Dave Doeren’s Weekly Press Conference Before NC State vs. UVA: TRANSCRIPT

NC State Head Coach Dave Doeren met with the media today for his weekly press conference before the Wolfpack play UVA this Saturday at Noon. You can read the transcript below.

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Recapping the win over ECU. Excited to be 1-0, obviously, and with a lot of the things that happened in the game.

There’s a lot of positives. Also, as always, a lot of things you want to be better at. Loved how we started. Four straight three-and-outs on defense. Offense moving the football. Playing really efficient, running the ball well, catching, throwing. Got out to a good lead.

Derailed drives on offense, and I’ll get into that, but one of the areas we put a lot of emphasis on, from last year to this year, was starting fast. With a lot of new parts, particularly on defense, I was excited to see what we’d look like.

Thought the guys really did a good job executing early in the game. First drive, ate a lot of clock, got points. I think we were 12 to 3 in time of possession in the first quarter. Really had to put ourselves in a good position, building a 17-point lead.

Disappointing that we let them back in the game. Got in the red zone on two drives where we had penalties that were on us. One was a late hit. Teague’s (Andersen) trying to be physical, and hits a guy after the Quarterback was tackled, and backs us up into a long yardage situation. A holding penalty on a Tight End on a really good counter play.

Both of those penalties in the red zone ended up being drive killers. Then missed two field goals that are makeable kicks.

A lot of things we can correct. That’s the good part. Areas we’re going to spend a lot of time focusing on. That’s the beauty of playing a game. It’s a truth teller. You find out where you’re at, the good and the bad.

This week is about that. It’s about identifying areas per player, per unit, that we want to really improve between this week and next week with our game. One of those, obviously, is finishing. Getting a lead and being able to finish somebody. Not that we didn’t finish. The defense did a tremendous job with a 4th down stop.

That 2nd and 3rd quarter window, where we could have played better to put ourselves in a better situation to close the game. There’s a lot of reasons for it. It’s not one thing. It’s a few focus things with penalties, and some young guys playing in the game.

I like how our coaches work together. I thought the players were awesome, very coachable on the sideline, took corrections, made adjustments.

Offensively, I thought CJ (Bailey) played at a high level, was really accurate down the field, made plays on his feet.

The skill guys caught the ball well. Wesley (Grimes) and Teddy (Hoffmann) obviously had explosive games for us.

I thought Justin Joly played really good without the football. He made some catches, moved the chains for us on a couple runs after the catch. Terrell (Anderson), Noah (Rogers) and Keenan (Jackson) all played really hard.

Our pass protection was solid. We gave up one sack, and it was on a play that CJ tried to extend. If he would have taken his check down, we would have prevented that from ever happening. To only give up one sack against a team that pressures a ton, it was good.

Our Tight Ends in general, I think that room is as good as it’s been. It’s versatile. Justin can do a lot of things, obviously, in the pass game, but he’s improved himself immensely as a blocker. Cody Hardy and Dante (Daniels) both were physical in the run game.

Both our Offensive Tackles, Jacarrius Peak and Teague Andersen, had good games.  Jalen Grant was very consistent inside at Center, and was physical. It was good to see him play physical. He had five pancakes in the game. Anthony Carter was very consistent. We rotated guys at Right Guard with Kamen Smith and Spike Sowells, and both will get better. Two young players that did some good things, and did some things they’ve got to get better at.

Overall, I thought our backs ran really hard. First of all, they took care of the ball. They made plays. There were some plays where there was a lot of penetration, where they just got us back to the line of scrimmage. Hollywood is an explosive player, and he was very close to popping on a couple of them, and just didn’t have that big breakout run, but I thought he played really well. It was good to see Duke Scott in his first action. We had too many minus yardage plays in the run game that we have to correct. Obviously, when you’re playing against a defense like we were, that blitzes a lot, you’ve got to handle movement. At times, we did really well with, and at times we didn’t. So an area we need to improve.

I love that we were 100 percent on short yardage offensively, running the ball, and with a down the field throw that ended up being a pass interference.

The negatives, we had two pre-snap penalties to start the 3rd quarter. Unacceptable. Like I mentioned, in the red zone, we had to settle for less than touchdowns. We had two touchdowns down there. We want to be 70 percent or better. We ended up 50 percent.

