Dave Doeren: "We Can't Sit Here and Say 'What If?'"

No. 10 NC State head coach Dave Doeren met with the media following the Wolfpack's 30-20 road loss to No. 5 Clemson Saturday evening.

NOTE: Click on the video in the player above to watch Doeren’s press conference.

“Winning here, the last 36 teams that have tried didn’t get it done. We had to play a lot better than we did tonight. Give Clemson credit. They won the line of scrimmage. Their D-line played really good. I thought they had a good game plan defensively. They played a lot looser in the secondary and made it hard for us to run by them, and their D-line pressured us. On defense, we had some opportunities right before the half to walk in with the lead getting the ball back. We had a coverage breakdown that led to [Will] Shipley’s play, and we had a chance at an interception that we dropped, and then they scored. That was a big possession for them because we took the lead on the series before. It was a hard-fought game. Clemson out-played us, and obviously that means they out-coached us today.”

“Their D-line’s really good. They got off blocks. Some of what we did was throwing the football when we’re down which takes away from running the football. We lost the turnover margin, and we lost the line of scrimmage, and you don’t win many games when that happens.”

“Go to the next game. We can’t sit here and say, ‘What if?’ It’s a long season, man. There’s a lot of games left. All we can control is next week. We have to focus on getting ready for Florida State, take them one at a time, and see where we end up.”

“This is a good football game with a good team on the field. We didn’t play our best. I think we’re a really good football team. They were better than us today. That’s where we’re at.”

“Tips end up being interceptions a lot. That’s just kind of the luck of the bounce on that one. As far as the deep ball, like I said, they played a lot of loose coverage. There were a lot of guys dropping. They were dropping eight at times. There was Cover 2 and Cover 3. They know what happened to them last week against Wake. I think they did a good job preparing that. Their D-line deserves a lot of credit. Devin [Leary] didn’t have a lot of time to find people.”

“For the most part. There were some plays that we gave them where guys started trying to make plays, and when that happens, guys get behind you, and your eyes are in the backfield. It happened a couple of times. I know when we watch the film we’ll tell you we can play a lot better. We played hard. It was a hard-fought game.”

“Yeah, it was there for sure. I feel like we gave them a touchdown going into the half. I really feel that way, not to discredit Clemson who made a nice throw and catch. On a three-deep with two hard corners and they run a flat route, the corner should be all over that. That should’ve never been caught by Shipley. We busted right there. Our corner had eyes in the wrong spot. You can’t do that in a game like this. You don’t have to be perfect, but you’ve got to play the defenses and offenses, execute, make your layups, and not turn the football over. We didn’t do that well enough."