Here is the FULL VIDEO of NC State head coach Dave Doeren at today’s press conference before the Troy game.

Quotes

“We’re excited for our home opener.  It’s always fun to get to game week.  Now we can narrow our focus.  I think it’s important early in the season, particularly when your playing a team with a new staff, that we focus on us.  That’s going to be key.  Early in the year you see a lot teams beat themselves.  Focusing on the things that we need to focus on, the things that we can control.”

“Troy’s an athletic team.  They return 9 starters on offense.  Obviously they have a new staff.  They have an experienced play caller in Neal Brown and Defensive Coordinator Vic Koenning.  They return all of their specialists, and the Special Teams Coordinator was retained, so that is probably the best film that we have.  They have two talented backs and some receivers with experience coming back.  They have a big play receiver in Bryan Holmes.  Their Defensive End Tyler Roberts and Safety Montres Kitchens were both All-Conference players, and they are very active on film.  We don’t know schematically what we are going to get.  We know what Kentucky and North Carolina did with their coordinators, but the personnel is different that they have to use.  We’ll have to really rely on the rules of our schemes, which is what you do at the beginning of the year most of the time anyway.  Particularly when your facing a team that has had the staff changes they have had.

“I’m excited for our players.  I’m excited to see some of them react.  There are several first time starters.  Whether they are True Freshman like Nyheim or Redshirt Freshman that are going to be playing for the first time, like Maurice Trowell who has had a really good camp.  I’m excited to see how they respond.  I know there will be ups and downs throughout the roster, but it’s always fun to see those guys that have been waiting to play their first college game.”

“Our team is pretty healthy.  We had a mock game last night with the guys, and were able to go over a lot of different situations.  Today is our day off.  Football wise, we’ll get back into it tomorrow.  It will be a quick week.  We’re looking forward to having everybody in the stadium to support the team.”

“Depth is so important, but really everybody has depth.  You want the depth to be competitive and for the guys to have experience.  This year you look at the linebacker position.  You take Jerod Fernandez, M.J. Salahuddin and Ford Howell.  There are three guys that are older guys.  That’s a great situation to have at linebacker.  At Will Linebacker, to have Airius who started some games at “Mike” playing at “Will” this year, and Ernie Robinson who made a bunch of plays on special teams last year, who is a third year player as well, and Riley Nicholson, who is a True Freshman, but a very talented True Freshman.  We feel like we have much better depth at Linebacker.”

“We have a lot of good talent backing up our offensive line, but it is young talent.  That’s where you see three guys that are Seniors or in Graduate School being backed up by Freshman or Redshirt Freshman.  That’s a big discrepancy in years.  You’re going from a 22 or 23 year old to an 18 or 19 year old.  They are talented guys.  That’s the one spot on the roster you still kind of cross your fingers on.  The rest of the team is a lot of experience backed up by experience.  They aren’t Seniors.  There are only 11 of those guys.  It’s a better situation than it was a year ago.”

“You can’t replace experience.  You learn by doing.  A lot of the time you tell young people something, but they have to live it to understand it.  That was the case with a lot of our roster last year.  Having those experiences underneath our belt is good.  Also, the way we played against Clemson is an experience that will serve us well also.  I think that was an embarrassing experience that will help our football team.  The experiences of how we responded late in the year.  All of those things make us the team that we are now, as coaches and as players.  I told the guys, It’s one thing to have experience.  It’s another to use it.  They need to make sure they take advantage of the knowledge they gained from it.”

“Dawka Nichols has been injured a lot.  None of them have been major.  He’s had a ton of hamstring, groin, quad minor injuries.  All kinds of things that have kept him from sustaining any kind of opportunity to play on offense.  As soon as he started to look good, he would be out.  Knock on wood, he did a great job, and our strength staff and trainers deserve a lot of the credit as well.  He’s been healthy.  He went through every practice.  He took every rep he was supposed to take.  He was a competitor on special teams a year ago.  Now he’s been out there enough everyday where you can see who he really is.  He’s tough.  He’s competitive.  He’s got good skills.  He’s had the luxury of watching Shad and Matt, and learning from two guys that are playing at a high level.  Reggie and him are competing a lot, because they know that they are in a position to be the next guy in.  The biggest thing when you are trying to show that you belong is to be out there everyday, and he was able to do that.”

“Going into camp I was very concerned about depth at the Nickel position.  We have Freddie Phillips as a Freshman at backup, but we also have Shawn Boone that can play there.  Shawn practiced at Nickel a lot throughout camp, and we feel great about it right now.  We feel like Shawn could play in the game at any time at Strong Safety, and we felt like if Dravious was tired, and Freddie had a big look in his eyes because it was his first game, that Shawn could step in and play there and do a really good job.  I feel like we have three guys that can step in and play that spot right now.”

“No it’s not a plan to put Jalan McClendon in the game.  It’s Jacoby’s offense and he’ll be our quarterback.  If we get a big lead and can play Jalan, that’s what we’ll do.  In a tight game I’m not going to walk in there and say series 4 is your series.  I just don’t believe in that.  I don’t think it’s a bad thing to do, but for me it’s out of my comfort zone.”

“I think we’ll continue to play defensive schemes that bring pressure.  A little bit is dictated by the offense that you’re playing.   Troy is an uptempo offense that operates kind of like UNC, so it does limit you some, because you can’t substitute as much.  We’d like to be very similar to how we finished the last three games pressuring and playing tighter coverage, and mixing our packages as much as we can.”

“Airius is a very good dogger.  Probably one of his greatest skill sets is how he is on blitzes.  He has a really quick twitch.  He’s not as tall as Rodman.  Rod did a lot of things in coverage that other linebackers can’t do.  But Airius is explosive.  He’s one of the most quick twitched guys we have.  His lateral movement skills are going to serve him well in pressure packages.”

“Last year we did not take the ball away well at the beginning of the year.  We finished doing a much better job.  The take aways early in the season are going to be key.”

“We’re very thankful to our fans for our sell out season.  Everywhere you go you can feel the excitement.  I have spoken to the students and to a lot of groups throughout the state and I can tell they’re excited.  They loved how we finished the season.  They loved our recruiting class.  They loved the positive things they are reading about the players on our football team.  The direction the program is heading.  The new facility.  There are a lot of things.  We’re just excited to play a game.”

“That’s one thing I learned working with Coach Mangino at Kansas.  He was really strict to his vision.  He didn’t let people on the outside take him away from what he needed to do on the inside.  We just have to keep doing it.  It’s about raising the bar and getting better.”

“We’re really excited about Johnny’s (Frasier) future.  When he got here he had a lot of little things that took him away from the field.  He had the flu for awhile and was struggling.  He’s just such a great kid with a great skill set.  When you play them as a Freshman, you don’t want to just give them 5 carries.  With Matt (Dayes) and Shad (Thornton), Reggie (Gallaspy) and Dawka (Nichols), and Nyheim (Hines) and (Jaylen) Samuels.  I just wanted to make sure that we were doing the best thing for his future.  He and I have talked a lot this week and last week.  Unless something changes, the plan is to redshirt him to get him ready to be the guy, the guy that we know he can be, and that he knows he can be.  We’re really excited about the future for him, and I think this is going to be a really good year for him.  You don’t really have a redshirt year.  It’s 4 months.  Then you’re out there trying to win a job.”