Dave Doeren After Virginia Tech: BULLETED

NC State head coach Dave Doeren spoke with the media after the Wolfpack fell to Virginia Tech 45-24 tonight. Below is a BULLETED breakdown of what he had to say.

• VT deserves a lot of credit.
  • Most physical team tonight.
  • Outplayed us.
  • Out-coached us.
  • A lot to learn from this film and a lot of work to do.
• Didn’t expect it.
  • Really excited where we came out last week.
• We missed having some guys on defense tonight from a health stand point.
• Guys continued to play hard, but didn’t do enough to put us in a place to win.
• Give up 314 yards rushing and turn the ball over twice.
• Took too long to get started offensively, with 80-some yards in the 1st half.
  • Defense didn’t start the way we expected them to.
• It’s a loss. Not the end of the season.

Khalid Martin Injury…

• He was communicating with us.
• Was moving his fingers and toes.
• He had a lot of pain.
• Told us to go finish the game.

On when he started thinking about the QB change…

• Didn’t talk about it at halftime.
• Thought we could regroup and get some things going.
• After the 2nd interception we said ‘give him another series and see how he responds.’
  • He went 3-and-out on that drive, and we thought we needed a spark.
• Devin led us on 2 scoring drives and did some good things, and also did some things he needs to learn from.

Defensive Starters Injured…

• Not having Payton Wilson, Tanner Ingle and Teshaun Smith hurts.
• Rakeim Ashford came in and started for Tanner, and he got hurt.
  • Then Khalid Martin came in and he got hurt.
• Have some deficiencies on the defensive side of the ball right now, and a lot of them are on the weakside of the defense.
  • It was evident.
• Last week Drake Thomas was playing SAM linebacker, and tonight he had to play WILL because Payton was out.
• Tanner and Payton are both hitters and physical, and this was their type of game.

VT Offensively…

• We didn’t know what we were going to get.
• QB Hendon Hooker was listed as the starter on the Depth Chart.
  • Prepared for what he did.
• Then we had to adjust to what this was going to be.
• They had some new schemes.
• We didn’t do a good job getting off blocks and tackling.
• Thought we set the edges better than we did a week ago.
  • More of the problems were internal.

Adjusting to stop the run game…

• Took our middle safety and added him into the run game.
• In the 2nd quarter we slowed them down and did some good things.
• Offensively we couldn’t get anything going, and the D was out there a lot.