VIDEO: NC State OC Eliah Drinkwitz Gives His Perspective on JMU Performance

NC State Offensive Coordinator Eliah Drinkwitz spoke with the media yesterday after practice, and gave his perspective on the Wolfpack’s offensive performance against James Madison, and what he and the offense needs to improve upon heading into Georgia State.

The VIDEO is above, and a BULLETED breakdown is below.

• Redshirt Sophomore CJ Riley has really good speed and height. Made a really tough contested catch on that fade. Made some other big plays for us. A couple of good curl catches. Good to see him do that.
• Freshman Running Back Ricky Person made a couple of really good pass rush pickups.
• You want to score touchdowns every time you get in the redzone. Biggest thing is you can’t turn the ball over.
• Used whatever plays we thought would help us win. We didn’t save anything. We just called plays. Some of them didn’t work. Some of them did work. 3rd down stuff worked. Redzone stuff worked. JMU is a good football team. We didn’t save anything. That wasn’t our mindset. We’ll go back to work this week and try to have some good plays for Georgia State.
• We used what we had. We had a plan together. We scored 3 points per possession. Only had the ball 8 times. We’ve got to do a better job. We can’t turn the football over. We’re going to do a better job establishing the run. I’m going to call better run plays to give our guys a better chance.
• The offensive line just needs to improve on little things. Finishing the backside of blocks. Couple of times had a holding penalty in the redzone.
• There wasn’t one specific group that didn’t play up to their potential. We’ve all got to play better. I’ve got to coach better. I’ve got to call better plays. Not putting it on any one group. I’m not going to overreact to it.
• We’re going to get better. The biggest growth is always between Week 1 and Week 2. Last year we didn’t blow it out in the run game in Week 1. We turned out fine running the football. Not panicked. We’re focused on improving, but not panicking.
• Why don’t you want a lot of 3rd downs? If you convert them. I’d like to score on every play, but they give you three downs to get 10 yards. Your job is to get a 1st down, and we did a great job of that. Had a great plan, and our guys executed on 3rd down. Would we like to be better on 1st and 2nd down? Absolutely. But what matters is converting, and we did do that. We’ll try to get a better plan for 1st and 2nd down this week. We’ll get better. But hey, great job on third downs.