TRANSCRIPT: Dave Doeren’s Postgame Press Conference After NC State’s 56-10 Win Over Campbell

Head Coach Dave Doeren met with the media for his postgame press conference after NC State’s 56-10 over Campbell this afternoon.

First, we’d like to thank our fans that came today and there was a point there in the 4th quarter where I looked up and I don’t know how many were still in the upper deck, but you guys are awesome. I mean to sit in the sun in a blowout game and stay the entire game. That’s awesome.

I don’t know your names, but I see you. It means a lot for the people that stay four quarters and support our guys. Appreciate everybody that comes, but just want to point out those guys that stay the whole game. That’s impressive. Our players and coaches see it and it helps us in recruiting.

As far as the game, offensively and defensively felt like we played really well and expected to. We wanted to be aggressive with the play calling on offense and build a lead. Obviously, we wanted to be explosive and we were. I thought we caught the football really well and protected CJ (Bailey) in the first half really well.

Defensively we were playing a lot of young guys. Jivan Baly got his first start at Nickel and did a nice job. I thought Asaad Brown, playing strong safety for his first game, did some good things and allowed us to rest a couple guys we’re going to get back hopefully next week.

It was good to see a lot of players play. I thought we did a good job on the line of scrimmage up front.

Thankful for Coach Warren. What he’s had to do the last two weeks was above and beyond the call of duty. Charlton did a great job for us and stepped in and allowed DJ (Eliot) the opportunity to spend the time he needed at home. It was good to have DJ back on the sidelines with us today.

Special teams wise, obviously disappointed catching a punt is so hard, but I think out of this we found our punt returner in Terrell Anderson. That might be the thing I’m most excited about coming out of the game. We finally got a guy back there that knows what to do.

What you do in practice has got to show up in games. Special teams area continues to be a sore spot for me with our performance and penalty on a touchdown. A lot of these are freshmen.

Teddy’s (Hoffmann) a freshman. LaCorian (Hodge), who got the holding penalty, it was holding. Freshmen guys have got to understand when they’re playing, it doesn’t matter what age they are. They’ve got to be mature and they’ve got to handle the game.

But I like how we responded today and excited about what remains on our schedule.

You’re up 42 at the half. What led to your decision to keep CJ in and keep some of the starters on offense through the third quarter?

I wanted to come out and start fast in the third quarter. We haven’t been a team that has finished people this year.

We’ve built leads and given up leads. I wanted them to go out and feel that. That’s what we need to do. Obviously there’s risk in that and I understand that, but I wanted the starters in there on the first drive of the second half, both sides of the ball. I told them score on offense, get a stop on defense, and then we’ll get the guys in there. Then it’s their responsibility to continue playing the way we want them to play and not get sloppy.

How have you seen CJ grow throughout the years. Completing over 80% of his passes.

CJ’s playing well. He’s played well all year. He’s not going to be perfect. There’s plays he’s going to learn from, but he’s given us a chance to win and he’s playing hard. He’s making plays with his feet. He’s throwing catchable footballs down the field.

He understands the offense and where coach wants him to go with the ball. He’s playing with a lot of confidence. So I love how CJ’s playing.

He talked about wanting to push the field more and you guys did today. How encouraging is that for you to see explosive plays in the pass game?

Well, I think with Hollywood (Smothers) in the backfield, it creates opportunities to throw the ball down the field. To stop him with a light box isn’t going to happen.

People have to kind of pick what they want. When you get into single high defenses and give us one-on-ones, we’ve got to be able to throw the ball down the field. You’ve got to force people to get out of that and start playing cover two.

That’s what this team actually started to do today. Then they opened up the run game again. So your run game and pass game are friends. They’ve got to work well together. I think you can’t be a dink and dunk offense with a good run game. When you have a good run game, it opens up down the field play actions and shots, and you can’t be afraid to call them.

Throw an incomplete pass, it’s okay, but those are opportunities with the receivers we have that, you know, we’ve got to capitalize on.

Do you feel CJ is underrated as a QB, maybe on the national level and within the ACC?

I don’t know, because I don’t read what you say out there. So if he’s underrated, that’s because you all are underrating him. I think he’s a hell of a player.

What was it like to see Jivan be able to step into that role today and then what kind of energy and enthusiasm does Kenny (Soares Jr.) bring?

I was proud of Jivan. We moved him, I don’t know, three weeks ago maybe to nickel from corner. Not knowing, obviously we’d be down Jackson Vick, but we felt like our corner position had good depth and we were concerned.

It was a good decision to move him there, and he did a great job today. There’s things he’ll learn from that film.

Kenny brings a lot of energy on the field. When Sean’s (Brown) not out there, there’s a captain not in the game, and you need guys to elevate as leaders. I asked several of those older players to do that today, and Kenny’s one of them.

How important was it to see both offense and defense kind of dominate and control the game?

It helps. I don’t know if it’s a confidence builder or not. That’s probably for the players to answer. We needed to play well today.

Obviously we didn’t play well a week ago, offensively anyway. We had a lot of ground to make up. You’ve got to get better each week in a season like we have, where our schedule does increase as far as the ranked opponents coming.

We’ve got to get better every game. Unfortunately, on defense there’s been a lot of injuries, so it’s hard because it’s a different player, and there are times in certain spots it doesn’t get the ability to get better. Now there’s another guy playing nickel or another guy playing strong safety, another guy playing WILL linebacker.

But offensively we’ve had continuity, and so we needed to take a huge jump from last week’s performance, and we did.

I thought we did a lot of good things on offense today and obviously get ready to go play in some crowd noise now and play against a much better opponent. It was something that needed to happen for us to be in a position to take another step.