NC State Wolfpack football head coach Dave Doeren answered questions from media members Thursday leading up to the Pack's season opener against Wake Forest on Saturday, Sept. 19.
The Demon Deacons (0-1, 0-1 ACC) have won the last three meetings between the schools, but the Wolfpack won the three games leading up to the most recent streak.
Here were Doeren's final thoughts as the Pack prep for the Deacs:
This morning, a group of parents filed a petition to the governor’s office to be allowed to be in attendance Saturday. Are you behind them in seeing the restriction be overturned and letting them see their kids play?
"Absolutely. I understand there are rules and regulations and you don’t want to open up a Pandora’s Box for everybody but it seems like there should be a little flexibility.
"You see a bunch of people hanging out at a patio outside of a bar but you can’t have 500 parents in a 60,000 seat stadium. It doesn’t make a lot of sense.
"These kids have been through a lot. Their parents, like all of us who have kids, have watched them go through a lot. For most of their lives, they’ve been able to watch them play in person and I think that would be a great thing to let that happen.
"We are allowed to use at this time 50 tickets for our parents, so the seniority of our travel roster, we’ve gone from one year left to players with two years left. Just kind of down the line until we fill those 50 seats. That’s what we’re doing right now.
"Obviously, I would love to see them all in there. Hopefully that will happen for this game, but if not, I know they said they would reevaluate after September."
As of right now, how many players do you anticipate having available this Saturday and how does that compare to the lowest amount that you had at any time during camp?
"We had 105 guys today and that’s not all COVID related. Some guys are out with ankle sprains and things like that. That’s the highest we’ve been.
"When we started back after the 8-day break, we had 45 players at practice. We gained about 10 players back per day after that. A week later we were up to 84, after Sept. 1. We’re in a good place.
"For the most part, the 105 that we’ll have that are available to play have been able to practice all week. Nobody got out of quarantine yesterday and was totally out of shape, we haven’t had any of that. If there were, we wouldn’t put them out there. We feel good about the depth chart you guys have and they’ve all been at practice."
We talked to junior running back Ricky Person this week and he talked about how injuries almost drove him to quit. I know that’s a tough thing for coaches to address that, but how did you help him through that?
"We have four captains and each week I’ll have a game captain if someone is showing leadership on the team. Ricky will be our fifth captain for this game.
"It’s interesting you say that because that’s really why. He’s been through a lot physically and as an athlete. When you have things that prevent you from playing the sport you’ve been playing since you were five-years-old and now it’s not available to you, it’s really hard on them mentally. It’s hard on their personality, their confidence, their mental health.
"Ricky had a lot of those ups and downs due to things out of his control. What happens when you’re repetitively injured, you lose training time. You lose that eight weeks with [strength and conditioning coordinator Dantonio Burnette] Thunder, you lose 15 straight practices in the spring and it’s hard to develop, so that set him back.
"To his credit, he came back in January and has done an outstanding job, not only in the winter but keeping himself in shape over the quarantine that we had and then putting together a really solid fall camp where he didn’t miss a single day. I’m happy for him and excited for what that will do for him personally, mentally.
"I know as a former athlete when I hurt my Achilles, it’s hard. It’s really hard when you’re taken away from your teammates and the meetings.
"As far as helping him through it, I think it was a joint effort. There was a lot of people in this building that helped him, from the coaching staff to the strength staff, to his parents, our trainers, mental health, you name it.
"These players have a lot of people around them that are here for them and want to help them through these situations. "
What’s been the most difficult or challenging thing to manage this fall camp?
"I think the day-to-day change in schedule was the hardest thing for the players. They’re just used to routine this time of year.
"For me, it was the contact tracing piece that was the hardest. You’d have one kid who was asymptomatic eat lunch and three guys might have been around him while they ate, they pass their COVID test, they feel great and they can’t come to the building for 14 days. That happened a lot over that period when the students came back, there were a lot of guys.
"As you guys know, there are symptoms that are basically the same symptom for almost everything out there we could have, which you have to bring the kid out and ‘Who’s he been around’ until they pass a test to show they don’t have it. From a runny nose to a scratchy throat to a headache, you name it. My recollection of fall camp was I had a headache every day as a player. That was hard.
"Obviously, our drills are based on our numbers, how many reps you’re going to take is based on our numbers. You never want to push these guys to a point where they get soft tissue injuries because we’re doing too much.
"That was really challenging for us as staff and that was something that we embraced, to be honest. We talked about embracing the suck. That’s really what it was at some times and the guys were good. Just try to find solutions and not be someone who sits around and tries to be more negative in an already negative situation."
Considering the disruptions in fall camp and starting the season with an ACC opponent, how do you feel about the time spent on situational reps such as two-minute drills in the weeks leading up to the opener?
"We’ve spent a lot of time, I would say in the last 10 days, on situational football. When we came out of that 8-day thing and only had 45 guys there, we couldn’t do things like that. We really had to wait until we had enough players, which was really about a week later around Sept. 7. So that was about 10 days ago.
"Every single day [since[, we’ve had a two-minute drill, we’ve worked on third down, we’ve worked on red zone, we’ve worked on game-ending situations.
"So, are we where we want to be? I think we’ve done as much as we can. I think we need to go play football now and kind of see where we’re at, see how much is absorbed and see how they handle it under the lights."
On depth
"The depth chart you have is where we’re at and we feel good about that depth chart. We need to see the guys play now. We need to tackle and catch and hang on to the ball, protect the quarterback, all of those.
"There are some guys on that depth chart that haven’t been back for two weeks, they’ve been back for 10 days. We don’t expect them to be able to play a whole game, we’re going to have to rotate at those positions. I’m not going to put a young man out there and ask him to do something he’s not ready to do.
"We will use depth as our friend in some position groups. There’s other spots like [fifth-year senior guard] Joe Sculthorpe, [redshirt junior center] Grant Gibson and Ricky Person, they’ve played the entire camp and they’re in great shape. That rotation in those spots, for example, we feel great about that. Other spots, we’re going to have to use our depth."
Considering how things played out the last time Wake Forest played in Carter-Finley, have you guys addressed what it would mean to give it back to them on your home field?
"We had a team meeting on Sunday to start the week and talked about the rivalry. As we know, it’s the third-longest standing consecutive played rivalry in the country. Based on what happens here with some of these games out west, they may not play those rivalries and we could end up being the longest standing consecutive game. It’s been played since 1910, there’s a lot of history in it.
"They beat us three years in a row and prior to that, we beat them three times in a row. Both teams have had their opportunities and, for the most part, they’ve been pretty close games. I know last year’s wasn’t.
"Our guys know what this game is about. It’s an in-state game. It’s an opportunity to play a team down the road that we have a lot of respect for. They have a good program. [Wake Forest] coach [Dave] Clawson and staff do a great job and we look forward to competing against them. "
A lot of times, coaches make hand signals for loud stadiums but because it’s going to be an empty stadium and will be so quiet, do you keep doing that because you don’t want the opponent to hear your calls and pick up on patterns?
"Well it’s not empty, we’ve got some sweet cutouts in there right now. I think there’s like 600 of them and I’m proud to say my dog is one of them, it’s pretty awesome.
"We have hand signals because our guys have to be able to communicate assuming they can’t hear each other. I know this is a unique year but if we’re trying to yell something to the far side of the field, even with no crowd noise, that corner might not be able to hear us. We have to be able to hand signal. Same thing from quarterback to wideout and it allows you to play faster from sideline to player as well."
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