Dave Doeren weekly press conference video and transcript

NC State wraps up its non-conference schedule against UConn this Saturday. The Huskies are 1-3 and are coming off of a major blowout loss to Michigan. Wolfpack head coach Dave Doeren met with the media Monday to discuss the program’s win over Texas Tech and discuss the upcoming primetime showdown at Carter-Finley Stadium.

Subscribe to The Wolfpacker today for a limited-time $1 deal for a year of premium access

Video and transcript highlights of Doeren’s weekly press conference are provided below.

Watch Dave Doeren’s press conference

Dave Doeren press conference opening statement transcript

Dave Doeren: “I’d like to thank our fans again, our parents, students, recruits that came to the game. It was an awesome environment. I think the new lights, what the game ops staff did, elevating the environment even further with the light show, I thought it was great for the fans. It obviously adds entertainment, and it was fun for our players. The guys raved about it after the game.

“I think Carter-Finley stadium is a special place. It’s one of the best college football environments in the country and, on top of that, our field crew, the way our turf is right now and the paint and everything they’re doing, it’s an incredible place. So a lot of kudos to everybody that made that happen, and I look forward to seeing another version of that this week with another night game at home.

“Just talking about the game itself, I’m proud of our team and our staff, how we played, how hard we played, I thought there was a lot of very visible strain, elite effort, guys played really hard. We played a lot of guys, rotated several people in and out of the game. Starting on offense, the positives, really felt like our run game was a big part of the time of possession in that game.

“That was a good defensive line. those guys are very experienced players, they’re big. I think their defensive end, number 19, is a draft pick. I think that guy’s really talented. Their linebackers played hard, their DBs were long, so they made it tough on us, and we were able to run the ball effectively. Our tailbacks were physical and, for the most part, did what they could do to help us and I thought the receivers improved away from the point of attack. Our time of possession in the second half was big. We had the ball for 19 minutes.”

“From a negative standpoint, we’re shooting ourselves in the foot too much on offense. Whether it’s penalties pre-snap or some technique things within the play where we can avoid a penalty, or just a bonehead mistake, the lineman downfield, that shouldn’t happen. We had a turnover that was a costly error on Demie [Sumo-Karngbaye] crossing the goal line and not finishing through the goal line with the ball. Definitely a teachable moment for him and one that I know he’s learned a lot from and did a great job bouncing back and making a play for us.

“I think, overall, you’re still seeing some young players, some inexperienced players at times that just need to make the routine plays and execute at a little bit higher level. If you get the touchdown that Demie had, if we don’t have the linemen downfield on Devin Leary‘s touchdown catch. That’s 14 more points, and we’re feeling pretty darn good about the results of that game, scoring in the 40s.

“It’s just little things like that in this game that can really taint how you feel. But similar to our first game, I think we leave that one, offensively speaking, with a lot to improve, left a lot of plays on the field and get to do it with a win. On defense, I thought that was our best performance this year. The three takeaways, Aydan White’s touchdown and the two interceptions, a stack, he had an outstanding game. Jakeen Harris had a nice interception. I thought, in the box , we performed well. We were disruptive. The D-line strained. I thought Savion had a really good game up front. Guys ran to the football. Josh [Harris] and Cory [Durden] were more disruptive at the nose. C.J. Clark had two sacks and got involved in the pass rush areas.

“I thought the linebackers played downhill and fit the run well. Tanner [Ingle] probably had his best game since last season, really tackled well. He has improved a lot as the season’s gone on. We had the disruption up front that you would hope to have when we’re plus-10. We call them bombs, but plays in the backfield, tackles for loss and sacks. We got pressure on the quarterback, sacked him four times and forced him to throw some poor balls.

“Again, we were able to stay on our line of scrimmage and not get into the hard count part of football. I think we’ve played three games now where the offense has attempted to get our D-line and our linebackers offsides, and the guys did a good job being disciplined. I thought we limited explosive plays against an offense that’s known for creating them until the last drive where we really played a prevent defense. We kept the ball in front of us and didn’t allow them to get behind us most of the night.

“On the negative side, defensively, Travali [Price] lost contain on a pressure that would have been a sack for Tanner. and just, young player, similar to what you see on offense sometimes, these guys have to make mistakes to get better, unfortunately, one I hope he learns from.

