Wolfpack Head Coach Dave Doeren spoke with the media in his postgame press conference after his team lost to Wake Forest 23-27, falling to 6-3.

Quotes

“I take responsibility anytime my team doesn’t play the way that it can and I do. We had a lot of opportunities and there is a lot of things that happened throughout the course of the game that led to the result. There is a lot of critical downs in the red zone where we didn’t get touchdowns for a variety of reasons. Settled for three field goals. We had some drops that were very uncharacteristic of guys on our team that cost us points or first down. We didn’t win the line of scrimmage, offensive line against their defensive line. They did a nice job with their scheme and we didn’t adjust well enough. I thought we played in the first half on defense pretty well and then the second half – particularly in the fourth quarter – gave up some explosive plays and the last play we were on a blitz and had a bust. We had a safety there to tackle it and he ran into somebody. Disappointing. Very disappointing. I thought we prepared well, but you get in the red zone as many times as we did in the first half and only get 13 points and you can’t put the game away when you had the chance there at the end, gotta make some plays there and obviously have to do a better job giving our guys a chance to make those plays. I own that.

“I don’t know exactly if it is that or was it senior night for some of those guys or was it something else? I definitely don’t think offensively we were crisp in the first half. What was the exact reason for that? I’m not sure. Was it the talk of what they could end up being? Was it the talk of seniors and three offensive linemen being seniors and being emotional at the beginning of the game? I’m not sure.”

“They threw two bombs and made really good catches. Those were two really good plays by them. I don’t think they did anything other than chuck it and have two really good catches made by receivers. We had defensive backs on them and they made great plays right there. You have to give them credit. One of the other drives they started running their quarterback. They hadn’t done that play in the first half so it was a new play. They started flaring their back and pulling their tackle. The defense we had been playing was working very well against the rest of their run game so that was a good adjustment by them. They got us on a little pick play. It wasn’t illegal, but they ran a rub route and our guy couldn’t get over the top on (WR-Greg) Dortch on the one that he caught. That was a good play by them, but with all that being said we had plenty of other chances to put that game away and they made more plays than us. That’s really what it comes down to.”

“You saw penetration in different places, sometimes it was an end coming inside, sometimes it was a backside linebacker, sometimes it was a three technique, but it was a variety of thing we weren’t doing well and not executing and picking up things they were doing.. We rushed 27 times for 47 yards and in a game where you had a lead, could you run the football there and adjust better and stay on blocks and finish and all the things that we coach and our guys have been better at throughout the season just didn’t happen tonight. We have to get back to work and fix that.”