On defense, three 4th down stops. Those are like turnovers in a game, and one of them to close the game out.

We stopped the run. A team that rushed for 300 yards on us a year ago. We held them to less than 1 yard per carry. I think 29 yards on 30 carries in the game. Really, a group performance when you talk about stopping the run.

Our DBs tackled well, with the exception of one play. Our Corners really tackled well in the game, and had some nice open field tackles on Anthony Smith, who’s a talented receiver.

We only surrendered 1 touchdown in the red zone. Held them to 2 field goals, one which they missed, and stopped them on fourth down.

The thing I loved was just the fundamentals. Guys were playing square. They were shedding blocks. They were disruptive.

We had 11 plays in their backfield. Only had one sack, but had a lot of hurries that helped our coverage. Cian Slone and Sabastian Harsh were standouts in the game. They were really disruptive on the defensive line in their first starts for us.

It was really good to see Caden Fordham back out there. I thought he looked like his old self. It’s a big hurdle. You go through a bunch of them when you’re coming back from being out as long as he was, and that live game is the last of those hurdles. His confidence is through the roof. He played well. He was physical. He played fast. It’s nice to have him back. Him and Sean (Brown), AJ (Richardson) and Kenny (Soares).

There were two 3rd-and-longs they converted on. We can’t let that happen.

We had a substitution issue, which is on the staff, not the players, that led to that touchdown. We should have got him down. That was the one tackle I was talking about. JJ (Johnson) had a chance to knock the Tight End down. Didn’t wrap up, but we shouldn’t have been in that situation against a tempo team, so it’s something as a staff we have to do a better job for our guys.

On special teams, Noonkester was exceptional. Did a great job. Great hang time. They had no returns in the game, and we didn’t get any returns either. We didn’t have a punt return or a kick return.

The biggest area, Special Teams wise, is just getting back to making kicks. We have talented kickers. We have confidence in those guys, and I look forward to seeing them bounce back.

Like I said in my postgame press conference, I thought our crowd was awesome. It was a great environment. There was a ton of recruits there, families there. Our student section was the heartbeat, the pulse, the thermostat of that stadium. They were incredible. They brought it, and we thank you for that again.

As you know, we play at Noon this week, and so we’re asking you to get to bed early, or stay up all night, whichever you prefer, but be at the stadium on time and get there and have a good time. Our tailgating is amazing. Get in the stands and be there for the kick and stay for 4 quarters.

It’s a big game this week. Virginia’s coming off a big win over Coastal. They looked really good in that game. Had a kick return for a touchdown. Blocked a punt.

You can tell they’ve worked really hard in recruiting and development. I think their Receiver core is really impressive. #6, (Cam) Ross, had a big game, over 100 yards receiving and a kickoff return for a touchdown. #11, (Trell) Harris, jumped off the film with his speed.

The Running Backs run hard.

Their Quarterback’s a good football player. Head coach’s son, (Chandler) Morris, has been around, has been in a bunch of different programs. He’s gritty. He’s tough. You can see him make plays on his feet. He’s got a good arm, throws with touch, and can throw it in there through a seam route with a lot of velocity in the game. They’ve got good weapons, and he can make you pay if you’re not sound in your pass rush.

We’ve got a great challenge against that offense.

Defensively, you can tell they’ve put a lot of time into the portal. They’ve got a lot of experienced players, some returners and some new.

They’ve got a 6’3″ Cornerback. They’ve got two Defensive Ends that are 6’6″ and 6’7″. Melton’s a really good player from Ohio State that they picked up. Their Safety’s tackled well in the game. Linebackers played downhill, played with their hands. They’ve got big inside guys, and they’ve got a good rotation. They’ve got good depth on their front, and you can tell the kids know their scheme.

They do a good job coaching. They’re a much better team than we played a couple years ago when we played them up there, and Tony Elliott and his staff deserve a lot of credit for what they’ve done there in recruiting and developing the roster.

With our fans, we need you there. We need you there early. We need you there for the entire game helping us. We talked a lot with our team about Carter-Finley Stadium, and how important it is to take advantage of home field advantage, how important it is for them to protect their turf, to show up every game with an edge and to play with an edge. I felt like we did that in the first game.

I was really excited about the way these guys prepared, how they practiced, how coachable they were.