“I do feel like we got tired on the one drive. This area in the game there in the second quarter where we were out there for a long number of plays. And then, we scored a touchdown at the end of that drive with Aydan, so we had to go right back out there again. And then after that drive, we went three-and-out on offense, and then went right back out there again, and we got tired playing a lot of snaps there in one quarter. So that’s something we’ve got to rotate more, which is difficult at times against a no huddle team that isn’t subbing all the time, but that’s an area that we can help ourselves.

“Special teams, I thought Chris Dunn continues to be elite in what he’s doing. He is hitting the ball well, his op-time is great. He’s very confident right now. The muffed punt fumble recovery by Joe Shimko, I was happy for him, to see him battle and fight under that pile and come up with the ball. Shane McDonough] improved his hang time, averaged over four seconds, 4.16, which was a goal of his this week, and I thought the special teams created some very advantageous field position for us in this football game and so kudos to those guys.

“Excited to play another home game. Expect a raucous crowd, and that’s the standard. It’s about celebrating Wolfpack football. It’s about cheering on our players and cheering on our staff and celebrating that you’re a part of such a great university. I know, at times it gets into who we’re playing and, to me, it’s not about that. It should be about the young men that play for your university and how hard they work and the pride you have for your university. And we have the nation’s fifth longest home winning streak, and I’d like to make sure I emphasize the word ‘we.’ The fans are a huge part of that. I mean, this doesn’t happen in places that have 25,000 people show up. It happens in places that sell out and get loud as hell. You’re helping make our program better when you do that, and it helps recruiting, it helps our players, it helps our coaches so just want to thank you and continue to emphasize the importance of that.

“We’re playing a UConn team that has a veteran defense. They do have a long bunch of D-lineman, their linebackers are experienced guys, they’re all 6-2, 220 or more. Coach [Jim] Mora is a veteran, proven coach at the NFL level and the college level, and he’s building a program. You can see that he’s doing it the right way. They’ve played some really good competition. They’re well-coached. You see them playing with fundamentals and technique, and you see their scheme and what he’s trying to do.

“They’re young on offense, their quarterback transfer from Penn State got injured, and they’re playing a young guy, but he’s from St. Thomas Aquinas in Florida, Devon Betty‘s High School, and he’s a winner. He’s a three-time state champion as a quarterback, and I know they’ll build a team around him. They have very good skill players, you see some explosive plays. There’s a lot of quick screens and plays on the perimeter to get those guys the ball. For us, I think this is a great opportunity to get better. We’ve really emphasized weekly improvement with our roster individually and collectively and identified areas with each player for them to focus on, and we’ll continue to do that and look forward to another opportunity to go compete.”

Q&A transcript

Dave, going back after week one, I know Tim Beck was asked about Devin Leary’s performance a couple times, and he had mentioned that there was a couple overthrown balls, a couple balls that he could have gone back and would have loved to have back. What were your thoughts on his performance after this week, having watched the game film now at this point?

Dave Doeren: “I think he did some good things. We had four drops that hurt him. I think the one to Demie would have been a touchdown on the screen. The one to Darryl Jones would have been a first down, and those were routine drops. The other two were contact catches with Anthony [Smith] and Julian [Gray]. And so some of those things make the performance different. You just see an incomplete, we see an opportunity that could have changed the game in certain ways.

“But he’s seeing the field. He’s trying to kind of find chemistry with some new guys, and I think that’s a work in progress still at times. We’re going to get better and better as these young guys, as Anthony Smith and Julian and Darryl, being a new player for us, the chemistry with Devin is still in the infant stages I guess you’d say. You see the chemistry with him and Porter [Rooks] with him and Thayer [Thomas], with him and [Devin Carter], so it’s just takes time, and I think, overall, nobody’s harder on himself than Devin.

“I told him after the game, there’s games last year where veteran players made veteran plays to help you, and, right now, we’re trying to make the same plays with guys that aren’t veterans at times, and there’s a plan for that, in my opinion, over time gets really good. When two guys that are explosive athletes start to play, when the game slows down a little bit, it changes things for Devin, so we’ve just got to get there.

“We’re through 25 percent of the regular season. And, as you saw two weeks ago, Anthony Smith jumped over two people, made circus catches. Now we think he’s going to do that every rep, and that’s just not realistic yet. But we’re excited about the progress and what’s going on. I think you can see, a year ago, no one knew what Demie could do, and now you’re seeing a playmaker coming out of that, and we’re just evolving right now. I’ve just got to kind of be patient and know that it’s coming.”

This is this is clearly a trap game coming up for you guys with UConn and obviously with with who comes after that. What experiences are you going to lean on from the past to make sure your guys bring an ‘A’ effort, not just for that game, but in practice everyday this week?

