TRANSCRIPT: Dave Doeren Talks Cards on ACC Teleconference

Mark BlankenbakerNovember 14, 2018

THE MODERATOR: We’re joined by Dave Doeren from NC State.

COACH DOEREN: I have had a good week here getting prepared for Louisville, and our guys really came back to work on Tuesday and had a great practice and excited about the way they’ve prepared, the way they’ve worked and bought into getting back to the fundamentals of the game of football, that felt like we didn’t do as well as we’re capable of in last week’s game. And it’s exciting to see the guys do that. They’re a resilient bunch of guys. They’re awesome guys to coach and excited about this next opportunity in a road game with Louisville who is obviously going through a tough situation, but I know there will be a lot of spirit and fight from their ball club. So look forward to that game.

Q. When you have kind of a deflating loss like that maybe the guys didn’t expect, didn’t see coming, what do you as a coach say to them to try to make sure it doesn’t have a hangover effect and you have this bounceback?
COACH DOEREN: I think the best thing you can do with anyone you’re working with is be honest and own the things that are yours and ask them to own the things that are theirs. And point out the things that are correctable. And then get together with the guys. And to me it’s opportunity coming up here to play another football game. And every week, whether we win or lose, we want to be better than we were the week before. And obviously we weren’t able to do that last week.

So you use it as an opportunity to grow as a coach and as an opportunity to grow as a player. And it’s not about blame. It’s about fixing things and getting things back to where we can win a football game.

Q. To get the offense back where it had been was it just fundamentals as you said or what have you been able to —
COACH DOEREN: There’s several things. We dropped five balls and a couple of them would have been really good catches but we’re capable of making really good catches and on the line of scrimmage I just didn’t think we had played as fast’s with have and guys were off target on some things and Wake Forest did a good job. So I mean part of it is the way they played. But we weren’t the same as we’ve been on our landmarks and our zone schemes and sustaining blocks and creating spaces for our running backs in the run game.

When you get five red zone possessions and get one touchdown and two of those three that you don’t score, you drop touchdown passes. I mean, that’s hard to say that we were doing the wrong things. We just gotta finish plays and that’s fundamental football. Blocking, catching, running, breaking tackles, leveraging the football and that’s what we focused on this week.

Q. When you’re playing a team that has an interim coach and is down a bunch of coaches on their staff, how do you just prepare for what challenges they might present for you, if they try and do anything different, or you just go by what you see on tape?
COACH DOEREN: I think there’s naturally going to be some adjusting that we have to do in the game. I mean, I would assume that with the new play caller coach Galloway that he’ll have some wrinkles. Their defensive coordinator hasn’t changed. So you expect to see the same types of things they’ve been doing.

I know they’re going to be very spirited. I know Lorenzo’s going to do everything he can to make football fun for those guys and be honest we’re doing the same thing here. We just want our guys to play the technique and execute the plays and have fun doing it. And however they come out in the game, you know, whether it’s pass at quarterback or one of the athletic quarterbacks that they have, we have to adjust and there will be things going on on the sideline that we have to do a good job with our guys and be able to play within the scheme and adjust to what they’re doing