The day after the game, the guys were excited to be coached. They sat in the team room, and they were really, really into what was going on in the room. You could see they wanted to get better. I met with them this morning, and same thing. We said, ‘Talk to me about what you’ve got to fix on film. What do you have to be better at?’ The guys were just throwing their hands up, open to criticism, open to ownership. Those kinds of things make it fun as a head coach. I look forward to advancing from one week to the next.

It was a great weekend of college football. That’s the advantage of playing on a Thursday. You actually get to watch some games. A lot of one possession games. I’m proud of the teams in ACC. There was a lot of good wins in the league and a hell of a game last night with Miami and Notre Dame. It was fun to watch that football game.

You just mentioned the ACC. Just to sort of expand on that, Georgia Tech obviously had a good win. Virginia had a good win. FSU. Miami. Virginia Tech, even their defense, did really well against South Carolina. The depth of this league, do you consider it under appreciated? What are your thoughts on the ACC relative to the other conferences in the country?

You’ve got to do it on the field. There’s a lot of inter-conference play in week one. You got to see Florida State have a great win over Alabama. Georgia Tech over Colorado. Obviously, Notre Dame is an independent, but a great football team. It was great to see Miami finish that game and get a win. Underappreciated, I would say, is an understatement. I think year-in-and-year-out, there’s maybe not the Top-10 number of teams that you see maybe in a couple of the other leagues, but the quality of our teams across the board, and the depth of our conference.

Every week’s a tough out, man. It’s every game, you’ve got to show up. Anybody can beat anybody in this league. There’s a lot of good coaches, and it’s exciting. It’s been that way for a while. Since I’ve been here, you see it’s competitive and as the season goes on, teams that are ranked against teams that aren’t, they’re one possession games.

There’s a lot of really good coaches in this league and the kids play really hard. I thought to start the season, there was a lot of games that were meaningful. I watched the South Carolina-Virginia Tech game. South Carolina’s quarterback finished that game. Virginia Tech had a chance to get off the field there at the end, and didn’t because of that kid’s effort. That quarterback’s a stud. That was a heck of a football game.

You talked about the kicking game and them bouncing back, but what went into that position battle through camp that let Nick (Koniecznski) win the job over Kanoah (Vinesett)?

It’s a statistical thing through camp. You have a lot of kicks. You have a lot of situational kicks. You have game-ending kicks. It’s just charting the makes, charting the misses, charting the 11-on-11 kicks, the kicks to win. By the end of camp, Nick was ahead.

He went in, made his first kick, drilled it right down the middle. That’s what he did all through training camp. He was 91 percent over three weeks. You can’t ignore what the guys do in practice, but you don’t know how game day is going to be. He’s a young kid. He’s a very talented kid.

Kanoah is a guy we have a lot of trust in. We’ll go through this week and continue to evaluate it, but we expect that position to get back to where it was, where these guys are accurate making the kicks we expect them to make.

As a coach, how do you approach that in a position that’s so confidence-based?

You just encourage them because they are talented. It’s not like we’re dealing with guys that can’t kick the football and make kicks. They can and they have. You just encourage them, and you help them through. No different than any other sport. When a guy’s a little off, it’s just ‘What do you need?’ You encourage them. Teammates do the same. They get back to being who they are.

You mentioned the penalties and just some detail-oriented mistakes. Do you feel like most of that was maybe first game jitters?

No, I don’t.

I think if they would have happened in the 1st quarter, I would maybe agree with that, but the fact that they happened later, particularly coming out of the half, to me that’s just poor focus.

Two of the penalties were aggressive penalties. It was guys trying to finish guys, and like I said, Teague’s was a late hit. That’s just not disciplined on his part. He wanted to be physical. CJ was already tackled. He’s got to pull off in that situation.

The holding penalty on Noah (Rogers) I thought was a great block. Sometimes that happens. Sometimes the refs see it different than the players and the coaches. I thought that was a really good block on that play.

Cody Hardy definitely could have let go. He had a guy out in space and he was finishing him, but those kind of penalties, you just have to learn as a player when you’ve got to catch up with your feet, or when you’ve got to let go.

The focus penalties though, when you’re talking about pre-snap to start the 3rd quarter with a false start at Receiver, and then a false start at Tackle, that stuff can’t happen. That’s completely focus driven. It has nothing to do with any game number that you’re in. It’s guys just being locked in.

