The college football world moves at warped speed, and Louisville at NC State this Saturday is a good example of it.
The Wolfpack won a combined 18 games in 2017 and 2018, and needs two win over their last three games to become bowl eligible this season. The Cardinals won a combined 17 games in 2016 and 2017, before bottoming out last year at 2-10. The last time the two teams met, NC State crushed Louisville 52-10 last year.
New coach Scott Satterfield seemingly has Louisville back on track.
“You are seeing coaches getting fired in their second season, halfway through it,” NCSU head coach Dave Doeren said. “Scott is doing a great job and their staff is doing a great job. They obviously had talent. You can see that. He didn’t walk into as bad a situation as people thought. They have really good skill players.”
Satterfield is aided by former NC State offensive line coach Dwayne Ledford, who is the offensive coordinator and offensive line coach for the Cardinals.
“They are running the stretch, which is the same base play that we run,” Doeren said. “Their formations are sometimes the same. They are using more tight ends that we use. That is a lot different.”
Doeren has heard a lot of questions about defending the speed of Louisville running backs and wide receivers, and if Micale Cunningham is running the football at quarterback.
“Every week in the ACC you play against good skill,” Doeren said.
NC State has had a rash of injuries that has affected nearly every unit on the field. Add in breaking in a new quarterback and it’s a difficult combination. Doeren was able to help rebuild the NCSU football program after a difficult 3-9 first year in 2013, and is now going to do it again. He has a few coaches he talks to when he wants to get some other opinions.
Doeren is a descendent of the Hayden Fry coaching tree, who only had four losing records from 1979-to-1998 at Iowa. Former Wisconsin coach Bret Bielema played and coached under Fry, and Doeren worked for Bielema.
Doeren also worked under Joe Glenn at Montana, who won 200 college football games, and former Kansas coach Mark Mangino, who helped turn around the Jayhawks.
Former Kansas State coach Bill Snyder is arguably the greatest turn-around artist in college history for his work with the Wildcats (19 bowl berths), and he also was a former Fry assistant coach from 1979-1988. Bielema also worked under Snyder and under Barry Alvarez at Wisconsin.
During tough times like this season, there is no shortage of people Doeren can rely on.
“I’ve always talked to guys that I worked for,” Doeren said. “Coach Bielema is a guy that I go to, and he grew up in that with Coach Snyder and Coach Fry. He’s been a great voice for me.
“Coach Glenn, who I worked for at Montana, who has been a really successful head coach, has been a great voice for me. You just go back to people that you respect and love in the profession. Then there are a lot of coaches that I worked with.”
Doeren can’t control the injuries, but he does know areas that NC State has to improve over the last three regular season games. Doeren simply said that the coaches will try to insulate the players from the outside world criticisms, but “we are not happy.”
“Offensively, finishing every play with the football,” Doeren said. “Every drive with a kick, whether it is a punt, a field goal or obviously an extra point.
“Defensively, just tackling. Those two basic fundamentals of the game have to be better. If you tackle better, you create takeaways. If you stop the run, you force third and long and then you get interception opportunities.”
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