WATCH: NC State WR Coach Joker Phillips Breaks Down Young Talent, Dacari Collins, Grayson McCall & Doeren’s Culture

NC State Wide Receivers Coach Joker Phillips met with the media yesterday. He spoke about how young and talented the Wide Receiver room is, the growth of Dacari Collins, the culture Dave Doeren has built, and the impact of Grayson McCall.

You can watch the video ABOVE, and check out the transcript BELOW.

This is probably one of my most young talented groups. When I say young, I was looking the other day at the depth chart, and we color code our classes, and green is Freshman. There’s about 7 or 8 of them. Noah Rogers, he’s a Freshman. He hasn’t played college football before. That’s the thing I have to do. Get them to learn to play college football. It’s a lot different. A lot of adjustments. Speed of the game is different. But talented group. Real, real talented group.

I’m 61 years old. I’ve seen a lot. The younger you are, it’s hard to focus all the time. It has shown up some. We’ve just got to continue to stack days. We had a great day today, but that’s one in a row. Two days ago we didn’t have such a good day. We have to stack days.

In today’s world, it’s good to be 2nd sometimes. We were second with Wes (Wesley Grimes). 2nd with Noah (Rogers). Things didn’t work out, but we were able to get them back here. I think KC Concepcion helped a lot. The year he had. The number of plays. Every week I would put together a package for Lex, to show him the number of reps that KC would get, and the reps from all the other guys that were from the North Carolina area that went to other places. At one point, it was like 400 snaps to 10. I think that helped us. It was a 2 year process recruiting Keenan (Jackson) and Terrell (Anderson). 1 year process with Tank Boston and Christian Zachary. It all just came together, and a lot of it had to do with #10 and the production he had.

Very talented. There’s a lot of draft picks in there…talent wise. We have to get it mentally. Physically we have to take care of ourselves. This is as talented of a group as I’ve ever had, from top to bottom. I’ve had a couple of talented guys like this, but not this deep. It’s fun to be a part of. It’s fun to watch. I’ve pulled what hair I’ve had out a couple of times, because it’s challenging too. They don’t know what they don’t know. So, everything you tell them, you better be on point with it, because they will do what you tell them.

At this point last year, Dacari (Collins) was a guy that we had questions about. Whether or not he was going to fit our culture. Dacari bought in about half way through the season. If you remember, he had 4 false starts before Game 7. That’s a lot for a Wide Receiver. There was a lack of focus from him. Then after the break, we sat down, and he turned it around. He became a guy we got excited about. It took Game 7 for him to buy into our culture. Now he’s a huge part of it.

Life is good right now. I love working for Coach Doeren. He’s found the right way to do it in my opinion. We have family time. We have together time as a staff. I think that’s helped. And you wonder why the staff has been intact. We’ve lost 2 guys in the 4 years that I’ve been here. One got a head coaching job, and the other went back with a buddy of his. That’s the reasons guys don’t leave. He’s done an unbelievable job of building the culture. Not only the culture of the whole program, but it’s the staff camaraderie too. This is a place I really truly enjoy being at. You know Raleigh is a great town. That’s one of the things I’ve tried to explain. If you’ve lived here your whole life, like Wes and Noah, I was trying to tell them when they left, ‘You’ve guys got a great town. Why leave it?’ They found out when they went away. 

There’s a reason why the guy (Grayson McCall) has been a three-time player of the year. The guy just knows how to play football. Today he was amazing. He did a great job today. He’s a leader. He knows what he wants. He knows what the coaches want. He demands it from the guys. He’s brought the receivers, because they are young, he’s brought all those guys together, getting them on the same page, and it’s been amazing to watch.