WATCH: NC State OC Kurt Roper Talks with the Media During the 1st Week of 2025 Spring Practice (with Transcript)

Kurt Roper is entering his first Spring as NC State’s Offensive Coordinator. He met with the media yesterday to give an update during the 1st week of the Wolfpack’s 2025 Spring practice.

You can watch the video above, and read the transcript below.

How’s the first couple days of practice going?

You know, it’s good. It’s obviously a learning process for these guys, but they’re trying to play fast.

They’re trying to play with a sense of urgency and trying to get fundamentally better every day. So it’s a good start. It’s two days, but it’s a good start.

How much does the terminology language change, or is it pretty much the same?

There’s a lot of terminology change. Obviously, we kept it the same where we could keep it the same, so you’re not having to relearn something that is not important. Some of it is I need to be able to adjust my system to some of this terminology just to make the transition a little bit easier, but there is still quite a bit of change.

CJ (Bailey) talked Tuesday about how excited he was to see you promoted and just how much you’ve done for his growth. What does it mean to know that he speaks so highly of you?

Well, I’m fortunate to coach him. He’s a great young man, first, and then obviously, he’s a really talented young man. He’s just a fun guy to be around.

He brings a lot of positive energy every day. He’s always got a smile on his face, maybe not necessarily at 6:30 in the morning all the time, but by the time we get to the field, he’s got a lot of positive energy. I’ve always said, you watch back through the years, good coaches are products of really good players.

So he gives us a chance to be a good football team.

Change kind of pushes people. So we’ve got you on offense and DJ (Eliot) on defense. Do you feel kind of a tangible energy that comes with that?

Well, yes.

I think the biggest thing is there’s learning. They have to spend time in their books and figure out how to go out and function at a high level on a practice field with a new system. So those guys are challenged. New creates growth at times, so we’ve been good around here a lot in football, but sometimes change is a positive thing.

You’ll have your, whoever it is, third center in three years. How vocal is that position, and how would you like to see that position get settled?

I think we’ve got to spend time finding that out this spring, and we’ve got several guys that are going to rotate in through that.

It’s huge. It starts with the snap, right? Last year, we all maybe got a little complacent in how good Zeke (Correll) was at really snapping the football.

We asked centers to do a lot more than we did when I first started 30 years ago. We’re asking them to gun snap and hit us right in the same spot in the chest and come off on a 300 pounder as fast as they can.

There’s nothing easy about that. So it starts with the snap and then the guy’s got to understand the system, get everybody on the same page and create a cohesive unit. We’re looking forward to watching that battle.

Last year, there was a lot of new when it comes to the players. This year, obviously the scheme is different, but have a lot of the same faces back with CJ, Justin (Joly), Hollywood (Smohters), people like that. Noah (Rogers), obviously. How much does that continuity help when you’re implementing a new system?

Experience is the best teacher for all of us. Even though we might be saying something a little bit different, they can correlate it to what they’ve done in the past. We’ve all been around together for a year.

So our ability to communicate with each other is quicker, and because the guys have played a lot of football, that makes a difference.

You know, it’s similar to the 2019 to the 2020 change.

When you looked at ’19 offensively, we were a lot of young, young guys, new players playing, and then in ’20, we were obviously a year better with the experience. So I guess the experience is the best teacher.

I know there’s some secrecy involved with closed practices and no spring game, but what can you share about what you expect the offense to look like?

That’s a good question. Obviously I’ve said, I think we’ve got to have the ability to function faster at the line of scrimmage. I think we’ve been pretty good coming out of a huddle.

I think we’re good at that as a team. We understand how to do that. We’ve got to be able to change the pace of play, if that makes sense.

So we’ve got to be able to go fast, maybe mix in some huddle, mix in some sugar huddle, as I’ve said. But beyond that, we got to find the best 11 players to put on the field.

What was it like for you last year to be able to see Hollywood grow throughout the year, and by the end of the year, it seemed to be clear?

It was actually fun recruiting, and I still remember the the first time I saw him play in person and I didn’t know much about him. I saw his tape, but Joker (Phillips) and I went down and watched him play a game when he was a Junior, and I came away from there really realizing how much more physical he was as a football player.

The speed and the ability to score from a long way away jumped out at you, but you found out how tough he was and how physical he was as a football player. I think he’s just going to keep getting better as he works in the weight room, works in the off season and understands our system.

How unique is that relationship with you being kind of his lead recruiter early on before moving over to the quarterback side of things and now being the offensive coordinator?

We’ve known each other a long time.

I give him a hard time because he told me no the first time. It’s kind of like my wife. It took me a long time to get her to say yes, but eventually we made ourselves that way. I think him going off and starting somewhere else and starting here, I think he really embraces being close to home and realizes how awesome this opportunity is for him and we’re obviously excited and fortunate to have him as a guy on our team.

You’ve been in the booth, you’ve been on the field. What are the perks of both?

I’ve called it always in the booth and you just see so much better. You can see the alignments, you see shades of corners and linebackers. So I think maybe my mind processes the information better and I can maybe put together a plan as I’m seeing it rather than waiting after a series and looking at the iPad and adjusting from that point.

It’s good in this sense that it’s very quiet and calm in the box and on the field it’s not that. So it’s good in that sense that it’s quiet and you can think, but you don’t feel the emotions of the game down there. You don’t feel the energy of the game.

So sometimes that’s important to feel that.

What’s it like having Zac (Roper) on staff (Special Teams Quality Control)?

Oh yeah, I mean, it’s my brother. It’s fortunate to have him around and all that, but we grew up the same in the sense when we started coaching. Cut (David Cutcliffe) is really both our mentors, so we think alike. So when you’re trying to make adjustments during the game, just having his insight is gonna be important.

I feel like last year, a lot of the problems came from just trying to get the offensive line rolling. How are you already starting to kind of solve that problem?

I think always on the focus. If you want to be good up front with five guys as a cohesive unit, you have to ask them to do the same things repetitively over and over and over again. You have to get good at that, because things are going to multiply really quickly on the offensive line with the defense, whether it’s a front change, a pressure change, those type things.

So if you put too much on their plate to say that you’re going to function at a high level when the defense is added to that becomes more challenging. So I think the biggest focus for us is, let’s find out what we’re good at and do it over and over.