NC State head coach Dave Doeren met with the media today for his Early Signing Day Press Conference. You can watch it here, or check out the transcript below.

Excited you know for this group, as you know there’s a lot of moving targets still with the way things have changed in the recruiting world, but you know before I get into any of the details of the class just like to say thank you to everybody that was a part of it…our staff, their coaches, our graduate assistants, our analysts, quality control, Coach Ruff, you name it, there’s so many people…our recruiting staff, our OP staff, our strength staff with Thunder and his crew, Natalie and our nutrition staff, Justin and Sports Med and his his staff and trainers, the academics and Ashley and Alicia and Jimmy…you name it facilities or Administration…it takes everybody to get this thing going, Coach Trevathan and what he does…then on the external part…our fans and our alumni that support our program that help with our recruiting efforts, the game day environment, the attendance, the passion…it all comes together.

It’s a long process. Some of these guys you recruit longer than others, some of them have brothers in the program, some of them were just recently found, but it’s a long tedious detailed experience where you’re showing a young man and his family and his coaches and everyone involved, everything you can about your program and and why it’s the right fit and I think fit is so important.

Our players, the way that they are in recruiting, and how they host and talk about the program, and help out the families that are there.

It all comes together and creates a Pack23 class and it’s an incredibly talented group of young men, and we’re excited to have the honor to help them, and coach them, and develop them into the best versions of themselves and there’s 10 total from the state of North Carolina, 7 scholarship players and 3 preferred Walk-Ons. Three from Florida, 2 from Georgia, 1 from South Carolina, 2 from Alabama, 1 from Mississippi and 1 from Maryland

Just about every position group was was touched in this. When you look at the guys in general, 6 of them are in All-Star games, 12 of them were team captains you…all-state selection, conference Player of the Year in Isaiah Shirley

14 of the 15 young men’s high schools were in the playoffs so they’re coming from winning programs and 9 of these guys are multi-sport athletes, so it’s a really good group.

We met a lot of our needs. There’s guys that I can’t talk about yet that are part of this class as well, just because of the signing rules and how all that goes into guys that are coming as transfers, so I won’t be able to comment on them. You guys see who’s coming, so you can make your stories out of that until I’m allowed to comment

Excited to get these guys here. A lot of them are mid-year…we’ll probably have 16 to 18 mid-year guys, so you’ll get to see these guys pretty soon

The last 3 years it’s really changed [recruiting]. The transfer piece has changed things with your own roster for sure, and then the windows to transfer have changed. We’ve always been able to transfer. As you know it used to be he’d sit a year and guys could leave whenever and then the portal opens with immediate eligibility and that was a 12-year window and then this year we have these two 6 week windows, so it’s a moving thing, it’s an evolving thing. We are learning how to live within this world as we go. I’m sure we’re failing, some succeeding, and we’ll get better as we go through it. I think for the players too, I think the the sad piece in all this right now, we’ll see how it plays out, it’s just the number of young men that have left teams that are going to have nowhere to go and there’s a lot more guys out there than there are places for him to land and I don’t know how that works and how many guys end up not graduating, because when you transfer you lose credits, and it’s sad. I hope that it works out. I really do. The biggest thing that we’ve seen too in this change, is the 3rd parties that are tampering with kids and trying to get kids to leave programs that are not supposed to be doing that and a lot of them don’t work for these universities. They’re people that are trying to make money off of kids and are not professionals. They are not coaches. They’re trying to get kids to leave programs and sign with them as a supposed NIL agent and and take a cut…sad. I hope the NCAA can get their arms around this thing from a recruiting standpoint. It’s not healthy at all. I don’t mean to be on my soapbox about that, but you asked the question. It used to be in recruiting, you built relationships, you got to know families and kids and you really poured your heart out to him about the school you showed him everybody in the program, you got them with professors. They figured out whether it was the right major. They looked at the depth charts. They would come to a practice, come to games and then they’d figure out if it is a great place for them. It’s just not the same in all cases anymore, so we’re learning how to evolve with the times and and that’s the key. It’s just continuing to evolve and not being stuck in our ways, even though we liked the old way better, it doesn’t matter. What matters is we still do the best we can to get the right guys here that fit the culture of our University and our program that are going to be great additions.

