NC State Wolfpack College Football Pregame Quote, 11/25/2019

I’m excited for our seniors this week, and obviously to have rivalry week and senior day at the same time for 12 guys that have been through a lot and done a lot for our program. It’s always an emotional day for the young men and their families. For me as a coach, it’s always a very, very proud day to be with those guys in their last college football game. As I’ve said before, it’s a day that I remember very well as a player. It’s the only game that I remember almost every snap of, as long as that was now.

For these guys, even for the ones who have been for a shorter time like Tabari Hines, they have made a lasting impression on me and on our staff: Emanuel McGirt, Jr., and what he’s been through, William Brown III as one of our walk-on seniors and a great young man to be around, the Dabbs twins (Tyler and Will) who are getting ready to go off into the world‚Äì one of them is going to be a doctor, Stephen Griffin, Tabari Hines, Deonte Holden‚Äì a sixth-year senior, Kishawn Miller, Jarius Morehead, Larrell Murchison, Jackson Quiggle and James Smith-Williams. Those are 12 very special young men to our staff, our team and me.

We get to play our final home game against our rival. It’s great to have a rivalry this close together. Every one of these games that I’ve been a part of has been heated, and I know how much we want to win and how much they want to win. I know what the fans are like‚Äì the whole deal. For our fans, we will be out there in all red, and we want you wearing your red for us cheering these young men on and honoring our senior class the right way. We look forward to having you do that, and I know how much this game matters in the state.

With that being said, I think for us as a football team, it’s about putting together four quarters of football and finding a way within the good that we’ve done‚Äì like the second half last week‚Äì of being consistent throughout of executing, playing hard and not giving people things. In that football game we just lost, we won the turnover margin. That was improvement. It’s just keeping ourselves from giving up the explosive plays, which is a challenge against North Carolina’s offense.

They’re obviously playing well with Sam Howell at quarterback, and their tailback is a very impressive young man. Their receiving corps has made a lot of plays for them throughout the season. I think Phil Long does a nice job schematically with what they do. Defensively, they’re very sound. I think Chazz Surratt might be the most impressive guy, considering he was a quarterback a year ago and now he has 100 tackles as a linebacker. I think it’s really a unique story for them.

It’s going to be a great football game. We really look forward to the opportunity to compete and go out there and play. I know our players do too.

On how much Doeren has watched UNC this season on TV:

I’ve watched them every week. With our schedule being what it was, I’ve had a chance to watch a lot of college football. We’ve had a lot of crossover opponents that they’ve had, so we’ve been able to watch them, whether it was through coaches’ film or watching the live copy at home. I’m very aware of what they’ve been doing throughout the season.

On North Carolina playing in tight games:

It’s a four-quarter game. It doesn’t matter what your record is. It doesn’t matter what your injuries are. None of that matters. I mean, when you look at last year, they were a team that hadn’t won a lot of games and took us to overtime, and we went up there a couple years ago when they had 10 wins and we were fighting to get into a bowl game and we killed them. It’s one of those games. You’ve got to show up and play. Nobody cares what happened in the previous 11 weeks. It’s about what happens on that Saturday.

On the second half at Georgia Tech:

It’s very important. I think our guys showed a lot of heart. I thought coming off of an implosion where we were gaining momentum in the second quarter with a field goal, a three and out, getting the ball back with two timeouts left and 90 seconds left to do something and knowing we get the ball back again at the beginning of the third quarter, and to have the costly fumble on the punt return and they score, we went in in a tough spot. To see the resolve of the guys and how they came back and held them to seven points in the second half, and offensively had a chance to win it, there were a lot of positives in that.

Devin Leary continues to get better and better, and so does his confidence. He stood up‚Äì I mentioned this in postgame in the locker room‚Äì and talked to his teammates in the locker room as a leader. They’re playing hard for him now, and they believe in him. I think that’s something we obviously didn’t have early when we were going through all the stuff we were going through. That was a huge positive. Now, it’s growing from that confidence we gained in the second half and knowing that we’ve got to put together four quarters like that.

On the run game at Georgia Tech:

Our offense is not built to throw 60 times a game. That’s not what we recruited all these guys for. We want to be balanced; you guys know that. We want our run game to set up our pass game. We want to take advantage of light boxes when we get them. We want people to have to put numbers in the box, which makes it easier to throw. There have been games where doing that wouldn’t have given us a chance to comeback because we’re down 21. That’s who we want to be. We want to be physical, win the line of scrimmage, take pride in pancaking people and get backs to the second level and let them do their thing so that corners and safeties have to tackle your backs. That’s a part of how we’ve built this team, and we have good talent in the backfield to feature.

In the midst of our season, we lost a lot of our tight ends. That hurt our run game some. Now Cary Angeline, and I think Thomas Ruocchio, showed a lot of things in that last game that help us. We had to move Derrick Eason to play some tight end. Eason came in and did some good things for us. It’s allowed him to have a role, but it’s a lot different than when you had Dylan Autenrieth and Dylan Parham. We’ve had to figure out each week, with pieces being pulled out, how we’re going to do this. I thought last week we were able to do it pretty well in the run game. That sets up our quarterback for a lot of things because as you saw last year and the year before with Ryan Finley, when people have to put numbers in there, it opens up a lot of RPO game for us.

On Thanksgiving:

It is Thanksgiving week, so we’re going to take time to be thankful with our players. We don’t have school Wednesday or Thursday, so today and tomorrow are normal days for the guys. Since we are a morning practice team, we don’t have to come in as early with the guys to get them a little more rest, but we still stay in the morning so our routine isn’t completely different for the players.

On Thursday after practice, we’ll cut our developmental guys loose to go home. They’ll rejoin us for the game Saturday. Our travel guys that are local will be able to go home and see their families, and Thursday night we take the whole team to the Angus Barn’s pavilion. It’s an awesome feast. The guys look forward to it. I know I do. Hopefully the game pants will fit on Saturday.

On playing UNC with Mack Brown as coach vs. Larry Fedora:

I’m going to compete hard against whoever that guy is, and I’ll do the same with Mack Brown. I have great respect for him. I always have and I always will. When you put the ball down it doesn’t matter who is on the other sideline. You’re coaching your guys and you want to win.