This weekend is a homecoming for Des Kitchings back to Raleigh. Have you guys had any conversations recently? What’s it going to be like going against his offense?

He’s a good coach. We’ve seen a lot of their film over the years, and crossover films, and you see what they do.

They’ve had a lot of different quarterbacks. Every offense starts and ends with what the QB can do, and the guy they have right now can do a lot. We know that they’ll be balanced. We know they’ll run the stretch, and that’s been a big play for them.

Their Tailback runs really hard. You can see that.

The biggest thing that jumps off the film with their offense is the Receiver skill. They’re explosive, made a couple circus catches and got behind people.

They’ll try to run the football, play actions, have down the field throws, screens and quick game. They’ll mix tempo on you. Looking forward to the competition.

It doesn’t matter who’s coaching on the other side of the field. It’s about us. It’s about us going out and executing our plan.

Going back to the previous matchup in 2023, Virginia had a lot of what you would call those focus penalties, mental mistakes late. What have you seen now on film as that team’s gotten a lot older and experienced with their slew of transfers?

Well, it’s not a big sample size, and that’s the thing that’s unique about all of college football. You’re really getting to know your opponent in the year you’re in, more than playing them year-after-year, because the roster changes so much.

In their case, there’s a lot of new players. Getting used to who they are, what they’re doing with the guys they have and the game they played. They got up pretty fast on them, so the second half wasn’t really a typical play calling sample of what you might get in a close game, or if they’re behind, or it’s a one score game. When you get up four scores, it’s a little different, so you’ve got to feel it out. I think really the first three weeks of the season, there’s going to be a lot of that.

We turn around and play on Thursday in game 3 against a team with a new staff, a lot of new players.

Until you get 3 or 4 games on these teams, you’re not going to fully know all the ins-and-outs of their personnel.

I was just wondering when you guys got Justin Joly last year in the portal, did you know you were getting a pretty well-rounded Tight End, and how has he developed since coming into your program?

Well, we knew we were getting a guy that had a lot of talent. Justin was a basketball player, that was a receiver in high school.

We played against him, so we saw him on the field, saw his body type and knew that he had a really athletic build to him. When we got him, we had to teach him how to work the way we work. It was a lot different than UCONN. There was a growth period there for him, an adjustment period.

Once he settled in, you could really see his talent as a receiver. He works really hard. The things he wasn’t great at, you could see he wanted to improve, and as the year went on last year, he got better and better without the football. That was a huge point of emphasis in the offseason for him.

He put on 15 pounds. He and Coach Locklear have worked really hard on his blocking, and it showed up. I was really impressed, not only with his run blocking, but there were a few times he was in pass protection. He did a great job on their Defensive Ends.

How does Virginia’s receiving core putt stress on a defense? It seems like they’ve got some different skill sets at receiver, Ross with speed, and Edrine’s a bigger guy. What’s the challenge in facing some different body types and different skill sets?

Well, the good thing is we see that in practice. Our receiver core has a lot of different guys, too.

Across the board, our DBs, have to cover Noah, Wesley, Teddy, Joly. So it’s not like it’s something we’re not used to seeing. We see it every day in practice.

As a DB, you’ve got to know your matchup. You’ve got to know what the guy does. You’ve got to study his film. You’ve got to study what type of player he is, what type of routes he runs, the stems of his routes, the breaking points of his routes.

That’s part of the week, is learning, what’s 11, what’s 6, what’s 7, what are these guys about? How do they get them the football? What are their splits? There’s a lot of intel that you get into, and then it’s making plays on the ball. They’re going to throw it up to these guys, and we’ve got to make plays. Their guys have shown that they can make them. There’s going to be some contested plays, and we’ve got to go up and win those plays.

You referenced the missed tackles. I think PFF only had 4 missed tackles. Did you guys do anything in Summer camp that maybe prepared the physicality for the first game, that led to less missed tackles? Or was it pretty much same old, same old?

No, obviously, DJ’s (Eliot) got his way of teaching that, and I think there’s been a lot of emphasis on tackling. Tracking ball carriers, where our eyes are on players, how fast we practice, guys getting to the near hip in an athletic position, even when we’re not tackling, where there’s more confidence that you’re making plays. We did a lot more good-on-good work in preparation for this game than we have in the past. We felt like because there was a lot of competition at certain position groups in years past, maybe when the roster was more settled and you knew who guys were, you got into a little bit less of that, more scout work.

