WATCH: Dave Doeren’s Weekly Press Conference Before Louisiana Tech (with transcript)

Dave Doeren met with the media today heading into NC State’s upcoming game against Louisiana Tech this Saturday. You can watch the video ABOVE, and read the transcript BELOW.

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Always your favorite thing to do, come to one of these after you don’t play well. And so, yeah, we’ll start with recognizing 9/11 this week. And for those of us that were alive and remember that day, that was a tough week, you know, and the first responders who acted and served and suffered and so much was lost in that horrific, horrible act and that morning and the day of it.

And, you know, a lot of things in our country changed after that. And also, my father’s birthday passed two years ago. So, you know, a heavy week of reflection and remembrance.

And I want to recognize that in regard to our game with Tennessee. First, I want to thank our fan base. You guys were awesome.

You know, it was a great showing by our fans. It was an amazing atmosphere. Our team and leadership, staff appreciate your support and the Dukes Mayo leadership team did a tremendous job.

It was a great game day environment. And as far as the game, we didn’t get it done. You know, it was bottom line.

And the game plan was to possess the ball, keep their offense on the sideline, have long clock eating drives that ended with a kick, obviously, preferably with points. On defense, get off the field on third down, have success in that area and get takeaways, win the field position battle with special teams and create a four quarter game.

And, you know, 3:54 left in the half. It’s 10-3. We intercept the ball. Bishop Fitzgerald makes a great play, get the ball on our side of the 50, move the ball down to the 16 yard line and have a chance to tie the game before half.

And that play was a huge momentum swing. You know, the pick six by them. And we did a poor job responding after that play.

And from that point on, the game just snowballed. You got to give Tennessee credit where credit is due. They played better than we did, coached better than we did.

But our game plan was effective until that play. And so, so much to take from the game. You get in a game like that against a team that can score, you can’t put your defense on the field on that side of the 50 like we did the entire second half.

Too many turnovers, penalties, poor field position, special teams had a part in that as well and just were better than we showed. And that’s disappointing. At the same time, it’s a great opportunity for our team to grow and use it as an opportunity for that.

You know, it’s definitely a loss in the record books for sure. I was happy with how our team responded yesterday. I mean, you could feel their disappointment, staff’s disappointment, and at the same time, feel their openness for growth and improvement.

And so, you know, when you have a game like that, it’s a loss that you want to use to prevent further losses in the same manner. And there’s a ton of opportunity to do that. And when we win, we all win.

When we lose, we all lose. And there’s no finger pointing, blaming. Everybody’s at fault and it always starts with me.

And I look forward to the opportunity, you know, to grow and to come back and respond the appropriate way with resiliency and grit, which is something that we’ve always done. And the best way to do that is to get back to work. And the formula is us.

It’s improving in a lot of areas. And looking forward to fighting the adversity and overcoming the things that we need to overcome as a football team. It’s an early loss in the season.

There’s a lot to play, a lot of football in front of us, 10 games with all of our goals still intact. And I look forward to that. You know, our DNA has always been to continue to fight at this university and overcome things.

And we got a lot to focus on. Starts with a great week of practice, meetings, game planning, fundamentals, and getting things the way we need to get them before we start conference play. And we do that with Louisiana Tech.

You know, kind of an interesting game. It’s our third game. It’s only their second.

They had a bye week. So we only have one film from the 2024 season of their team. And they have a lot of new parts.

Eight new starters on defense that are transfers, hired a new defense coordinator that has done a good job. His career at getting the ball back on defense created a lot of takeaways in their system. It’s a 3-3-5 like ours, but very different in their alignments and a lot more zone defense.

And keep the ball in front, tackle well, create turnovers. Offensively, Coach Cumbie’s from the Air Raid Tree and spent a lot of time at Texas Tech. He’s a very, very good offensive coach.

They’ve got good personnel. I think the running back really jumps off the film, a good runner. And so we got to get back to playing our brand of football.

And I look forward to that. Our team did come out of the game healthy. And so, you know, we’ll have some growth in that way with when you’re playing the same guys over and over and over.

You can get better. That’s one thing we’re going to be able to do. So look forward to this week.

Evaluating Run Game vs. Tennessee

There’s a lot we have to improve on. You know, there’s too many plays in our backfield for one.

You know, we had 10 tackles in our backfield in the game. Some of them were runs. Some of them weren’t.

But, you know, it starts with being aggressive. And I think at times you try to be too perfect. You got to get your line, your tight ends, your running backs all in sync.

And there were some things that we did well. I thought our outside run game had some positive plays. Our inside run game, not so much.

And we knew Tennessee’s D-Tackles were going to be a handful. Those guys were really good players, too. That was part of it.

You know, we just didn’t stay on people long enough. There was too much penetration. And they did a lot of blitzing inside and mixed it up.

So I think it’s a combination of things. But it comes down to execution. And my history with running the football, you know, it starts with your guys, your five guys up front playing together and playing aggressive and getting vertical, you know, and we’re too lateral at times.

And some of that’s because of all the things we’re getting. But some of that’s just us trying to be perfect. And we just got to get back to the basics of the run game and look forward to seeing that happen.

Hollywood Smothers after 2 games

Yeah, you know, and we have three backs that we trust. And, you know, it’s like anything. He started to have some positive things happen on the field.

