to be as good as he can each week.

I think that's the one thing that, he's ahead of his years from a maturity standpoint when it comes to preparing for games. I would look for him and whatever the role that is Tony gives him... he'll be ready to play. 

How frustrating is it that some of the goodwill you built up with the fan base after the Clemson win kind of evaporates after the Miami loss? 
It's hard for me to answer that because I didn't really read anything, I've been locked in here.

I just can only guess.  That's frustrating, because you think we wanted to drop a pass or jump offsides? Nobody wanted that to happen, but it did. At the end of the day, they're still 18 to 22 year old guys, man.  There's sometimes going to be a mistake that none of us like, but that's where we're at. They're still growing in the game.

So I'm going to love these players. I'm going to love our staff. We're going to stick together. We're going to work hard together, and hopefully the passion and the grief of the loss to our fanbase will return to the support for the athletes, which is where it should be. These kids work really hard. They're still in control of their own destiny, and [I’d] be ashamed if the fans didn't see it that way, once they get over the shock of losing a football game. 

The impact of losing Chandler Zavala along the offensive line...
Well, it hurts our depth.

We were able to rotate. Derrick Eason was coming in the game and spelling Dylan McMahon and Dylan was able to go over and spell Chandler. Speas was able to spell, and Tim McKay.

So we had a pair and a spare, I guess you would say, that were keeping each other fresh.  We no longer have that, so it hurts your depth more than anything. It's forcing Dylan McMahon and Derrick Eason to play full games instead of maybe 60% of a game, that's the biggest part.

Right now we're in the process of developing that next man.  Right now Speas is the guy that can kind of play everywhere but center for us; we can move him in and out if we need to. So I think the biggest toll that we're having now, it's we had all this depth and that depth is no longer there.

Looking at the last two games, it seems like the running game has been kind of  struggling the most after losing Zavala.  When you look back at the tape, the film from these last two games, is it more on the re-shuffling of the offensive line or is it more Ricky and Bam need to step up?
Oh, it's not on the running backs, they're still averaging close to five yards a carry. There's a couple things.  We're throwing the ball a little bit more because we're getting loaded boxes. If you look at how we're being played, I think you need to pay attention to that as well. Our yards per carry is not a negative for our offense.

Many times do you want to hand it off into a box where they got more than you got? You've got to understand that part of football when you ask that question.

I do think losing a starter, there's going to be some drop-off. I think Chandler's a gigantic guy, he's very athletic, and so we got a little smaller, just a little bit, but I think it's more, you look at Miami and they had everybody in a box, so we were dishing the ball out... get behind, you're starting to throw it a little bit more, but we do want to have a balanced offense if we can.

No, I think  Bam and Ricky are running hard. 

The fake punt call... is that something you guys saw on tape? What went into it?
We've had that fake in since training camp... been waiting for the right moment to call it. It was a time we needed momentum... usually when you get closer to the 50-yard line, you get their safe punt, their defense stays on the field.  If you want to really succeed on a fake point, you have to call it when it's a situation where you think they're going to come after a block. 

We'd been looking at how they lined up our formations throughout the game. We felt like we had it and called it at the right time. The guys executed it.

If you watch the play, our left tackle on the play did a tremendous job.  Demarcus Jones, he drove his guy into another guy, ended up blocking two people on the play. It was a great job by DeMarcus and then Trent getting around it.

You always have things like that in your playbook, and sometimes you can't call it because they come out in a different look where it wasn't good... we would have had to kill it and just punt it away. That was a good play for us in the game. 

You were able to hit Anthony Smith on a deep ball. How is that for his confidence?
Well, he's the fastest guy on our team, and we've tried it throughout the year.  He's still learning how to adjust to the ball and track the football down the field, but that was a great play. I was really happy for him, and he's getting more and more confident. That's the thing I told him earlier in the year, “You're probably not going to play as much as you want, just because of these kids that came back...” if you're a young receiver, normally you'd be playing a lot more than you're going to with those guys back.

You got to take it in stride and get better and better and better and be ready for your moment when it comes. He's made some plays on special teams, which has built his confidence. So I was happy to see that and happy to see Devin and him connect. It's nice to have a guy who runs 22 miles an hour at practice every day. He's the fastest guy on our team, so to have a guy like that catching the ball, it helps you stretch the field. 

What’s the one thing maybe you want to correct from the tape?
Just the last two games in general, because of what we saw, we got a lot of play action pass these last two weeks – and obviously Louisville already does that, but just our ability [at] stopping it. We're number one in the league in rush defense; when you do that, you're going to get nakeds and play-actions. You have to be great at that, too.

The ability to not just stop the run, but also defend the play-action pass and the nakeds the way that we want to.  You're not going to always stop them all, but if they have to throw the check down or if it's a flood concept and there's three guys on the sideline, they can throw the short one, make them throw the check down on the naked.

So, trying to get them off of the deeper throws and just controlling our eyes better in the secondary on those types of things would be the number one thing.

Their freshman running back Trevion Cooley is really emerging. What have you seen from him on film?
Well, we liked him a lot at Knightdale. He’s a really good young man... enjoyed getting to know him during the recruiting process, and he chose to leave the state.  You see him get more and more... he caught a wheel route for a touchdown earlier and just had his first 100-yard game.

He's a track athlete in high school that had good track times, as well, so we know he's got that kind of speed, a tough kid.  We got to know him. He was over here quite a bit. I think he's really good, a really good person. 

Have you assigned a captain to replace Isaiah?
I haven't, we just found out today, so I haven't gone down that path.  We may do game captains, which I've done in the past just based on who's really stepped up that week on defense.  We'll have to see how that plays out, but I haven't gotten there yet. 

Are these injuries even harder when it's not just guys who are so talented, but who are such leaders on the team? 
If you wanted to pull the four most vocal playmakers out of our defense, we just did. That makes it hard, it really does. It puts more stress on the guys around them. They're going to have to step up ane take advantage of the roles.  

Drake's going to have to be that vocal guy now... and I think anytime you have a loss in the roster, it's replaced not only by the player that comes into the lineup, but the guys around them. The guys that have experience have to just play a little bit better, each of them to make up for that loss. 

Our guys unfortunately have experience with that. So we're just going to have to do a great job of it and play complimentary football.  We got to play great on special teams. Our offense is down one starter, defense is down four. So the offense is going to have to help us out a little bit that way.

That's the way it is, but I can tell you this, I'm not saying these things as an excuse, it's the reality, right? This is the reality of where we're at. It doesn't change our goals. We're still one game at a time, and we still play a good Louisville team. I still got a bunch of guys that want to win that game, so that's where our focus is.