Recap: Dave Doeren weekly press conference

NC State football coach Dave Doeren held his weekly Monday press conference to discuss the upcoming game — Saturday’s road showdown at Louisville. Kickoff is set for 3:30 p.m., and the game will be televised on ACC Network.

Here is a quick recap of Doeren’s press conference:

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Dave Doeren opening statement

NC State football coach Dave Doeren begins his press conference addressing the shooting in Charlottesville, Va., that killed three Virginia football players.

“Terrible news, a tragedy,” Doeren said. “Football and coaching is a brotherhood, and we are definitely here alongside them and support them and suffer with them. It doesn’t feel like we should be talking about football with what’s going on up there. It’s tough.”

Doeren also added, “I hope everybody can pray for them and help them through this.”

• Moving on to the home loss to Boston College, Doeren started with acknowledging the nature of the defeat.

“Tough loss to say the least, a really hard one to swallow,” Doeren said.

• Doeren noted the game was two separate halves. NC State wanted to get out to a lead against a team with a young quarterback and did so with a 14-0 first quarter advantage.

After that, the NC State offense struggled, and Doeren noted there were “a variety of reasons” for that, including lack of execution, penalties that created tough down and distances and good Boston College play on defense, especially on third downs.

• The NC State defense did a great job keeping NC State in the game, Doeren added. He thought the unit gave a tremendous response to the offense turning it over three times in the second half.

• On the fourth down play in the red zone that Boston College converted via a flag for pass interference with 18 seconds left, setting up the game-winner for the Eagles, Doeren went into a lengthy explanation of what happened and why he continued to feel that a flag should not have been thrown.

“The play that they ran, we practiced all week,” Doeren stated. “[NC State fourth-year junior linebacker] Drake Thomas made the play in practice all week. He knew the play that was coming, and I thought he made a terrific play. His timing, he broke on the football, had both hands extended. I thought he beat the receiver to the spot.

“He did everything that we could ask him to do. I’m really proud of him for making that play. At the end of that play we should have been out there with the ball on offense kneeling the ball down for a win, but that’s not how it ended.”

Doeren added that made the loss hard to swallow, and he was hurt for his senior class.

“You can call it an ugly win. I’ll take it all day long, man, but we didn’t get it,” Doeren said.

• Doeren noted that “of course we can” make less mistakes, coach better and make more plays.

• Special teams play stood out to Doeren, who went over a list of accomplishments against Boston College.

• NC State knew where Boston College receiver Zay Flowers was, and he still made plays on the defense, Doeren said, adding that Flowers is a special player.

“They battled back,” Doeren said of BC, “and you have to give them credit for that.”

• Discussing Louisville, Doeren noted they will have a Senior Day Saturday and have won 4 of 5 games.

The Cards’ defense brings a lot of pressure, is aggressive and force a lot of turnovers, Doeren noted.

• Offensively, Louisville has “very good personnel” in the backfield and fast receivers.

• Doeren concluded his opening statement adding that it is hard to focus considering the tragedy at Virginia.

Q&A Portion

• Dave Doeren does not meet with his players Monday since that’s a day off, but they will discuss the tragedy at Virginia on Tuesday. He plans to be transparent and speak from his heart, and he hopes his players will do that, too.

• Doeren also spoke from the heart when addressing the team Sunday about the Boston College loss.

“I told them I was in a lot of pain, too. I felt for them. I felt like we were robbed in the moment because we made the play in what I thought was a great play, and still do,” Doeren said.

The coach added there are opportunities in front of them to still have a great season, albeit not what they thought at the beginning of the season.

• Doeren acknowledged that this might be a good time to hit the road for a game.

• Looking back at the coaching from Saturday, Doeren noted that ultimately the blame starts with him.

“I stay up all night after a loss,” Doeren said. “What could have I done?”

His goal is to learn from what they should have done.

“At the end of the day, everything we did led to one play to win it and we made the play,” Doeren added. “Right? We did. You guys all saw it.

“Yeah, could we have eliminated that from happening with on fourth-and-1 at the 1-yard line? Could we have gotten into the end zone? I thought we called a good play. We didn’t block it well. A play that should have scored because we had enough blockers at the point of attack.

“Could we have called another play? Sure, we could have, and we still would have had to block it well. Maybe we would have, maybe we wouldn’t have. On that particular play, their nose guard won on that play, and that’s football. Sometimes you go up and make a play, and sometimes you don’t.”

• On freshman quarterback MJ Morris’ second-half turnovers, Doeren noted that expectations may have been too high because he had not made some of those earlier.

On one fumble, Morris in retrospect probably should have handed the football off on a read option, Doeren noted. Morris was trying to make a play and didn’t pull the football out well from the running back.

The interception was an underthrown pass.

“Of course he could have thrown a better pass there, that’s going to happen from time to time,” Doeren added. “He made some mistakes. Like I told him, ‘You’re human, too. You’re going to learn from the things you do and you’re going to get better from this.’ We don’t expect him to be perfect.”

• Doeren did not have any updates on injuries sustained during the game.

• ACC rules do not allow Doeren to comment on responses from the conference regarding officials’ calls.

• Doeren also said that they never considered going with quarterback Jack Chambers for a struggling Morris in the second half.

• Looking ahead to the Friday game vs. North Carolina on Nov. 25, Doeren noted the high school coaches in the state have made it clear they do not want college games on Friday, and both he and UNC’s Mack Brown agree that day belongs to the high schools.

“That’s above our decision-making,” Dave Doeren added. “Obviously that’s part of the television contract that we are in. It’d be great if it wasn’t a Friday game for those reasons, but it’s one of those things that I don’t control, Mack doesn’t control. Obviously, neither of us like it, but it doesn’t matter.”