North Carolina State University Athletics
Wolfpack Seeks Faster Start against ODU
9/5/2014 12:00:00 AM | Football
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RALEIGH, N.C. - An old football coaches’ axiom claims that teams improve the most between games one and two. NC State head coach Dave Doeren hopes that often repeated cliché will indeed come to fruition when the Wolfpack (1-0) entertains Old Dominion (1-0) Saturday afternoon at 6 p.m.
The Wolfpack Sports Network begins its pregame coverage from Carter-Finley Stadium at 4 p.m.
To be sure, Doeren would have preferred his team play better in the first half of last week’s comeback 24-23 win over Georgia Southern – a game in which the Pack trailed 17-3 at halftime – but he also believes many benefits can be derived from a dramatic fourth quarter rally early in the season.
“I think that was huge on a lot of fronts,” Doeren said. “It’s well documented how many games we lost in the fourth quarter last year, so to get in one and win and make clutch throws, catches and stops when it mattered most was important.”
This week, NC State will discard its traditional red and white colors in favor of sleek black and gray uniforms that have been specially designed by Adidas. But on the field, the Wolfpack will be trying to slow down a red hot quarterback. Old Dominion senior Taylor Heinicke has thrown for more yards and touchdowns than any active quarterback in college football. To put Heinicke’s numbers into perspective, one needs only to compare his production to one of the Wolfpack’s all-time greats.
Through the first three years of his career, Philip Rivers amassed 8,994 yards with 61 touchdown passes. In his first three years, Heinicke passed for 11,483 yards and 102 scores. Yes, most of Heinicke’s numbers were posted against mostly Division 1-AA competition, but more than 11,000 yards passing in just three years is difficult to ignore.
We’ll learn more this season since ODU is in its first year as an FBS member. The Monarchs play nothing but Division 1-A competition the rest of the way in 2014.
“He was probably the most exciting quarterback at their level until they moved up this year,” said Doeren. “The guy’s a really, really good player. He doesn’t throw a lot of picks, throws a lot of touchdown passes, understands their offense and just has a lot of savvy.”
Heinicke engineers an offense that closely resembles the spread attack initially made famous by Mike Leach at Texas Tech a decade ago. After the Monarchs lull defenses to sleep by throwing short, intermediate and long routes, they’ll sneak in quick-hitting running plays that are especially effective against defensive fronts that are desperately trying to rush upfield in an attempt to get pressure on the quarterback.
In last week’s 41-28 triumph over Hampton, Old Dominion rushed for 188 yards with 137 of those yards coming from tailback Gerard Johnson. Heinicke finished 29-of-40 for 281 yards, with three touchdowns and two interceptions.
After facing the Georgia Southern option attack last week, Wolfpack safety Hakim Jones welcomes the opportunity to go up against a totally different style of offense this weekend.
“They’re a pass first team and have a couple of good receivers,” Jones said. “We do a good job of defending the pass and played the pass well in camp against Jacoby. We feel like we’ll do well.”
Jacoby, as in Jacoby Brissett, will try to build on his opening week performance as NC State’s quarterback. Just like the rest of his team, Brissett got off to a slow start against Georgia Southern before finishing with a flurry, hitting 14 of his last 16 throws with three touchdowns.
“He needed to make a mistake and bounce back from it,” Doeren said, referring to Brissett’s first half interception thrown last week. “He got in a rhythm and got going after that. I just think he started doing what he’s coached to do. He wasn’t pressing, that’s for sure. He looked like he was having fun.”
If Doeren has a ‘bucket list’ for this week’s game, two of the goals would be to limit big plays by the opposition, while making a few more ‘plus plays’ on offense. Of Georgia Southern’s 438 total yards on offense last Saturday, 261 came on just six plays. On the flip side, the Wolfpack produced just four explosive plays (of 20 yards or more), falling well short of the desired team goal of 10.
Of course, the overall numbers will improve dramatically on Saturday if the Pack is simply more productive at the beginning of the game.
As far as one NC State veteran is concerned, the number one point of emphasis for this game is obvious.
“We definitely need to come out faster than what we did,” said senior offensive tackle Rob Crisp. “We had a lot of true freshmen and redshirt freshmen that played in our first game, so now that they have that feel for game situations, I think they’ll be a lot more relaxed going into game two.”
A total of 10 true freshman saw time in game one, while 20 players overall played in a college football game for the very first time.
Wolfpack Sports Network coverage of the first ever meeting between NC State and Old Dominion begins with the Mathews Motors Countdown to Kickoff at four p.m. In hour two of the pregame show, shortly after five o’clock, color analyst and former Wolfpack All-American Johnny Evans fields questions from fans on ‘Ask the Analyst.’ Questions to Johnny can be sent on Twitter @packradio, or by clicking here.
The Dave Doeren TV Show can be seen Sunday night at 11:30 p.m. on WRAL TV-5 in Raleigh and on WILM in Wilmington. A stream of the show is also available each Monday on Gopack.com. This year’s show includes questions from fans using Twitter. To forward a question to coach Doeren, use hashtag #DoerenTV.
For other stations and networks airing the Dave Doeren TV Show, go here.
