WATCH: Dave Doeren After Practice Before NC State vs. FSU (with transcript)

Head Coach Dave Doeren met with the media after practice yesterday before NC State’s football game vs. FSU tomorrow night in Carter-Finley Stadium. You can watch the video above, and read the transcript below.

How’s the team responded this week in practice?

It’s been a great week, short week, but great week. Guys have had good energy, and they’re definitely excited about playing at home. Opportunity to play a really good football team, a storied program.

More than anything, just when you play like that, you want to get back out and show what you’ve got. I think they showed that in the meeting room. They showed that in practice, and we’re one day away from game week Friday already.

It goes fast, so looking forward to getting back in the stadium.

What is it about playing at home, especially at night, do you think your team tends to play better than when you’re on the road?

I think it’s team-to-team. I think someone asked me that yesterday, it depends on your home environment. We have a great home environment. And this one, Military Appreciation Day, is always my favorite home game of the year.

I think our military presence in North Carolina is huge. It’s very, very special to me, being from a military family, my wife being from a military family. So you have the pageantry of that, along with a sellout and a packed house.

If you were playing at a place maybe where there’s 20,000 people there, it’d probably be a different answer to the question, but for us, home field is an advantage because of who we have in the stands and how loud they can get in the student section. There’s some teams that have a bad game day at home, and so going on the road might bring energy to them. I think that’s not the case for us right now.

The teams I’ve had that have played well on the road, obviously we were very mature football teams. We weren’t dealing with the injuries that we’re dealing with. Every year is different when you look at those kind of things, but we have a great home field advantage. It’s been that way for a while, and we’re excited to be back in the Carter.

Could you briefly share the military connections with your family, and since you’ve been here, what are things that you’ve done to emphasize highlighting this particular game?

My dad served in the Navy, stationed in California during Vietnam. My father-in-law served in Vietnam, was in the Army, and so both of them were a part of that. My grandfather’s both served, Sara’s grandfather’s both served. So our families are rooted that way. So chain of command and respect and understanding our freedom isn’t free, is something we were raised with, and I don’t take that for granted.

95,000 plus troops stationed in our state.

Things that I’ve done personally, I’ve built a lot of relationships with current and retired military over the years here. I’ve had opportunities to go to Marsauk and learn, to go to Fort Bragg, now Liberty, to learn and share ideas. I’ve also had former military in the program here. We have a current guy that’s working with our team, Mike Irwin, who’s former military, Special Forces.

So it’s ingrained, not just for me and my upbringing, but with what we do programmatically to bring these guys in. Obviously football is not life or death, but football, command presence, leadership, getting guys to learn how to be leaders, getting guys to be able to grow in leadership, to speak accountability. There’s a lot of carryover between what they do, training their troops, and what we do training our team, and how we try to build and mentor leadership within our program, within the branches of the military. So I have the utmost respect, and I think anytime we can, as coaches, grab on to things that are parallel and use those things to help our guys learn, it’s great. So I’ve really enjoyed and will continue to enjoy the relationships that I’ve built, crossing over with them, and hopefully it’s the reciprocity, because there’s so many of them here in our state, it makes the access pretty easy.

What have you seen as the biggest difference for CJ (Bailey) in particular when it comes to playing at home versus playing on the road? Is it just the road game atmosphere, or is it something different for him?

I think it’s two really good defenses, Miami and Notre Dame. I think if we would have played them here, I don’t know what the outcome would have been, but those were really good defenses. So I think you have to look at that as well. They’re two Top-10 defenses you’re talking about. So the personnel they’re playing with has something to do with it.

It’s not just CJ. It’s him not having enough time in some games, us not being able to run the ball in some games, us being behind in some games, right?

But the kid’s a battler. He fights, and every one of these games is a lesson for him and the guys around him to get better.

Is there a specific player or players who might have surprised you in the way they’ve stepped up this week?

Not really, I mean, this team’s got good leadership, and the guys that are playing, we’ve asked them to continue to lead.

When I had my team meeting, I talked a lot about these being the last 12 days of the regular season, and the last 12 opportunities to be in one room as one team, unless we can get an opportunity to keep playing, and that’s not guaranteed, we have to earn that. So it’s like an hourglass, we have the sand running out, and there’s not much sand left in there for the seniors. So, really upping our urgency and how we play, because the brotherhood in our team room is really strong, and those guys, all of them, want our seniors to finish well.

You mentioned the home environment, how important is it that three straight years have sold out in Carter-Finley?

Yeah, it’s huge, I mean, when you take a job somewhere, you want to be in a place where you can recruit from the state, which we’re able to do. There’s great talent in North Carolina. You want a home fan base that helps you win games, not just with crowd noise, but sold out stadiums help recruiting, they do, and I’ve been talking about that a long time. So, when a recruit hits the in-state schools, and we’re one of them, there’s a difference on game day, everybody knows that.

So it is an advantage for us in recruiting, it’s an advantage for us in crowd noise, in the atmosphere. Just come out here in the parking lots before the game, you can see that people are excited about what’s going on. Everyone wants to win, I get that, but the environment that we have on game day with Carter-Family Stadium, and with our fans, and our students, it’s really, really good, and it’s taken time.

I mean, people used to leave at the end of the half, and they were gone, and now the stadium’s staying full more often, and those things are really big in the growth of our program.

As far as the Friday games, and how difficult it is to get recruits in for those games, too, but how nice is it to have it a little bit later in the season, where some players might have already finished their season and can actually still come out on Friday?

Yeah, I think Thursday night and Friday night, you get great coverage, right? And so that’s the positive of that, and your fans, it’s great for them.

For high school recruits, unless their seasons are over, which to your point, some of them are, it’s harder to get them into your stadiums. And so at this time of the year, we’re in playoff football at the high school level, and some of them have finished, some of them haven’t. So we’ll get a portion of them to be here for game day, but it’s give and take.

I do like the coverage that we do get on a Thursday night and Friday night, and I prefer those games after a bye or to open the season, just from a health standpoint and being able to get guys fresh and keep them healthy throughout the season. But there is a huge advantage, I think, when you’re not in a short week, to playing those night games during the week, because of how much television coverage you can get.

What type of athleticism have you seen from FSU, and are any position groups where they stand out maybe?

Well, it starts with the QB, he can really run. He’s like a tailback when he takes off, and has great acceleration. They have a huge receiver, can run well.

And #19 and #12 are jet speed guys that get the ball in a lot of ways for him. Handoffs and reverses and tunnel screens, they’re dangerous in space. And in their return game, they’ve got great speed, which is what you’d expect.

You watch their punt team and their missiles, #3 can run, man. You watch him, and I don’t know how many times anyone’s blocked him this season on a punt. He’s like the first guy down the field every time.

So, it’s what you’d expect. I mean, it’s probably the most talented Florida State team we’ve played in the last five opportunities, when you look across the board at depth and speed on the field. So, we’re going to have to show up and play really well.

They’ve been in a lot of really close games. They’ve lost four and one possession games, so very close to having a different season down there than they are.