NC State football coach Dave Doeren wants to finish what he started in Raleigh
After having five straight winning seasons at N.C. State, Wolfpack coach Dave Doeren saw his program slip in 2019.
N.C. State finished 4-8 overall, 1-7 in ACC league play, and Doeren made lots of changes, including hiring five new assistant coaches.
During an exclusive interview on The Observer’s Talking Preps show Monday night, Doeren said he found some good out in that.
“I think it was great offseason,” he said, “and I thought it brought a lot of ugly things to a head. I think that is one of the positive things of going through adversity. It really does uncover some things that — had you won this game or that game, got in the bowl game — you might have overlooked it. And so, for me, it’s a great chance to really look at what’s going on. Our players did a phenomenal job of owning their part of it and together we worked really hard on building some chemistry this winter that I thought helped us quite a bit through quarantine.”
Here are Doeren’s responses to questions from Monday night, lightly edited for brevity and clarity.
Question: How have you been passing the time during this pandemic?
Dave Doeren: I’ve been spending a lot of time with my family. That’s been a blessing in all of this. I’m going on 10 years as a head coach and 20-some as a college coach. You just don’t get this kind of time with your children and your wife. And Sara and I spent a lot of good time together. I’ve been around my three sons and Sara as much as I could be.
Q: How much is missing spring practice going to hurt you guys?
DD: Well, I think reps are so precious, you know, and I don’t think there’s anything more important than building good habits and those happen from a massive amount of reps. And so it always hurts to lose reps with your guys, but I guess we’re all in the same boat in this thing, and you don’t feel like anyone’s had a chance to maybe do more than you’ve done from that standpoint of coaching your guys. But for us, we had a very young football team and you would love to examine those guys on the grass a little bit more.
Q: Do you think we’ll have football this fall with the coronavirus pandemic?
DD: I do. I think we’re definitely going to play football. I don’t know if we’re gonna start on time or not. I don’t know how many games, but I do know that college athletics needs college football for a variety of reasons. I think what our sport gives to the country as well, coming out of this lockdown where everybody just probably can’t wait. I think there was a ton of people watching the golf match (Sunday) between (Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson, Peyton Manning and Tom Brady). Everybody’s starving to watch competition right now but, you know, just seeing how things are trending too, I would say that we’re on a good track now, to have the games. I just don’t know what the stands are gonna be like. I have no idea how that’s gonna play out.
Q: Last season was a tough one for you guys (after five straight winning seasons, State was 4-8). How quickly do you think the team can bounce back?
DD: We plan on being back this year for sure. I think, going through what we did last year was very difficult, on our staff, on our players, on our fans. None of us want to live it again. Some of it was out of our control, some of it wasn’t.
Q: You have five new assistant coaches this season, including new offensive coordinator Tim Beck. How will that work out, and is Devin Leary still going to be the starting quarterback?
DD: Tim and I were together at Kansas, and so we have a chemistry already. Tim and John Garrison, my offensive line coach, were together for seven years at Nebraska. And so they have a good chemistry together. And so it’s really been more about the other offensive staff members getting used to Tim and how he’s going to do things, and they’ve been awesome. It’s been fun seeing (offensive line) coach (Todd) Goebbel and (assistant head) coach (George) McDonald and (running backs) coach (Kurt) Roper spend time with Tim and those guys building their chemistry.
Going into the spring, Devin was our starter and will remain so and I know Bailey (Hockman)’s chomping at the bit to win that job. And, like I told Devin, it’s his to lose at this point, but we also want all of our players to get better. We want every single guy on the roster to improve. It’s your job as a starter to hold onto that job. it’s your job as the backup to try to take it from them.”
Q: How tough was it to make the coaching changes you did?
DD: It’s the hardest thing you do as the leader on of an organization, I think. It’s painful. I wouldn’t wish it on anybody. I have great respect for the coaches in my program that have been here — the ones that have left on their own and the ones that I’ve had to ask to leave. I think they are tremendous men. But sometimes you just need to go in a different direction, and I felt like I did. But I wish those guys nothing but success down the road. I know they’re really good at what they do and they’ll be great given the opportunities, and I’m excited about the new ideas and new chemistry that we’re building with the different coaches that we brought in.
Q: Do you feel you guys are poised to make a big jump in league play?
DD: A lot of our guys that were injured are now completely healthy and back and ready to play, and they were experienced players. And all these young guys that had to play — we were second to Clemson for number of freshmen played in college football last year — they all now have a lot of experience probably before they should have had it.
But what you have now is that group of young guys that got battle tested, really thrown into the fire, and then a bunch of veteran players that had to sit out and watch what went down last year, and have a lot of fire in their belly because losing the game to injuries is one of the hardest things and also gives you more perspective. Not that I would ever want a player to be injured, but I do think they return to the game with a lot more respect for the game than they had prior to the injury.