And so, you know, when that happens, you’re going to continue to see guys, you know, hot hand, I guess you would say. But, you know, he did some good things. He loves football.

He works really hard. He has good practice habits. You know, between Jordan (Waters) and him and Kendrick (Raphael), we feel like we have three backs that we can play.

Reaction from players and coaches over the past 48 hours

You know, what you always see after a game that you don’t play well in, you see a lot of guys upset. You see a lot of guys ready to get back to work. There’s lots of conversations about how we can do that.

This is a group that, you know, has some good leadership in it. This team has a lot of guys that understand what we need to do. And it’s not like we haven’t faced adversity before.

So, you know, it wasn’t a lot of panic in there. It was just, we know we’re better than that. Let’s look at the film.

Let’s see what we got to do better. And let’s get back to it.

Who have been some of the guys that have stepped up?

Yeah, you have returners, obviously, Davin Vann, Sean Brown, Devon Betty, all the guys speaking up on defense. You know, it’s good to hear Grayson (McCall), Jordan Waters, talk on offense and give their perspective. Our leadership council has a lot of strong leadership in it.

You know, and so some of it is vocal. Some of it is more intentional about what they do when they’re here. But there was a lot of guys that got up and talked about, you know, things they’ve been through, how to overcome adversity and sticking together more than anything, you know, because the way things are anymore, you’re only as good as your last game.

And so, you know, there’s a lot of overcoming the outside noise in college athletics. And so for them to understand that, stick together and get back to it.

Why was the execution not there against Tennessee?

Yeah, we did practice well. You know, we did. And here’s a couple of things, you know, we played a really good football team in Tennessee.

And so your margin for error is very small. And I’ve said this a million times, you know, football plays are designed for 11 guys to do things right. And there was just too many plays where that didn’t happen.

And we were in that game, you know, like I said, it’s 10-3 and we’re knocking on the door to make it a tie going in at the half. And it went the other direction. And when that happened, we got away from 11 man football.

You started seeing guys try to do more than they needed to do. And it wasn’t good enough, you know, and we’ve got to do a better job, obviously, of handling situations like that. And so it was a great learning experience for the team, not one that’s fun to go through at all.

But it wasn’t a result of us not practicing well, you know, I think in the heat of the moment, just some things didn’t go the way we wanted it to. And guys strained the wrong way. You know, sometimes you try to do too much instead of just doing what your coach to do within the system.

Thoughts on how Grayson McCall’s done so far, and challenge of bringing in a Transfer QB

Yeah, I mean, we’ve had a lot of quarterbacks transfer here and so we’ve dealt with this on multiple occasions.

One with Grayson, we feel great about Grayson, you know, and he’s a really good player. He’s a good leader. He’s hard on himself.

He was motivated to play better. He owns everything that he can do. And he’s devout about going about his business the right way, respecting his teammates, doing his job.

And so things didn’t go his way the other night. You know, there’s definitely plays he wishes he had back. We can protect better for him as well.

But I’m excited about Grayson McCall. He’s our guy and he’s going to rebound well. But I’ve been through this with Jacoby Brissett, been through this with Ryan Finley, been through this with a lot of transfer quarterbacks, you know, and Brennan (Armstrong) last year.

And sometimes it’s seamless. Sometimes it takes a while. And the thing that is different about college football more than ever is there’s a lot of new parts on these fields.

And, you know, I think the guys from a chemistry standpoint off the field are really good. You’re still trying to get that chemistry on the field in games, you know, and you can practice, practice, practice, practice. It’s still not the game.

It’s not. And the things that happen, you know, with the crowd noise, with the officiating and all the things that happen. Game days are different.

And so these guys are going to continue to grow and get better. And I think one thing we’ve done over time that people know, we’re going to improve. This season goes on and we’ve got a lot of new guys on that football field, you know, and so they’ve got to all do their part.

Getting new faces to mesh well together when things don’t go well early in the season

You just have to have communication. You know, you have to have open meetings with guys.

You got to talk to your players. You know, I know these guys off the field, like we’ve done a lot with that. But like I said, I’ve only coached them in two games, you know, and so you’re learning some of the things about them on game day.

There’s a lot of training that existed previously with other places they’ve been. And some of that was really good and some of that doesn’t fit here, you know, and so you’re having to change some of those things. But it’s a growing process.

It’s one I enjoy, you know, enjoy helping these guys. But it is different, you know, I mean, having that many new people it’s different. And so you just have to be open to it being different.

And it’s not just an iron fist, like there’s got to be communication. There’s got to be understanding on both sides.

Illegal formation penalties on Anthony Belton

Yeah, he was in the backfield. You know, I mean, as an offensive lineman, you’ve got to have your helmet at least break the plane of the center’s belt in his stance.

And he was in a proper stance. He adjusted his stance three different times. And each time he backed up a little bit.

So he’s got to correct that. He knows that. And he will.

Ja’Had Carter’s performance

Yeah, it was good to see him out there. You know, he gave up one down the field throw, one that I know he’d like to have back.

And other than that, I thought he played pretty good. You know, he was in the right places. He shows his contact skills.

He gets off blocks. He plays fast. He’s a good communicator.

And so it was great to get him out there. And I know he’ll only get better with reps.