Dave Doeren & CJ Bailey’s Postgame Press Conference After the Military Bowl: TRANSCRIPT

NC State Head Coach Dave Doeren and Wolfpack Quarterback CJ Bailey met with the media for their postgame press conference after the Military Bowl. You can read the transcript BELOW.

Congratulations to ECU on the win, they earned it. And I’d also like to apologize for our football team for how that ended. I’m embarrassed as a coach, and I know our players are too.

It’s not how people in this program, players in this program, staff in this program want anything to do with something like that. To me, it’s a terrible response to something that happened to one of our players, and there’s no excuses for it. And so I apologize to ECU and their team for the way we responded.

As far as the game goes, there was a lot of plays in this game. I was proud of how we fought back, got back into the football game, flipped the momentum, took the lead, and then just didn’t finish. Had two drives offensively where we could have ran the clock out, didn’t.

Defensively, had them third and 10 on the 21, give up a 79-yard touchdown in. And so we had our chances to win that football game and didn’t get it done.

One, was Hollywood (Smothers) hurt coming out of halftime? And my second question is, in the third and fourth quarter, what do you think your guys did better?

He was not hurt, so I’m not sure why you thought he was. We started stopping people, man. In the first half, they were seven of eight on third down.

So we got some stops, we forced two turnovers. Offensively, we took advantage of field position, scored multiple touchdowns, and started playing complimentary football. In the first half, we had drives that ended without points several times, moved the ball well throughout the first half, did nothing to stop them.

They were seven of eight, like I said, on third down. They rushed for 300 and some yards. Hard to win a football game when yougive up 300 yards rushing.

A couple of big interceptions by Tamarcus Cooley. Do you question the play calling after those drives on offense after those interceptions?

I mean, sure, we didn’t get first downs, so yeah, you can question that. You can question blocking, too, right? Every play you call, if you block it well, is a good play.

And so those plays did not get enough yards, we didn’t get first downs. And the easy thing to do is blame the play caller, right? There’s 11 guys on the field that need to block, and run, and catch, and all those things, too. And so it’s everybody’s fault when it doesn’t get done.

Always, always look at, could we have called a better play? And of course, when you don’t get a first down, it’s easy to point the finger at that guy. But there’s a lot of things we could have done, that’s just one of them.

What allowed them to get going on the ground?

Missed tackles, guys not getting off blocks.

Got caught in a couple right defenses as well, third and ten, they’re down. That was a good play call by them, right? They’re down one, third and ten, you’re thinking they’re going to throw the football. And he was in a pass blitz, and they split it, and we didn’t get it down.

So that was a good call by ECU. But we also had enough guys there, and the back made a guy miss. But stoping the run’s about a lot of things, it’s gap integrity, it’s beating blocks, it’s leveraging the ball, it’s tackling, and it’s pursuit.

And there’s a lot of those things that weren’t good enough in this game.

Either one of you can answer, but coming into the game, you were one of the best fourth quarter teams in the nation.. When you see the score 20-7, what do you say to your team? What is the mindset of your team?

That’s exactly what I said to them. CJ was in the huddle, we were down there in a TV timeout. I said, you’re the best fourth quarter team in college football, let’s go win.

We did, we went down and scored, defense stopped them, went down and scored. Took the lead, three minutes and 40 seconds left, and had a chance to get a first down, make them burn their timeouts. And we didn’t get it done, defense didn’t stop them.

We’ve been a good finishing team all year, and that was the theme of this whole bowl, was finish, finish, finish, finish. And we got right there, three and a half minutes away, not enough. In offense, we’ve got the ball, and we’re driving it down with a chance to score, and it’s tough.

Hollywood had a hell of a football game, the ball goes through his hands, and that kid makes that play 99 times out of 100, and he didn’t.

Can you talk a little bit about the trip this week, and what stood out to you, and going through the game today, and just the atmosphere in the stadium?