We’re super excited about this group of guys and there’s a bunch of guys that are going to help us, and some of them, because of how many players we’re losing, will have a chance to play early. You can never really predict that.

There’s a lot of talented young men in this class…a lot of leaders in this class…a lot of winners in this class.

There’s a lot of length on the line of scrimmage. It’s hard to get 6’6″ guys. We were able to get several 6’6″ guys for the O-line in this class. that’s going to help us immensely down the road.

We kind of felt like, with the transfer portal and all the attention to 4-year transfers, that the Junior College was neglected a little bit. We feel like we were able to find some really good players there hat normally would have had more traffic in our opinion, so that was a good job by our coaches doing their homework and finding guys that were fits and meat areas that we had where we weren’t having the same luck maybe in high school or the portal world, we found a couple guys that really fit us from the Junior College. I’m glad we were able to do that. I look forward to Jykeveous Hibbler and Terrente Hinton getting here.

I don’t know if I’ll ever have a class that big, because of Covid, that’s why the class was so big [this years Senior class]. I mean the Super Senior effect allowing so many kids to come back that really never would have been able to do that without the extra year from the covid legislation. I think that class size has more to do with that than it does than anything, but I think you’re right. I think recruiting classes in general like when you bring in whatever it is, 15 guys or 25 guys, how many are you going to really have four to five years later. With all of the different ways guys can leave your program now, the attrition outflow from college football programs has increased quite a bit. It used to be a lot different and so I guess we’ll just have to see what time tells on that, and see how it plays out.

I don’t want to speculate [how much 3rd parties inducing players with NIL opportunities effected this class]. I know it was at play with several guys down the stretch. It’s pretty crazy what’s going on right now and and there’s no way to know what’s real and what isn’t. A lot of this stuff is what you hear, or what someone tells you. You don’t always have proof. Some of it could be exaggerated, but it’s not exaggerated that there’s people out there that are calling young people and their parents and promising things at other schools if they’ll leave or decommit. That’s happening, and it’s happening too much, at an alarming rate. I’m sure Mac and other coaches if you polled out there, you’d probably find every single one. I saw the head coach at UTSA put out a tweet about basically when is the NCAA going to stop this, basically pleading for the NCAA to help, because how many kids on his own team were getting poached illegally. So that’s going on at every level and
it’s unfortunate, because that’s not what college sports is supposed to be about

Losing Isaiah Moore, and still have Drake Thomas and Payton Wilson making decisions, and either way, if they come back, they’re in their last years, but adding some guys [Linebackers] that could run with length. Same thing we did last year with a couple guys. In this defense speed is the key and if you look at those 2 outside linebackers in this class, they’re very fast. Both of them have played DB even, so you can see them playing in space. The middle linebacker we recruited hard, Rohan Davey, and he committed early to Cincinnati when we were supposed to have him down for a visit back in the Spring and it just didn’t happen. He committed to them and shut it down, and then when their staff changed, he opened things back up, so we were excited to get back in on Rohan. We feel like he’s a really good inside linebacker, and another guy that’s played Safety. So this three linebacker defense, you want to try to get 3 in every class if you can, and we’re a little bit under scholarships there. My philosophy has always been to have a 3-deep plus one in the room in case one guy’s hurt, you can keep your three-deep going, so that’s kind of from a number standpoint we’re a little bit under at linebacker, so this was a good time to get those three guys. If we do lose all three of the ones we have this year, it’s going to be critical from a developmental standpoint, because we do have some good players next in line that have been waiting their turn, but to have that youth behind them, to develop them with Coach Thunder, and get them ready.

