NC State Wolfpack football head coach Dave Doeren had only met Charley Wiles a couple of times before he hired him as the team's defensive line coach.

It was an easy choice. Wiles had become one of the more well-known position coaches in the country after spending the past 23 seasons at Virginia Tech as the right-hand man of long-time and legendary Hokies defensive coordinator Bud Foster.

To the Virginia Tech faithful, Wiles was essential to Foster and the Hokies' iconic head coach Frank Beamer in creating the program's "Beamer Ball" system, which was centered around aggressive special teams and a stingy defense. It helped lead the Hokies to the 2000 BCS National Championship Game when the team arguably had the best defensive front in the country, tying for the most team sacks (58.0) in college football that season.

"Timing was in our favor," Doeren said. "Charley would still be there probably if he hadn't been asked to leave. We just got fortunate. Sometimes timing is everything when you're talking about hiring coaches. Sometimes you can't get a coach even though he may want to go because of his contract, and we were just fortunate to find a guy like that."

Wiles admits the "mixed" emotions about his return to Lane Stadium.

"It's more player-driven, no doubt this is about our players," Wiles said. "It's about the players. It's about NC State, our football team. And it's about Virginia Tech and their players. Certainly not about Coach Wiles.

"The players have been through a lot. Unbelievable how it changes on a daily basis. If that was Frank Beamer on the other side or something, that would be totally different. Or Bud Foster, from an emotional standpoint.

"Not having fans, it's different. So that plays a factor, I think, not having a full Lane Stadium."

Although nine months hardly compares to a 23-year history in Blacksburg that included one national championship appearance, four Orange Bowls, six Gator Bowls and one Sugar Bowl, Wiles feels right at home in his first season with the Wolfpack football team.

"They kind of knew me a little bit, and that always gives you a good feeling when you feel like you know somebody a little bit," Wiles said. "I did spend a lot of time recruiting those guys, so when you're doing that you do get to know the kids and get close to them.

"That helped us speed the process up. I think that they had a little bit of trust already there, and then we continue to build that every day."

It helps to start the season with the sweet taste of victory as NC State opened its schedule with an ACC win for the first time since 1989 in a 45-42 win over Wake Forest.

Although the Demon Deacons' offense was able to effectively move the ball throughout the game, the defensive line came up big in the right moments, including three sacks and six tackles for loss from the unit.

Considering the consistent disruptions of the offseason and fall camp, the defensive line coach was overall pleased with his position group's performance in the win.

"First of all, they moved school up so we only got a seven-day camp, which is the shortest camp ever," Wiles explained. "Then we kind of kept it a camp mentality through two to three more weeks, but it wasn't like you had them in the evening. You had them in the morning, we're a morning practice team.

"Then we get where it was time for our first scrimmage, and I've never seen any of these kids live because of spring ball, we only did five practices. We were going to return from spring break and get into the real meat and potatoes of our spring, which would have been three scrimmages. We didn't get any of that, of course.

"In our scrimmage, that was a limited number of plays because it was our first live work. It was more put the ball down. It wasn't as much situational stuff. It was limited. Kids got somewhere between 25 and 45 plays, and then we had an interruption here. We didn't have enough kids to practice, we had so many kids quarantined due to the contact tracing so we had a stoppage.

"Then it was like eight or nine days before we were able to return with a safe number and then we were doing limited practice.

"So you get into game week, and we returned one starter defensively, not on the D-line, back on a Monday of game week from quarantine. The preparation was different. It was scary, from a conditioning standpoint, playing a team with an up-tempo offense that is going to try to grind you up."

As for how Wiles has impacted the position group thus far despite the setbacks of a football season in a pandemic, Doeren could not be more pleased.

"He's doing great things with our young men," Doeren said. "He's a cultivator of chemistry in that room. Those guys play hard for him and I know he does everything he can to help them."

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