Yeah, just my (CJ Bailey) first bowl game, I had a fun trip, a lot of things was great. I enjoyed myself, built a better bond, got closer to my team this week.

And it was a pretty fun experience, and it’s not fun when you don’t finish what we came up to do, and we didn’t do it, we didn’t finish it. So I’ll say that if we finished the game, it would have been a better experience.

For both of you, how long do you feel like you’re kind of going to ruminate on this before you flip the page and say, okay, let’s get started for next season, and how do you do that?

(CJ) Well, it’s over now, so we’ve already flipped the page.

We’ve already flipped that mindset, so let’s go get ready for next year. We’ve got a lot of things to work on in the offseason, and everything is in the past now, a couple, 30 minutes ago. So it doesn’t matter, we’ve flipped the page.

Dave, it’s no secret, this has been a bit of a rough season for this team. As you kind of go into the offseason, you have time to reflect on this year. What will you take away, and what will you hopefully try to build on in the future?

Five one possession losses, we had five like that.

I mean, down to the last minute and a half, gut-wrenching, and it’s hard when you lose a game like that five times. And we also had some one possession wins that were incredible. Our last game of the year was one of them.

And so we played a lot of young guys, this being one of them. We had a lot of growing to do, and that’s what this offseason’s going to be about. It’s going to be about learning how to finish and put ourselves in position to win those one possession games.

Ten win seasons, which is what we’re talking about, like five of them. Those five go the other way, it’s 11 wins. You’ve got to win one possession games.

I mean, look at the Kansas City Chiefs right now, I think they’ve won 12 of them. You want to be a great team, you’ve got to win those games. And we’re not good enough to do that right now, we’re not.

And it’s been both sides of the football. It hadn’t been offense, defense, both sides have had chances to close out games. And so we’ve got to work really hard as a coaching staff, at putting our guys in great positions to finish, coaching them well.

And they’ve got to train hard, and they’ve got to go make plays for us. But yeah, I mean, that’s what this season was about. It was about some gut-wrenching moments, and went through a lot.

And we go back to Grayson’s (McCall) injury and all the stuff that happened from that. CJ’s emergence as a starter and a leader of our football team, and he’s got a great future here. And I’m excited to be his coach, I really am, and I’m very proud of him.

I know he’s going to take this loss hard, because that’s how he’s wired. There’s a lot of good young players. Noah Rodgers, and Hollywood, some others.

These guys are young, they’re redshirt freshmen, making plays. And so there’s a lot to build on. I look forward to doing that with them too.

Coach, with the offense stalling out early, especially in that first half, what do you think you guys could have done better offensively to close drives?

We had some penalties that hurt us. There were some positive plays that were called back and created second and extra longs and got us off schedule. So that’s the first thing that comes to mind, we had two critical holding penalties after positive plays.

But other than that, I thought we ran the ball really well in the first half, threw the ball around and caught it.

Dave, how do you guys start next season against East Carolina? What do you have to do to regroup and get ready for that game?

Yeah, I mean, we’ve got time to think about that. I mean, tonight’s more about these guys and things we’ve got to do.

We come back in January, we’ll start forward. And we’re going to be talking about the first game for a while. We’ve got a lot of things to work on, and playing them’s not one of them.

A lot of things.

This season’s been tough, but what do you take away from playing in the military bowl for yourself? Did you ever think about a military career? Did you have family that served? Just what does it mean to be in this Military Bowl?

It’s special to be in Annapolis. You look up on that ring of honor and see all the wars.

And most of the places you go, they have famous players’ names and Pearl Harbor, and you just look out there and you see it. It’s pretty crazy being on a naval base at a place like this. My father was in the Navy, but my father-in-law was in the Army, served in Vietnam.

So the military has a very special place in my heart. And yeah, it’s great to be here. It is a wonderful trip, the bowl committee and everybody here.

Washington D.C. is a special place, being in the nation’s capital with these guys, letting them see the monuments. There’s a lot of history here. There’s a lot of really, really incredible things to be a part of with the team.