WATCH: Caden Fordham’s Postgame Press Conference After NC State’s Win Over #8 Georgia Tech (with transcript)

Redshirt Senior Linebacker Caden Fordham met with the media for his postgame press conference last night after NC State’s 48-36 win over #8 Georgia Tech. You can watch the video above, and read the transcript below.

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Coach Doeren said this is probably one of your best performances. Did it feel like that for you, and what was going through your head tonight?

We came out with the mindset we were going to play fast. The coaches were on our tail all week, simplified a lot of the things for us. So we just came out and played fast and free.

That’s what I told the guys before the game. ‘We can’t play tentative. We’ve got to play fast. Whatever you see, believe in it and go attack.’

So that’s what everyone did tonight, and it worked out.

October obviously didn’t go as well as NC State would have liked, but to go out there today and do what you guys did, to feel that joy and happiness, to see the students and folks run out on the field, describe that sort of release and how neat is it to have sort of that happy feeling again, that happy vibe?

It’s awesome, especially to win a game like that. But being in the Carter, it was special. Giving that to Coach Doeren, I mean, that man fights so much, and he goes through so much. He’s there every day, the same guy working hard. So it was amazing to go out there and do that with my brothers.

What’s it like for you as a linebacker going against a quarterback like Haynes King, who can run the ball a lot and present a lot of challenges? How do you combat that and limit him as much as possible?

I love playing against guys like that. Credit to him. He’s a great player. He plays very hard. We knew we had a challenge. Coach simplified a lot of things for us so we could play fast. We knew they did a bunch of different stuff on offense formation-wise. So it just simplified, and I think that was the key to helping us play fast.

What was it like for you to seal the game with a pick at the end?

It was cool. It was my first interception in a college game, so it was awesome to get that done.

Obviously, you all came into this game with a lot of injuries, especially offensively, but you and the rest of the leaders and Coach Doeren obviously preach this next man up mentality. Can you kind of speak on that and what it means to the team?

Yeah, I mean, it means everything.

Credit to Duke (Scott) tonight. That dude played his tail off with Hollywood (Smothers) being out. Our tight ends played very well, too, I thought.

On defense, some of the safeties, Assad (Brown), he came in, stepped up really big for us. So that’s big around here. We know anyone can play at any time, and that’s why Coach Doeren always says that to us, preaches it, so those guys were completely ready.

They went out there and played their tails off tonight.

You get a bye week, and then you have Miami, Florida State, and North Carolina. You have three games left. What’s on the table for NC State? What do you hope to be coming out of the bye week when y’all return to the field in a couple weeks?

We’re going to enjoy this for 24 hours. Coach gave us tomorrow off. Get back healthy on this bye week. Get some of the guys back, and then just be ready to roll.

We’ve got three games left. We’ve got to win all three of them, so that’s the plan from here on out.