Dave Doeren: “I think the focus that our guys are really excited about is the individual improvement, and that’s where we’ve been since the East Carolina game. I think that’s an experience enough for these guys.

“I know where you’re coming from. I think you know everyone in sports can see those things. The good thing for us, there’s been enough of these examples out there in college football this year to point to where you don’t have to just talk about it. I mean, it seems like every week somebody’s losing a game like that, and we’re going to try to get better.

“I think that’s what really good programs do. Doesn’t matter who you play, it’s how you play. It started back in the preseason. Our worst enemy is us not anyone else on our schedule, and we’re going to be playing that exact same verbiage to them throughout the week. These guys understand. They want to play well, and they know they got to practice will do that.”

Can you speak just a little bit about Demie’s improvement. Like you said a year ago he was just a special teamer and only saw six games, but now in his first three games he has over 400 all-purpose yards and last game 147 with two touchdowns and almost a third touchdown. Can you just speak on what you’ve seen from him in the past year and maybe this offseason coming into this year?

Dave Doeren: “He’s a naturally gifted football player. He sees things. There’s a vision that comes with this game that is hard to coach at times. Drake Thomas has that vision on defense. He sees things that are very hard to coach.

“Demie sees things as a football player. He’s tough. He’s very, very competitive. And he’s gifted. He was blessed with the ability, and so we just got to grow him up. He’s still learning. He’s still making mistakes, but he competes really hard and he’s gifted and he’ll continue to get better.”

Do you have any updates on the availability of Jordan Houston, Tyler Baker-Williams going into this week?

Dave Doeren: “Not yet, no. We’ll see Justin, our trainer, here this afternoon. So, I don’t want to speculate until I have the most up to date info, but we’ll have it for you on Thursday.”

I know you been ask a lot about the offense but it looked like in this game, you guys really schemed up a lot of opportunities for scoring plays. Is that a positive that you can lean on? Finish those out, maybe there’s a completely different outlook on the unit?

Dave Doeren: “Yeah, it’s like I said, we would have had 41 points with two plays that did score that just didn’t count. Demie’s play should have been a touchdown if he crosses the goal line like he’s supposed to with the ball and Devin’s play did score. Anthony’s downfield on a pass play, which doesn’t make sense to him or us right now.

“If we’re 41-17, are you guys asking about the offense? I don’t know. Just those two plays alone changes the outcome of that game from the outside looking in. But within the game, there’s a lot of plays we left on the field, man. There’s little things that are, ‘Hey, we didn’t do this. We could show you eight clips in practice where we did it a certain way and then on game day, it didn’t happen that way.’ That’s youth.

“Anthony and Julian are part of some of those plays. Demie, obviously, on some of that. There’s a bigger outside concern than there is an inside concern, I would say.”

I wanted to ask you about CJ Clark, obviously two sacks in this game, just him coming back from injury where are you seeing him at right now?

Dave Doeren: “So excited for him. His confidence is growing each week. I said this couple of weeks ago, there’s a progression you go through returning from an injury like he had. Can I do this? I think I can, and then you do it. And then you’re on to another one and another one. He’s starting to get that.

“One of his biggest strengths as a D-lineman is his explosiveness off the line of scrimmage, that twitch we call it. You’re starting to see that again. He’s very strong. He’s running through contact. His first sack he split a double team. I’m happy for him and happy for us, because we need that.

“Like I’ve said many times, we lost Daniel Joseph and Levi Jones, our best two pass rushers. So seeing him and Travali pick up that helps. We need that pass rush from our front.”

I know you learn about your team every time they take the field a little bit about how they respond to moments. I’m curious. When you’re playing a power conference opponent like Texas Tech, you talked about their defensive line being good and they made it tough on you. How much value there is and that in terms of pushing you guys to play even better, or maybe more you learn about your team playing against power conference opponents?

Dave Doeren: “Yeah, I think it does. It enlightens us as coaches. Like, ‘Hey, this game, we really got to see this guy step up and play well,’ and as you know, Clemson and Florida State’s D-lines are very, very impressive, right? So, a game like that was really good from a measuring standpoint of where we need to improve, what we’re doing well, what we got to do better. Put our tight ends in some matchups on big guys on the edges. too. So, we were able to evaluate them and see where they’re better and where they need help.

