NC State Wolfpack football coach Dave Doeren went 8-3 in the regular season and won a program-record seven ACC wins in his eighth season in Raleigh.

For the third time in the past four years, the Pack finished the regular season with eight victories. NC State is now bowl eligible for the sixth time during Doeren's tenure. The Wolfpack head coach is considered to be on the shortlist of candidates for ACC Coach of the Year, including Notre Dame's Brian Kelly and Miami's Manny Diaz.

The Wolfpacker staff ranks Doeren's top three coaching jobs during his time at NC State thus far:

3. 2017

It’s easy to look back on the 2017 season and think about what could’ve been.

Had NC State found a way to beat Wake Forest in Winston Salem in the second-to-last game of the schedule, the Pack may have even made a long shot case to deserve a bid in one of the New Year’s Six bowls. Instead, the Wolfpack finished the regular season with an 8-4 record and went on to crush Arizona State 52-31 in the Sun Bowl.

When you look back on the 2017 season, however, most of the disappointment wasn’t Doeren’s fault.

There should be no points deducted for losing to Top 10 squads Notre Dame and Clemson. The Pack was manhandled by the Irish in South Bend without star running back Nyheim Hines but pushed the Tigers to the brink one week later in Carter-Finley Stadium in a 38-31 heartbreaker.

NC State lost to South Carolina in a fluky 35-28 season opener in which the Wolfpack more than doubled the total yards of the Gamecocks 504-246. Then a goal-line fumble by then-freshman wide receiver Emeka Emezie in the final minutes of the game prevented a Pack comeback against Wake Forest.

Those moments sting when looking back at a team that easily could have finished with 10 wins considering all of the future NFL talent on that roster.

Doeren had his best team in 2017. A 10-win season would have been enough to be considered his premier coaching job, but the 9-4 campaign was still a special season nonetheless.

2. 2014

Similar to 2020, 2014 was a bounce-back season of sorts.

NC State didn’t win a single conference game in Doeren’s first year in 2013. The Wolfpack followed it up with an 8-5 campaign in 2014, including the second-year head coach’s first three ACC wins.

Two of which came against in-state rivals Wake Forest and North Carolina, the latter securing Doeren’s first bowl bid with the Pack.

NC State finished off the year on a high note with a 34-27 victory over Central Florida in the St. Petersburg Bowl.

Looking back, the Wolfpack had plenty of NFL talent on the roster, but most of the future Pack Pros were underclassmen at that point. Doeren earned his first winning season with the Wolfpack in 2014 and built the foundation of what the program would become in the latter half of the decade.

1. 2020

Coming off of a 4-8 campaign in 2019, expectations were low for NC State in 2020.

The Wolfpack finished 11th out of 15 teams in the ACC Preseason Media Poll. Longtime News & Observer NC State beat writer and current sports talk radio personality Joe Giglio predicted a 3-7 conference record for the Pack.

Heck, I estimated a 5-6 record and Matt forecasted a 6-5 season back in early September. Then, of course, there was the now-infamous graphic from the cast of The Huddle on ACC Network that gave NC State a ceiling of four wins.

We all deserve to be featured on the “Old Takes Exposed” Twitter account at this point.

The Wolfpack has been the surprise of the league in 2020, finishing with an 8-3 record that included a program-record seven ACC wins.

There are several parties in the program that deserve credit for this season’s success, but the praise should start with Doeren. After some self-reflection and coaching staff turnover in the offseason, the Wolfpack looked like a completely different team this year compared to last fall.

It wasn’t all roses either. NC State faced as much adversity in 2020 as any team in the league.

The Pack had to pause all football-related activities in late August due to a COVID outbreak in the program.

It had to go without starting redshirt sophomore quarterback Devin Leary in seven of its 11 contests. Leary first missed the opener after missing nearly three weeks in quarantine leading up to the season. Then he missed the final six games of the schedule after breaking his fibula in the Duke game.

There were also several injuries that left the Wolfpack thin in the young secondary.

Junior safety Tanner Ingle missed the better part of five games due to issues with his hamstring and was ejected from targeting penalties in three other contests. Senior corner Chris Ingram didn’t play a snap all season. Sophomore safety Rakeim Ashford and redshirt freshman safety Khalid Martin both suffered season-ending injuries in game two against Virginia Tech.

Not to mention the challenges of installing a new offensive system in a year without a spring practice under offensive coordinator Tim Beck, who was hired in January and was nothing short of excellent in his first season with the Wolfpack.

What made this season even more special was how NC State got to 8-3. The Pack defeated two ranked opponents and won five of its eight victories in games in which it trailed at some point in the second half.

When things aren’t going well, the blame goes to the man in charge. But the same should be true when a team exceeds expectations, as was the case this season.

Considering all of the distracting elements of this year combined with the disappointment of last fall, 2020 will go down as Doeren’s best coaching job in his first eight seasons in Raleigh.

3. 2018

Truth be told, NC State's 9-4 record this season was partly because of its schedule. I wrote after the Wolfpack was soundly beaten by Texas A&M in the Gator Bowl that between that contest and a similar loss at Clemson that it was clear that the Wolfpack were simply outclassed. (To be fair, there were extenuating circumstances that contributed to Gator Bowl loss.)

However, Doeren deserves credit for guiding a team that lost seven players to the NFL Draft off the 2017 team to being at one point the No. 14 squad in the College Football Playoff committee's rankings.

NC State was 6-2 then, and it included wins on the road at a 9-win Marshall squad that would defeat South Florida in the Gasparilla Bowl and conference home victories over an 8-win Virginia team and a 7-win Boston College squad. It was the same Virginia team that would play in the ACC title game a year later.

The only hiccup this year: Doeren was unable to complete a "chalk" win-loss record when the Pack had a stunning, last-minute home loss to Wake Forest, which killed NC State's chances of a New Year's Six bowl game.

2. 2017

A lot of people look at this season and wonder how NC State only won nine games with all the NFL talent on the roster. I believe that is a short-sighted viewpoint.

Let's not forget, the year before the Wolfpack was 5-6 heading into its regular-season finale at UNC. Going into the bye in 2017, it was 6-1. The reason why the Wolfpack went "only" 9-4 this year? Partially because it played a very challenging schedule.

Its losses were on a neutral field to a nine-win South Carolina team that also went 5-3 in the SEC and knocked off Michigan in the Outback Bowl, on the road to a 10-win Notre Dame team that defeated LSU in the Citrus Bowl, on the road to an 8-win Wake Forest team that knocked off Texas A&M in the Belk Bowl and at home to a Clemson team that played in the College Football Playoff.

This season featured one of the better non-conference schedules in NC State history. In addition to South Carolina and Notre Dame away from home, it also played an eight-win Marshall squad at home. The Thundering Herd defeated Colorado State in the New Mexico Bowl to end the year.

The bottom-line is this season was the most nationally relevant campaign for the Wolfpack. Had it beaten Notre Dame, it would have hosted ESPN's College Gameday for its showdown with Clemson. That contest with the Tigers was, in essence, the de facto ACC title contest.

1. 2020

The turnaround from 2019 is remarkable in itself, and the fact that NC State beat three ACC teams potentially bound for winning records — Pittsburgh, Virginia and Wake Forest — plus handed Liberty its only loss of the year shows that the eight wins were not a fluky byproduct of an easy schedule.

However, the most impressive aspect of Doeren's staff's coaching jobs were working around an injury at quarterback and a pandemic. I've said it before and will repeat it: the most impressive thing was keeping the team united. More than any team I've previously covered under Doeren, I felt that this one had the tightest bond.

That alone was a huge reason for NC State's successes.

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