Emotions will be running high for NC State football, which isn’t all that unusual, but there are many twists and turns with this particular opener.
NC State plays at East Carolina at 12 p.m. on ESPN, where the tradeoff is getting terrific national exposure, but the temperature will be hot. The Wolfpack will finally unleash what they’ve learned through what felt like endless practices since last playing North Carolina on Nov. 26 2021.
NC State coach Dave Doeren held his end of game week media session Thursday, and talked about the various emotions of playing in a season opener.
“There are just things you don’t know and you have to be ready to adjust,” Doeren said. “It’s the unknowns, but not just from your opponent. You have guys who haven’t played.”
Another part of the allure is welcoming back several players who had season-ending injuries last year. Redshirt junior linebacker Payton Wilson hasn’t played a game since the second game of last year in the loss against Mississippi State.
“We limited him [during fall camp], but he did do tackling,” Doeren said. “He didn’t take every rep. All these guys coming off major injuries or guys with a lot of reps, we looked at how many reps they needed. He got what he needed.”
Doeren gave some serious foreshadowing to the depth chart during his Monday press conference, which was released Tuesday. There weren’t many surprises but junior receiver Keyon Lesane showed his value during fall camp.
“He’s been very consistent day-in, day-out,” Doeren said. “The biggest thing you look for is not just ability but dependability. He had a good spring and took that into the summer. In fall camp, he was one of the most productive guys on a daily basis. I’m excited for him.”
There is also the subplot of NC State special assistant to the head coach Ruffin McNeill seeing the ECU visiting locker room for the first time ever. The former Pirates defensive back took over his alma mater in 2010, and went 42-34 with a 30-18 mark in league play — four years in CUSA and two years in AAC. ECU went to four bowl games during that six-year stretch.
McNeill was fired following the 2015 season, where the Pirates went 5-7 overall. He went to Virginia for a year before he was reunited with his former offensive coordinator Lincoln Riley at Oklahoma from 2017-19.
He left the Sooners after the 2019 season, but then took his current job at NC State in July 2020, which was during a time that Doeren reinvented his program. NC State had gone 4-8 overall and 1-7 in the ACC in 2019, and there isn’t an assistant coach left from Doeren’s first seven years in Raleigh.
“I had another head coach prior with Ted Roof,” Doeren said. “It was great for me to have someone like that. It was the first time for me as a head coach, but then Ted left [for Appalachian State]. That 2019 season, I didn’t have that.”
Doeren talked about his father’s battle with Alzheimer’s prior to the Holiday Bowl. McNeill has also discussed his 88-year-old father’s suffering with demential in their hometown of Lumberton, N.C. Doeren and McNeill have known each other since Doeren was a graduate assistant at USC in 1998-99, and McNeill was at Fresno State in 1999.
“That was a unique piece about it that I hadn’t really thought about, but I did think about him and his dad,” Doeren said. “At that time [in 2020], my dad wasn’t as far along and it has accelerated quite a bit in the last 24 months. It definitely gives us common ground on another thing we do.
“Ruffin is great to have for so many reasons.”
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