Javonte Vereen is a hybrid guy. He’s a guy that can play the tight end position, but he can also play as a receiver, so he’s a mismatch guy that we can use similar to how we’ve used guys here in the past…Jaylen Samuels…Trent Penix, but he’s got length where he can be out there in a receiver position. He’s got great ball skills. Love his leadership too. The way that he’s wired and built upstairs in the mind. He’s a really competitive guy.

Kevin Concepcion, we’ve had him in Camp. He’s got great ball skills. Really good route runner. Competitive guy. Played for a really good high school program at Chambers. He’s just been up here a ton. He’s been a great guy to recruit and he’s a very very natural guy in the slot

Kendrick Raphael, another guy we recruited hard early. Came on an official back in the Spring when he had official visits. At the time, we thought we were going to get him then and he committed to Iowa, obviously a great place for running backs, and at some point in the season, felt like that was the wrong fit, so we were excited when he opened things back up. He always liked us. We always liked him. He’s a guy that comes from a very good program at Naples High. You can see his film. He’s a good runner for sure. Can make people miss, run people over. He’s got great acceleration and vision and balance, but the other thing you see with him is he’s a blocker, a very very physical blocker on film. He’s going to be a guy that can take on the blitzers that you get in this league, and sometimes running backs aren’t coached that way in high school, and he comes from an offense, an option offense where he’s putting his face on people a lot, so he loves his toughness. He’s a very versatile guy

We’ve known Lex Thomas forever. He’s a gym rat. He’s just an all-around athlete and every sport he’s in, he’s competitive. He’s a leader…people follow him. A guy that can really throw the football and has great accuracy, so we’re excited about Lex. He did a tremendous job in this class working with guys and getting guys to want to play with him.

As far as recruiting another quarterback, it just depends. I would love to have four on our roster on scholarship. That’s kind of where you want to be. Sometimes even five because of injuries. If you got three you’re traveling, one your red shirting, that’s kind of where you want to be programmatically, but you don’t take one to take one either. I think it’s got to be the right one and if we end up there, we end up there, but I think we’re always trying to get competitive in every room. That’s the one thing, I’ll tell you it doesn’t matter if it’s quarterback, running back, linebacker, the d-line, competition brings out the best in everybody, and if we didn’t learn anything this year playing four quarterbacks to win eight games, we better have some guys in there that are ready to play.

We’ll be up front and honest these guys. Coach Anae has been talking with them. Coach Roper’s been talking with them. They’ll know what we’re doing and if there ends up being somebody new, they’ll be a part of that conversation. That position has to compete like every every position, and we don’t have a returning starter here right now that’s an all-conference player, so at any position, we would have an open competition with who’s back. We’re excited for MJ Morris. We’re excited for Ben Finley. We’re excited for Lex Thomas. If we add a piecem we’ll be excited for that person coming in as well and I know Coach Anae feels the same way.

They’re all different conversations [helping a player working through possibly going pro]. Some guys are further along than others in their career and it always starts with how can they improve. If you feel like you’re working with someone that can gain a lot by returning, sometimes it’s not the physical, sometimes it’s mental, sometimes it’s graduation, you come back, you’re going to graduate. There’s a lot of things to talk about and sometimes there’s injuries involved you want to discuss and how that plays into the the whole conversation. Their draft grade is important, you know what the NFL is saying, what the scouts and the GMS are saying, and so you put everything on the table with them and at the end of the day tell these guys the same thing. I’m not in there to try to sway them to come back. I’m not. I’m in there to give them all the information I can get and help them make an educated decision with whoever they want to be involved in it. Whatever they decide, I’m going to support them even if I think it’s what I wouldn’t tell them to do. I care a lot about these young men. They play really hard for me and I want them to be happy at the end of their journey and I just want them to be educated before they make that choice.

Cory Durden’s playing in the bowl game. He’s our nose guard. you know so Corey’s. We can rotate guys in there. Obviously CJ Clark was played at nose throughout the season when we needed to, and he’s got reps in there for us. Nick Campbell we gave a ton of reps during the bowl prep and Nick’s done a great job. He’s gotten a ton better. Those are the 3 guys that you’ll see throughout the game and I don’t know what the rotation will be yet. We’re still not there, but that’s kind of where we’re at presently. For the future, we’ve got DJ Jackson that we’re redshirting right now and we’re excited about his future, and we’re continuing to recruit the position as well.

