Coach Dave Doeren Virginia Tech Game Review
NC State football coach Dave Doeren has had a chance to review the video of Saturday's 45-24 loss at Virginia Tech and needless to say, he wasn't happy with what he saw on either side of the ball.
Here is what Doeren had to say about the game and the Wolfpack's effort in it during his regular weekly media conference on Monday ...
"As far as the game goes, it always starts with me. We did not perform the way that we thought we would. I’ve got to do a better job preparing our team.
"We knew it would be a game of adjustments, not knowing with all the things that were out there, who might play, who might coach. We knew they had a new defensive coordinator, so not having film on them would be a first quarter where we needed to hang in there and get used to what they were going to do and adjust accordingly. It didn’t feel like we did a good job there as a staff or the guys even handling some of that.
"For me, it’s an opportunity to learn from that situation. It’s a loss for sure, but it’s also an opportunity to get better. As a staff, as a team, we knew it was a game where we needed to win on the road with turnover margin and be like we were on the line of scrimmage the previous week. We were not. Virginia Tech beat us up front with six sacks in our backfield, and we turned the football over twice at quarterback. Because of that we had a tough start."
"Defensively, we did not stop the run. For us to be good on defense we need to be disruptive. We need to be in the backfield. We need to create the takeaways, and those things did not take place, obviously, in the game.
"I thought our specialists, Chris Dunn had his career long, hit a 53-yard field goal. It was great for him to get that. Everything about it; the snap, hold, protection and kick. Trenton Gill had a 47 yard net. Thayer (Thomas) had a good punt return for us. Those were good things that happened in the game."
'As a staff, it’s obviously an opportunity with this football team to learn, to grow and to continue to fight and grow from an experience that obviously we don’t want to relive. We’ll do that. These are experienced coaches. They’re great young men. They’re prideful young men. They care about each other in this university. We all hate losing. More than that it’s about giving ourselves an opportunity to win and being physical and going out there and competing for four quarters and being coachable and doing a good job with adjustments.
"This week, it’s all about overcoming what we just went through, moving on and having a great day. It’s a long season and there’s a lot of opportunities in front of us. I know this team has been through a lot, and they’ll fight and stick together and fight even harder.
"Offensively, I do think we ran the football efficiently. I thought our backs were physical. We had one negative play in the backfield in the running game. The rest of them were very efficient runs, some explosive runs. Our red zone offense continues to score. I thought Devin (Leary) came in off the bench and moved our offense and scored a couple of drives for us.
On defense, our third down defense was something we wanted to improve and did, but it starts with stopping the run. That’s an area where not having Payton (Wilson) and Tanner (Ingle) hurts, but schematically we’ve got to do a better job with players just shedding blocks and holding edges and tackling. So, there’s a lot to work on, and we look at it as a great opportunity to do that."
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