NC State Head Coach Dave Doeren met with the media for his postgame press conference after the Wolfpack lost 19-29 to Duke this afternoon. You can watch it ABOVE, and read the transcript BELOW.
Congratulations to Duke on the win. It was a hard fought defensive game by both teams.
When you look at the statistics, they were 0-9 on third down. I think the game came down to us kicking field goals and them scoring a couple more touchdowns than us. We gave them a short field with a turnover in the red zone, which really hurt.
Defensively, we played good enough in that game for us to win. We just didn’t connect offensively enough. I heard CJ (Bailey) talking.
He threw some good balls that were dropped. He threw behind a couple guys. He threw high too, and we got to make some play calls in certain situations to help.
But collectively, it’s not good enough. It’s a we, us and ours business. There isn’t any blame other than everybody.
It starts with me. Disappointing more than anything just for our seniors. Like I’ve said, I take it really personal to send them out with a win.
I thought we prepared well and didn’t get it done. Duke has a good defense. Statistically, they’ve been really good all year.
They showed that today. They made it hard on us offensively. We just weren’t able to capitalize when we got the ball across the 20.
Every time we got down there, we didn’t get touchdowns but once.
You mentioned the struggles in the red zone. We asked CJ Bailey about it a little bit, but I wanted to ask you as well. What did you see from Duke that led to those struggles in the redzone?
Different drives. They zero blitzed us in one drive three straight times, we didn’t manage it.
Didn’t do a good job. We had a good play call in one. One of the receivers slipped.
Dacari (Collins) came out one-on-one on the guy. We thought we went there and he slipped. Other than that, they covered us.
They rushed us. They stopped the run. We didn’t get it done.
We got outplayed in that area of the field and there’s nothing magic about it. It’s tight windows and they made more plays down there than us. We didn’t finish drives in that area of the field.
We were able to get down there quite a bit, but you got to finish. It’s not about being 100% scoring if they’re all field goals. You got to get some touchdowns and it’s execution more than anything.
It’s not one thing. There’s multiple things that happened. There are a few missed passes by Bailey tonight, but a lot of drops, especially in the second half.
What is your assessment of that impact on the offense as well?
We talk about being efficient. What I mean by that is on first down, you get four yards or more, whatever the down and distance is. On second down, you get half of it and get yourself into manageable third downs.
Then you operate on third down over 60%. When you hit a guy wide open on a slant or a square in on first down, it’s going to be second and three and it’s dropped. It’s now 2nd and 10.
Those kind of plays are impactful. They are no different than when you have a 30-yard run and there’s a holding penalty. Those are impactful plays that hurt your offense.
I thought we had gotten past that kind of stuff. We’ve caught the ball well all year. This hasn’t been an issue.
We’ve had really good stretch and catch plays by receivers and tight ends and backs. It’s frustrating that it happened tonight because that hasn’t been something we’ve done this year. I thought our guys throughout the season have really caught the football well, but that wasn’t the case tonight.
Earlier this season, you talked about shortening the season into a five-game stretch and that’s how you recalibrated the team’s expectations. Going into another bye week here, what’s the key to focusing on these last two games and recalibrating expectations again?
Yeah, I said this in the locker room.
We have two games left. We have a short bye because we play on Thursday the following week, go down to Georgia Tech and then come home and play a rival. We have two opportunities to finish and that’s what they’re going to remember is how they finish.
We need to do a great job one at a time. Obviously, it starts with the corrections from this game, getting the guys back in the right frame of mind and getting back to work.
You’ve talked about finishing in the redzone previously this year. How do you guys try to go about fixing that instead of just settling for field goals when you have to do that?
Yeah, if I had the answer for you right now, I’d give it to you, but I need to look at it. I thought we had corrected that coming out of the last bye.
We were much better, but today we were really bad down there. We get in the film room with the staff and see what’s happening, how we’re getting attacked and what the shortcomings are. It’s been a lot better, obviously, than it was tonight.
It’s not as bad as it can get because there’s other games this year where we’ve turned the ball over down there multiple times. We got points, but you need touchdowns to win a game like that.
From your perspective, what have teams done this year to limit KC Concepcion?
It’s been double teams.
It’s been re-routes with the man over the top. At times tonight, it wasn’t. It was just they put their best DB on him, and sometimes he covered him really well.
Sometimes he didn’t. At times, we threw the football to him. He had two drops, but most teams have leaned to safety his way, which is smart.
Because of that, you’ve seen us be able to get the ball to other guys. Justin Joly has been a benefactor of that. Some of the outside receivers have been a benefactor of that.
If you watch their game plan in the second half in particular, they took their corner that was playing on the outside in the first half and put him on him the entire second half when they were playing man to man with the safety over the top. It’s hard when that’s going to happen. It’s really an outside-inside look.
In zone defense, you have an underneath player with a zone player over the top. There’s a lot more tension on him. Last year, coming out of the bye, it became the show.
People weren’t as in tune. They had the whole offseason to listen to how good a player he is. Obviously, they’re paying attention.
They’re doing a good job. They’re defending him well. That’s why we’ve had to spread the ball around.
And it’s about players making plays. That’s how you win games. Bottom line is, we didn’t make enough of them.
Duke was held to 0 for 9 on third down. They barely averaged a yard per carry in the running game. You won the turnover battle, time to possession, but ultimately still come away, unfortunately, with a double-digit loss. What else do you think, aside from the redzone stuff, sticks out to you to where you want to really key in and improve in order for you guys to reach that bowl-eligible status in these next two games?
Drops and penalties. We had 8 penalties, and I don’t have the number here. It’s not on the stats, but drops and penalties would be the other two things.