Brandon Cisse is a super positive guy man. I love his personality. Really athletic. Can cover. Has really good ball skills. Excellent returner…punt returner and kickoff returner. It’s hard to find Corners that run like he does with the ball skills that he has. We’re really happy that he’s coming in here. He’s got good length. Energetic and very positive. He was a good leader in this class. He was one of the guys, once he committed, that was a big part of some of these guys sticking together and coming here. Look forward to getting them here. He’s got a great personality. You guys will enjoy getting to know him

Daemon Fagan, you know from a great program in American heritage down in Plantation Florida. State runner-up this year. State champions before. The guys played a lot of football against a lot of really good players you. He’s very rangy. Long. Sees the field well. Good communication skills. Watching him in practice, he’s a leader. He gets guys lined up. He directs traffic. He can cover and he’s got a lot of range

Zach Myers is another guy that plays both ways. You love DB’s that play receiver, because of the ball skill aspect as one of the things here, trying to get more interceptions, which we did a great job of this year. Part of it’s teaching guys how to break on the ball and technique, but part of it too is just the ball skills. You’d be surprised how many guys don’t play both ways anymore and how catching the football doesn’t come natural to everybody. He’s a guy that can catch. He had offers to play both offense and defense. Great personality. Really good friends. Got to know him well through this process, because he’s close with Aydan White on our roster, and that relationship helped. Christ school has done a good job developing players. They have really done a good job lately, so looking forward to getting Zack here. He’s a guy that we feel like can play the Nickel, Strong or Free Safety. He’s got a lot of different skill sets as a DB.

I think the wingspan, athleticism, the length…all those things matter at the Tackle and Guard positions. When you’re talking about pass protection, staying between the quarterback and the line of scrimmage. Really fortunate, I mean it’s the tallest group of linemen we’ve ever gotten in one class. They’re tough guys. They’re awesome fits for us. Darion Rivers from West Charlotte, 6’6″, maybe 290 now, but a basketball player too…is on the state championship basketball team a year ago. Really enjoy him and his family. What he brings athletically, he’s going to be a guy that has to develop and get in the weight room, but he’s got that work ethic to do so, and we’re excited about that. Kamen Smith, another basketball player…tough guy. Dad’s a coach. Mom was a basketball player. Super athletic. Can play both tackles. Can play guard. Kamen does a lot of things that we like. He’s close friends with Isaiah Shirley. They had a great relationship throughout this thing. That was kind of cool to be a part of. Obi Obasuyi, Alpharetta (GA), transferred down there. Really a hard worker. Super athletic long, 6’6″, 295 probably now. A very intelligent young man as well. He’s going to come in here I think with 11 college classes that he’s already completed. Super impressive guy. and then the latest. Rico Jackson…6’6″…300ish maybe…285-ish. From Dillard High School, great program in Fort Lauderdale. I’ve had a couple guys from there when I was at other schools. Rico was here in the summer…came through…at that time we were full…loved him and he really liked it here. He committed to Illinois. As the season went on, he opened it up. For whatever reason, he felt like he wanted to see what else was out there, and I told him if we had a spot open up, we’d be calling him and it happened, and it’s just great that he was available when we had it, because I think he’s a great fit for us. Those four guys, they’re going to get along well. They’re a good group. That group will be awesome, and I know Coach Tujague is really excited about them.

I mean there’s a lot of things that were talked about [with Devin Leary]. It’s really not anything I want to put out there. I am blessed to be a part of the journey with him, and I really enjoyed my time with Devin. I think he was a great player on our team. He was a guy that I have so much respect for as a player. I wish him nothing but the best and same thing with his family. I really enjoyed his family the entire time here. Sometimes guys make decisions, whether you like it or not, it doesn’t matter. Wish him nothing but success