Dave Doeren’s Postgame Press Conference After Pitt: BULLETED

Head Coach Dave Doeren spoke with the media in his Postgame Press Conference after NC State defeated #24 Pitt on the road today. You can watch it here, or check out a BULLETED breakdown below.

• That was a heck of a football game, and I’m super proud of our young men and our coaches.
• Talked about fighting and throwing the 1st punch, just continuing to throw punches, and to make sure we throw the last punch.
• Our guys were very resilient. They know it’s a long year. They know it’s a long year.
• Played a really good Pitt team today, a well-coached football team.
• We had a good plan.
  • Used our tempo well on offense, changing the cadence up and getting them to give us a lot of free 1st downs in the 1st half.
• Devin Leary really played a stellar game in his 1st start of the season.
  • Really proud of him and the way the wideouts & tight ends caught the football.
• The running backs took care of it on the road.
  • We said ‘no turnovers,’ and we were able to do that.
• Defensively, we hung in there.
  • Some good red-zone stops.
  • Good goal-line stand.
  • An unfortunate deal where we had a pick-6 called back.
    • I personally didn’t think that was a very good call, but the guys still stopped them on that drive.
  • They were resilient.
  • We are down in personnel right now, so those guys really had to suck it up on that side of the football.
• I think a lot of people just wanted to throw us in the trash can after last week.
  • That’s the world we are in right now.
  • These kids and coaches just hung together.
  • There’s a lot of football left.
  • We’ve got 8 more games.
  • We’ve embraced the chip on our shoulder, and we are going to continue to do that and try to make the most out of the players we have to coach and get ready for another great game next week at Virginia.

Long-term impact of this win…

• It’s huge for the character and confidence.
• It’s one thing to say ‘we can do it.’
• It’s one thing to believe, but it’s another to go do it.
• It’s a tremendous thing for your quarterback to know it doesn’t matter what’s on the clock, that he’ll drive us down and score to win.
  • It was a really good drive.
  • There were some good play calls by Tim Beck.
  • The kids executed well.
  • They managed the clock and the time.
  • The O-line protected against a really, really good defensive line.

Thin Secondary…

• Found out on Thursday that we wouldn’t have starting Nickel Tyler Baker-Williams because of contact tracing.
• Josh Pierre-Louis, a true freshman, started his first game at Nickel.
• Moved Taiyon Palmer during training camp from Corner to Nickel, and then last week had to move him back to Corner.
  • Didn’t take a rep of practice this week at Nickel.
  • So Josh Pierre-Louis goes out of the game, and we had to teach 2 linebackers how to play Nickel on Friday.
• When you take Chris Ingram, Teshaun Smith, Tyler Baker-Williams, Khalid Martin and Rakeim Ashford out it’s pretty crazy what we’re dealing with.
  • There’s 6 Defensive Back’s that are not playing that are in our 2-deep.
• We’re very thin.
  • It says a lot about the heart and toughness of that group.
  • They need a cold tub right now. That’s what they need.

Devin Leary…

• As hard as it was for him not to play in the Wake Forest game, I think it was the right thing for us to do coming out of the quarantine that he had.
  • It’s given him time to get back to where he needed to be, and he’s done a great job of taking coaching from Coach Beck.
• It was nice to see him with starting wideouts and starting offensive linemen and 3 rotational tailbacks and all the tight ends.
  • I think you got a good glimpse of what he is and what he could be.

Defense…

• There was a time there where offensively we weren’t getting a whole lot going.
  • We were out there a lot defensively in the 3rd quarter.
  • A lot of heart and toughness.
• Obviously we don’t want to bend but not break.
  • They got in some unbalance and we didn’t adjust well at times, and they had guys wide open because of that.
  • We’ve got stuff we’ve got to clean up, but when it counted they stood up.
  • They made some really key plays in some key moments, and they showed a lot of resiliency and toughness.

Stopping Pitt’s Rushing Attack…

• It’s a joint effort when you stop the run. It’s not one guy.
• Obviously having Alim in the middle helps.
• It always starts inside-out, but as you guys know we didn’t play well in the rushing defense the 1st week because of our edges and in the 2nd week for a myriad of reasons.
  • It was great to see them get that shored up in game 3.
• We tackled better.
  • Crisp, contact plays on defense, striking people.
  • It wasn’t just dragging people to the ground.
  • Fun to see some knock-back tackling.
• Guys are getting into game shape.
  • Hopefully, we’ll have enough guys to continue to play.
  • It was fun to watch them fly around there for a bit.

Emeka Emezie…

• It’s awesome for Emeka.
• He was struggling these past couple weeks because his role wasn’t too big yet.
  • Kept fighting, working and practicing.
• Coach McDonald does a good job with him.
• I was really happy for Emeka to make that play.
  • He’s earned it by continuing to work hard.
  • That was a big play for us on that drive, and obviously the 4th-down conversion with Thayer Thomas was huge, which led to the touchdown.
• Devin Leary was nails, man.
  • He did a great job of reading coverage and putting the ball where it needed to be.

O-Line…

• Obviously they took last game to heart…giving up 6 sacks.
• Worked really hard on our pass-rush fundamentals this week.
• Some things got exposed last week.
  • We have to take each week and try to get better.
• They saw what they were up against with Pitt’s D-line, and Coach Garrison had a great plan.
  • Tight Ends and Running Backs are part of that, too.
  • Then it’s just Devin throwing on time, not giving them too much time to get to him.

Leary’s calmness on the final drive…