Those two groups coming together, it’s now about getting them on the grass together and building that chemistry. I do like the opportunity we have to win a lot more games than we did last year. Whether we sneak up on people or not, I don’t know. We have to go out there and out execute and outperform and do our jobs, and I know our guys are excited about that opportunity.
Talk about recruiting right now with the Wolfpack.
DD: You come out of a four-win season, you got new coaches. People want to see them coach. They want to see the players. They want to see the direction of the program, and then all of a sudden they can’t, and so, we’re in a position right now where we’re doing the best we can with these Zoom calls. We’ve got some really good kids we’re talking to. I love the direction that we’re headed with everything, but we need to get people back here. We need to get on the grass. We need to go win some games.
I think it was my third year when we came out of a season, barely got to a bowl game and beat Vanderbilt, and then we had to flip a bunch of recruits in the end after we won four out of last five games, and we did that, and we won nine in a row two years in a row. So I’m not going to hit the panic button. If you looked at our (past) classes, June was our month where we capitalized, and we just haven’t had that opportunity to get people here to do that.
Q: How has the pandemic changed recruiting this year?
DD: I think a lot of these kids have made decisions before they wanted to. I think a lot of them had plans to come visit us, to visit other schools and compare their A, B, C and D schools and then make decisions. And because of this, some of them have kind of put the pause button on it. Some of them made decisions earlier than they wanted to. So I do think you’re going to have a lot of people flipping this year, based on how the seasons play out.
Q: Would you like the ACC have the top two teams play for the championship instead of the respective division winners?
DD: I wouldn’t be against it. I do think having the best two teams in the championship game, and no disrespect to the teams that have gotten there because they’ve won their way in, but I do think there’s something to that. My biggest thing that I dislike about our setup is that with our rival game being a Coastal (Division) team, we only play one other team from the coastal in a yearly rotation and so I’m going on my eighth season here and I’ve played Duke one time and they’re right down the road. I think that’s unfair to the student-athletes to go to a university, and not play teams from the other side during your entire college career. (We have a) graduating class that never played Duke and that’s not right. A rotation should be set up to let us have intra-conference play a little bit more often.
Tell us about your incoming freshman, including top recruit Porter Rooks of Myers Park High School.
DD: Porter was having a good spring. He’s a very natural player. He sees the field very well. He learns quickly. He was making plays. We’re excited about Porter, and that class in general. Ethan Lane and Sean Hill, two offensive linemen, were getting reps. They were in the two-deep this spring, because we’re still trying to get some of our guys back from the IR and they were doing a great job working hard. Jayland Parker, a young linebacker, did some nice things. So there’s some good talent in that class. We’re looking forward to getting them all here. Our summer two sessions starts June 22 and we’re hopeful to have all those guys here by then.
Q: When you were at Northern Illinois, you were part of a coaching staff that won back-to-back conference championships. Can you do that in Raleigh?
DD: Yeah, I think you got to get there first, you know, and for us, Clemson is the team to beat. You’ve got to get through them first, and I think it’s just a belief thing with your team. Once you do it one time, then you can do it every time. But it’s about getting through a team like that, that right now is one of the best teams in college football year in and year out. We’ve been close a couple times and just haven’t gotten it done. Hopefully you put together a game where you can find that one play that gets you over the top.
Q: Is the high school talent in North Carolina better now than when you started in 2012?
DD: Well it’s such a fast-growing state, between Charlotte and Raleigh, two of the fastest-growing cities in the country. And so the population is getting bigger and bigger. I think (high school) coaches do a really good job here. They are handcuffed a little bit with some of the rules in the spring as far as being able to be on the field as much as they want their guys, but I think that’s even gotten better. I think the competition across the state is outstanding. The one thing about the state that I love is there’s still a lot of kids that play multiple sports. Guys don’t get too burned out in one sport. You can still go watch a guy be a competitor after the football season.
Q: Three years ago you had a chance to go the SEC, to Tennessee. What kept you in Raleigh?
DD: Well first of all, we love it here. My sons love it here. We don’t do anything without discussing these things as a family, and I don’t feel like professionally I had done I everything I set out to do here. I want to win a championship at this university for these young men. My sons did not want to leave their schools and as their father, for me to be able to say that they went to these schools in Raleigh and graduated from the schools in Raleigh and not have to uproot them — a lot of times in coaching you don’t the opportunity to make that choice, they choose it for you.
And you know, just contemplating it and sitting down with Sara and and talking to Chancellor (Randy) Woodson and talking to (former athletic director) Debbie (Yow), they gave me an extension. They gave me more security and at the time, I had a three-year deal and they gave me a five-year deal, which obviously in recruiting that’s a big thing. These young men want to go somewhere where their head coach is going to be with them. It all just kind of came together and I was fortunate to have the opportunity to talk to Tennessee but at the end of the day, this is home for us and this is where we want to be.
This story was originally published May 26, 2020 at 3:58 PM.