We did a lot of good-on-good work. The speed of the game in practice was increased probably because you’re going up against the starting offense as a starting defense more. There’s a fine line in that, because it’s more physical when you do that, too, and you want to keep them healthy. The closer you get to the game, the more concerned you get about those type of competitive periods, but I do think it paid off, especially in space.

Our Corners tackled extremely well in that football game. We had 17 tackles at Corner, and that’s a lot, and they weren’t all run plays. There were a lot of hitches and screens, and plays like that thrown out there where they had one-on-one plays, and they got guys down, and in some cases knocked guys back. I thought Jamel Johnson in particular really played a good football game for us, and tackled like a Safety. He came up and knocked guys back, and obviously the 4th down play was a huge play on a big Tight End.

You’ve mentioned the crossover. Obviously, they have Des Kitchings. You have some Virginia fellas. Do you think with the NIL, and the transfers and everything going on now, that it sort of mitigates that type of knowledge, that crossover knowledge, that you would have otherwise in maybe earlier years?

I’s been a long time since either had a staff member at each other’s schools. Tujague being here. There’s really hardly anybody left from that team from when he was there.

The same can be said for when Des was here. So I don’t really see that as an advantage other than knowing each other’s stadiums and things like that. I think you guys make a much bigger deal out of that than we do. We’re going to take the scouting reports, the PFF and the film study as what we need to know, and how we build our game plans, and talk about their personnel.

Virginia this year is non-conference. The conferences are expanding. You can’t play everybody every year. Is this something maybe down the line you would like to see more of crossovers with maybe a Virginia Tech or Wake Forest if they’re not on the ACC schedule. Local teams that fans can get to the games?

You want to try to play 9 or 10 Power 4 games a year. In our case, it’s 10 with Notre Dame this year. So for me, when it’s not a conference game, 1 of the 8, I like playing teams that have recruiting battles in them, that are regional where our fans can get to those games, or their fans can get to ours, much more than playing a team…like going to Texas Tech or going to BYU, you know, going across the country to play a game where we don’t really have recruiting ties.

I’d much rather play a regional team. We haven’t played a lot. I think this is my 4th game against UVA in 13 years, so it seemed like a natural fit to try to get them on our schedule when we both had an opening. We were both trying to find another game.

I’ve tried to do it with Duke before, back when we hardly ever played Duke, and I just couldn’t get them on the schedule, because they had theirs filled up so far out.

As far as playing more games, I think there’s going to be a lot more of that. I think there’s a lot of conversation, as you can see, with other conferences increasing conference play. I’m not privy to all that goes on in those meetings, but I’m all for playing as many conference games as we can.

I think it’s great.

You were able to get 5 True Freshmen in the game. What was it like to see them get their first taste of college football? And there’s a couple Redshirt Freshmen that also got in there, like Brody Barndhart, and a couple of the guys.

Yeah. I’m excited to see their growth from week 1 to week 2.

There’s a lot of nerves in those games for those guys, more than we probably realize as coaches. Ronnie Royal III played his first full game. Brody Barndhart played his first full game. Both Redshirt Freshmen. Duke Scott.

Then you’ve got Teddy Hoffmann, who played really well in the game. I thought Josiah Victor, Nose Guard, came in and gave us some great snaps.

There’s a bunch of them that played, but it’s fun to see. Spike Sowells got in at Guard and played a bunch of snaps. Chase Bond got in at Defensive End, and had back-to-back tackles.

These kids have worked hard, and the ones that have earned the right to be out there, they get out there and play, and those reps are going to build confidence for them.

They’re now going to understand when coaches and players are all talking to them about how we practice, and how hard you need to go and practice, to be ready for Saturday or for gameday. They’re going to learn a lot from that, and for us, we need these guys to come on, because the talent is there in some of these young players.

The future is now. You want to get them out there, get them ready, and know that as the year goes on, they’re going to get better and better and better.

Noah (Rogers) had a hard hit in the game. I just want to see how he was doing coming off of that.

Yeah, Noah’s good. He’s totally cleared, and we’re looking forward to having him back.