NC State head coach Dave Doeren met with the media following the No. 13 Wolfpack’s 21-20 road win over East Carolina Saturday afternoon at Dowdy-Ficklen Stadium.
NOTE: Click the video in the player above to watch Doeren’s interview. A transcript is provided below.
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“Well, first, we want to give East Carolina a lot of credit. We were up, 21-7, and their kids fought. They deserve a lot of credit for that. They had two goal-line stands. We fumbled one and then got stopped on the other which, in my opinion, was the most disappointing part of the day. We had two goal-line opportunities where we didn’t come up with points. There’s a lot to look at on film, a lot to improve. It always starts with the schemes that we’re running. Look at how we’re coaching things, look at the guys that are running them and where we can get better, and we will. We’ll get a lot better, but the one thing I can’t do is change our record tomorrow. We’re 1-0. As ugly as it is, it doesn’t count any different than if we won by 100. I’m excited. The last time I was here, […] we lost. It’s good to get a W down here. You’ve got to give Mike Houston, his staff, and his team credit. They did a great job today.”
“No, we had some injuries. We didn’t have enough people. We had two guys go down on that play, so I wanted to get the right people in and wanted to have 11 people in the game obviously. We were going to have a max-block type of thing, and one of the guys that would have been in on that was out, so we had to find his backup and put him in.”
“I don’t think [I have to build them back up despite the win]. There’s a lot of guys that expected to play better than they played today. That film’s going to be embarrassing for some of them, not because I’m going to embarrass them. They missed a ton of tackles. As you know, we tackled really well as a defense last year, and it was a lot of the same players. We just didn’t get it done.”
“[No updates on Payton Wilson] yet. Once we know, we’ll let you know.”
“I’m very impressed with Demie Sumo. He’s probably the bright spot of the day besides our special teams. He’s hard to tackle, runs through contact, tough, took care of the ball. He’s a huge bright spot.”
“Coach [Tony] Gibson and his staff deserve credit. You hold a team to 20 points, and it’s a team that scores a lot on offense. They have a lot of skill. They did a good job in the transfer portal getting some good players in there. If you ask Tony, he’d tell you they didn’t play good. There was a lot of missed tackles.”
“[Owen Daffer] had just missed an extra point. I thought he was probably in his head a little bit. We had two guys jumping. We thought we might get a low kick because he had to drive it. He didn’t. He just missed it. I was hoping that he wouldn’t recover from the missed extra point. It’s hard as a kicker. That’s a big moment for him, and obviously you know I’ve been on the other side of that a couple of times. It’s tough on those kids. It’s a lot of pressure.”
“You coach them. You go in there and talk about the things they did wrong. You own the things that we, as a staff, need to do better for them. The players have to fix it with their coaches and then execute it better. It’s collective. It’s not just the coach or the player. It’s always a two-sided thing when you’re trying to get better. That’s the beauty of this game. We’ve got 11 more regular season games. You heard me say this earlier. We have to be a team that improves. We look forward to being 1-0, and we get to try and do that.”
“We didn’t get it gone. I don’t know what happened on the 1 where the refs stepped in and there wasn’t a timeout on either side of the ball. It was kind of a weird moment. I thought we were going to score on that play, and then we couldn’t run that play because they saw it. Really, we lost another play on our short-yardage package. It wasn’t just two plays; it really became three. It shouldn’t come to that, to be honest.”
“I’m really happy with [special teams]. It was Collin Smith and Shane McDonough’s first game with us. Sean Brown had a huge tackle. Jasiah [Provillon] blocked a punt that Sean Brown recovered for a touchdown. Those are huge plays in the game, and I’m proud of those guys. Thayer [Thomas] had a huge punt return, too."
