10/12/2020 football Edit

Dave Doeren wishes NC State football could play Duke more often

Matt Carter • TheWolfpackCentral

Editor

Only Earle Edwards has been the football coach for the NC State Wolfpack longer than Dave Doeren, who is in his eighth season at the helm, tying Beattie Feathers (1944-51) for the second-longest tenure in school history.

Edwards coached for 17 years from 1954-70.

Feathers did not compete against Duke in his inaugural season, but starting in 1945 the Wolfpack would play the Blue Devils every year, including for all 17 of Edwards’ tenure, until 2004.

Saturday will be just the second time Doeren has faced Duke, and the first at Carter-Finley Stadium. It’s a fact the head coach wishes could change going forward, somehow.

“You'd like for every recruiting class to have a chance to play every team in the league,” Doeren said. “The way our rotation is set up currently, we play UNC every year and then we'll play one of the other teams every seven years. I just don't think that's fair, not just because they're down the street, but when you come to play in the ACC, you should play every team.

"It'd be great if you could play home and away against every team, particularly when you're talking about a team in the Triangle. I mean it's pretty crazy to think that you could come to NC State and never play Duke your entire career — and that's happened for multiple players.”

Doeren noted all three Triangle-based ACC programs have a proximity that is conducive for rivalries.

“You have a team that's within 30 minutes,” Doeren noted. “We go in every grocery store and you see NC State, you see Duke, you see UNC, their stuff is everywhere and yet we don't play them.

"To me it's just a natural rivalry game, it makes sense geographically to play a team that's that close to you and in your own league. It's kind of a common-sense deal, in my opinion."

However, it has been since 2013 — Doeren’s first season at NC State — that the Wolfpack last played Duke. The coach noted that he has watched them play over the years and feels like he has a good understanding of the program under head coach David Cutcliffe, who took over play-calling duties for the Blue Devils this season.

“I've watched Duke on defense for the last seven years,” Doeren said. “I've watched Duke on offense for the last seven years. And even though Cut wasn't calling plays, maybe, I know that his hand was in it.”

In preparing for this version of the Blue Devils that is 1-4 in the ACC, Doeren noted that he saw a well-coached, disciplined team that has a disruptive defensive line but is trying to overcome a rash of turnovers, 19 to be exact, to begin the year.

“I know their kids are smart, and they're tough,” Doeren said. “And they will play really hard against us.”

NC State Wolfpack receiver Porter Rooks — NC State freshman Porter Rooks had a strong performance at Virginia with three receptions for 51 yards. (ACC media)

Other NC State Football Tidbits

• NC State should return at least one player this week, when junior nickel Tyler Baker-Williams makes his return from the second 14-day quarantine that he has been caught in despite never testing positive for COVID-19.

“That's the hard part of this thing with contact tracing, so he's not going to be able to play 100 snaps,” Doeren said, alluding to Virginia’s offensive play total against the Pack Saturday. “We're going to have to have a rotation at nickel, but it's great to have him back.

“He was playing as good as any guy on our roster in training camp, so it's a nice thing to get him back in the lineup.”

Doeren also confirmed that it is unlikely that redshirt freshman safety Khalid Martin, who was taken off the field at Lane Stadium in Blacksburg, Va., against Virginia Tech by ambulance following a scary collision, will return this season. Doeren did say that Martin was making the progress they had hoped to see.

“He is not done for his career, to our knowledge, but it's going take a while,” the coach admitted.

• Against Virginia, NC State was able to stop the Cavs on the 1-yard line for a goal-line stand. That came a week after the defense did the same thing versus Pittsburgh.

A major component to the goal-line defense is redshirt freshman defensive tackle Joshua Harris, who teams up with junior Alim McNeill and redshirt freshman C.J. Clark to give what Doeren noted was “1,000 pounds almost” of a “stout” interior defensive presence.

“We’re proud of Josh,” Doeren said. “Josh went through an injury last year, and has worked really hard to get himself into a position where he can play. He’s found a role in our defense, and he’s really taken advantage of it.”

• Freshman receiver Porter Rooks had his best performance in a Wolfpack uniform when he caught three passes for 51 yards Saturday. Doeren sees the highly touted rookie — he was a top-200 recruit nationally per Rivals.com — coming out of his shell and growing more comfortable.

“It was the first game I've seen him play where he had a different way about him,” Doeren said. “He was a very aggressive player, I thought, in that game. Not that he's not a consistent player, but his personality came out a little bit Saturday.

“It was fun to see that, and I told him that I saw him grow up in that game. He had a lot of energy about him. He usually shows up, doesn't say a ton and then plays really hard, and he had some emotion to him Saturday.”