North Carolina State University Athletics
Dave Doeren Press Conference - September 15
9/15/2014 12:00:00 AM | Football
Opening Statement:
Its good to be 3-0 and great to get a road win, especially with the way that we played. It all starts on the line of scrimmage, and I really felt like both sides of the ball dominated the line of scrimmage, running the football the way we did. 53 carries, 315 yards and basically six yards of carry versus the other side they had 27 carries for seven yards, a 2.6 yard average.
We had 14 explosive plays on our offense; what we call explosive plays are runs over 10 or passes over 20. We had 14; they only had five. We made 10 plays in their backfield and they had three in ours and one that Jacoby should have thrown the ball away on the sprint out. That was the only sack of the game when he ran out of bounds on a sprint out pass. We were 6-6 in the red zone and we found somebody down there once on defense called them to a field goal.
First down offense continues to be an asset, were averaging five yards on the season. We were 5.2 on the first down of that game and on the third down both sides of the ball were effective. We were 70 percent on offense and 63 percent on defense. We played a ton of guys; a lot of guys got valuable playing time in that game. Clay Nichols got his first carries. Ben Grazen, a guy that works so hard for us on the scout teams, was able to get in. Everybody played that was on the trip for the most part. It was fun but now we get to come back home for our last non-conference game of the season.
We're having a big field media this week for our parents and families. Its pride week for us; our leadership council picked that word for us as a football team. I think that's a great word to have for our last non-conference game leading up to a conference opener against such a good opponent. This is a great week for us to focus on ourselves, and things we need to get better at. We've talked all off-season, summer and fall camp about closing a gap between out competition we need to beat, be relevant, and where we were in the beginning of the season and this is one of those weeks where you can do that. It's not a week where you look forward; it's a week you look inside.
We're playing a team that's 2-1. They won two in a row, beating a good Furman team last week. Presbyterian they are a 4-3 team and play a lot of guys near the line of scrimmage. Their quarter is defense, and they pack it in. They put everyone up there and the safeties are down in the box and will see if they can cover you. They're a spread option team on offense. They have a big receiver that's averaging 14 yards a catch; not the same as Georgia Southern but more like Clemson offensively with jet motions. They utilize a lot of jet motion in their offense.
I think the big focus for us is on our individual improvement and within the team. I told them in the locker room you cant get ready to play the conference schedule we have and ever think that any week isn't the biggest week on your schedule. Its an internal look at ourselves; trying to close gaps and trying to chase people that beat us last year and get in a position where we can beat them and be a relevant team.
On playbook this year versus last year:
Were able to be balanced, which we weren't always able to do. I don't think people were expecting our passing game and understand why we went to it. It's hard throwing a football with people attacking at him (the quarterback) and last year we couldn't capitalize on those looks and were able to do that now.
We have to honor Jacoby and he's so accurate right now and hopefully stays that way. You have to honor where we put receivers because he'll just throw it and the guys will catch it and run and that's as good as a run pass. Guys have to honor where the alignments are and opens up the run game and then we have our jets and our misdirections and the ability to play action off of those things.
We just couldn't throw the football last year and it was very hard to try and create as many different ways as you could but we weren't able to do it whether it was a compaction issue, a quarterback issue or a line change because of injuries up front. We're able to be balanced because we can throw the ball around and our receivers are playing a lot better.
On consistency of offensive line:
It helps a lot when those five guys get to play together and really we are playing six now because Tony (Creecy) is really taking it in there. They get to know each other, they play with each other, and they know what that guy is going to do and how he would play off of his block. It's a really tight unit and it helps when you see guys getting better.
Last year in game three, Joe Thuney played three different positions by now. We had a totally different tackle plan and were on our second quarterback and it was just different. I do think being able to throw the football does help our offensive line; it takes some of the pressure off of them. The way Coach Canada is doing it with the run game there's a lot of different things for the defense to have to worry about so you cant just run up and blitz. It helps having the balance for the offensive line so people can't just pinpoint what's happening.
On rotation of running backs:
All three of them are running hard and they all have big roles in the game. I think Coach Kitchings has a good feel for when his guys do well and he uses them. It's a long year and we don't have a bye until game nine, which is different than a lot of teams in the league that have already had a bye week. We have to make sure we use the depth to get us to where we want to be over the course of the season.
On punt returner change:
Its disappointing when Bra'Lon has been so good for us and were going to talk as a staff about whether to make a change or not. Obviously he was back-pedaling to catch balls behind him instead of running, getting square and getting underneath it, which is the basic fundamental of catching a punt. We now have to get back into practice and see if we get back to normal and if not Bo Hines will be our returner. Bo is very capable, so it will be one of those two guys.
On improvement in red zone:
We have an accurate quarterback and we can run the football.
On going back to facing a spread option offense:
There's a lot of carry over from game one and game two. It's kind of a blend of those two systems. They (Presbyterian) have a different quarterback than those two teams have but similar types of run plays and schemes where you have a jet coming out on one end and a different play coming out the other end. They do a nice job of pulling your defense in two directions, so you have to be sound and make sure you have good edges so the ball cane get outside your leverage and then we have to tackle like we did last week. We have to be really good with our pursuit of tackle and if we miss a tackle turning it back to the pursuit and the pursuit making a difference. We did that last week and have to continue to do it.