“I think it’s huge. The higher that level of competition is, we also get to see the nerve factor. I think that was the first night game for some of these kids playing for us. It was an electric environment. I think Tanner Ingle played the best he’s played all year. So that environment made him better. Other guys, you could tell that it was a little bit much for them. Next time they’re in it, it’d be better.

“So it’s great to have that because as we know, we’re going to be playing in that environment as we move forward almost every week.”

Can you talk a little bit about Freddie Aughtry-Lindsay’s contributions and progression as a coach now with your team on your defense and how he’s helped some of those guys play as well as they’ve been playing?

Dave Doeren: “Yeah, yeah. Freddie’s been awesome to have here on the staff. You know he had two interceptions for touchdowns against UConn back as a player. I know he told that story to the team in training camp when he spoke about one of our core values, which is focus for this week. I think Freddie, one, is an alarm. So he’s coaching in a different in a heartbeat, I guess you’d say. His bloods in the bricks here, and it’s cool to see him mentor these guys.

“Him and coach Ruffin work with my freshmen every week, the developmental guys we call it and our skills workshop and helping them through that first semester in college. It’s the hardest semester in my opinion, transitionally. Freddie is a really good mentor to these guys.

“As far as his position group, I think the performance speaks for itself. The way that Tyler Baker-Williams has been playing. Freddie gets a lot of credit for helping him, and you see him out there with Jalen Frazier. You see him out there with Devan Boykin, and he’s doing a lot of good things with his guys. He’s been a great addition to the staff, and it’s not just football. In the state in recruiting he’s got a lot of good connections. Very personable with the high school coaches and takes a lot of pride in being from this university.“

Could you just speak to Payton Wilson. Obviously he’s going to give you a lift with his skill but when he’s on the field does he give the bounce it gives your team?

Dave Doeren: “Yeah, wasn’t it awesome to see him out there? And I know made us all feel good for him as a person. He was so happy, thankful. Again a guy that is going through the things you go through coming back from injuries, he played well. He can play better, but he led us in tackles his first full game back.

“One play I can’t remember exactly when it was in the game, but where you got to see him take off and run a guy down and tackle him on the sideline. He can cover ground. I mean, that guy’s a tremendous athlete, so it’s just putting another elite competitor that’s very gifted back on the field. And those guys love playing together, man. It’s great seeing him and Isaiah and Drake in the same lineup for an entire game.”

You talked about the chemistry with the passing game. Just in going back and looking at and analyzing things, are you pleased with separation of the receivers, the routes being run correctly, all the other things that go into everything clicking in the passing game?

Dave Doeren: “Sometimes yes, sometimes no. I think there’s always route depth conversations that we have. Sometimes, the receivers are getting good separation and we’re overthrowing them. Sometimes they’re not, and they’re in contact catch situations. I think it’s a work in progress, like I said.

“I know those kids are working hard at it. It’s a good group of guys. I think, as we continue to rep them and as Devin gets more and more comfortable with the different guys that are in the game, the production will go up. But again, I think you got to give Texas Tech a little credit. That’s a good defense, and they played Dana Holgerson’s offense the week prior and played them very well. Same defensive kids that beat Mississippi State in the bowl game, so I think you got to give them some credit in that.”

Where do things stand with Shyheim Battle? I know he wasn’t able to go out there on Saturday.

Dave Doeren: “Yeah, he’s a lot better than he was. He went through warm ups and just said he didn’t feel 100 percent. At that point, we didn’t play him. I think he’s very close. Week prior was similar with with Payton, and we’re just in the beginning of the season. Just don’t want something to be a lingering injury if we can prevent that. With the depth we have at corner, the way that we felt about Aydan and Derrek Pitts and Teshaun, just didn’t feel like it was a necessary risk.

“We’re hopeful we’ll have him the rest of the season. But again, we got to get to Saturday before I tell you 100 percent. But he will practice. Like, he’s in a good spot that way, just kind of get into the contact part of it.”

How good is it to have a player like Aydan White behind them that’s able to go out there and have the type of game that he did?

Dave Doeren: “Yeah, I mean we list those guys as ‘Ors’ for reason there. We look at Aydan as a starter. I don’t think there’s much difference right now. … Each of them have different skills that they’re better at. You know, I think Derrek probably had his best game against Texas Tech, too. He tackled really well. He had a great past breakup on a deep ball. We look at those guys on equals when it comes to the rotation they’re going to be in.

“But to answer your question, yeah, we’re super excited about Aydan. We were his freshman year. He went and had a pick against Liberty as a true freshman, and missed him last year when he was out that injury. So it’s great to have him back and healthy.”