Here is a transcript from NC State football coach Dave Doeren's weekly press conference, held on Mondays.

Related link: Video/audio of Doeren's PC

"Looking forward to playing a home game. It's been a month since we've been back in the Carter-Finnley, and excited for homecoming night. Night game opportunity against a tremendous football team — its what you play for, to play against such a good team, such a well-coached team and to get to do it at home in a night environment at the Carter. It's been awesome to have those types of games and look forward to having one. I know will have a tremendous crowd.

“Excited just to get back on the grass with the guys. As everyone knows we’re injured, we're young and, and all those kind of things. We’re going through some challenges … but I love the challenge and love when my back’s up against the wall. And I know this our guys aren't going to flinch. They're going to fight, and we're going to fight as a program to get better.

“And I think that's the biggest thing for us. It's not who we play. It's what we do to get better every day and how we play and that's what we have to focus on and continue to focus on regardless of where we're at with our injury report. And so that's going to be, for the next four weeks, what you hear me talk about.

“This week the challenge is obviously a great one. When you're playing a team that's done what Clemson's done, and I [can] go through their statistics, but you all know where they're at. They do a really good job on both sides of football, they're well-coached, they got good players. We just got to go out there and be the best that we can be with what we do.

“It's really fundamentals. It's executing 11 guys at the same time. You turn on the film and there's lots of plays where you're one guy away, [or] a guy doing it right then doing a wrong five plays later on the same play. It's just catching, it's blocking. It's finishing one more step on a block, getting your hand inside versus outside, how you leverage the football, how you tackle — it’s basic football fundamentals, one on one.

“I'm excited about that challenge. It’s a great week to be back home because there's an interesting schedule, only having two games in October with only one of them being a home game. It’s weird having that setup, and so now it's nice to at least get in a rhythm and be able to put together some consecutive weeks of football questions.

"Questions?"

Looks like Payton Wilson played his season high and in snaps. Obviously he had a lot of tackles. What's it been like for you to try to — I don't know if you got him on a pitch count or not — but obviously, he's been pretty reckless out there. Like he's always going. Have you tried to kind of let him go but also try to keep him healthy.

“I think early in the season there was a fatigue part of this thing for him and so as we talked earlier in the year, our rotation at linebacker was good. But as the season’s gone on, his production has increased. And so he's a guy that's making a lot more plays than other guys, and his stamina has improved.

“That's allowed us to play him more. Him and Drake [Thomas], I thought played their best game last week. They were both very active, they were physical, had good spirit about him. I thought CJ hart came in did some good things when he had his opportunity.

“The young linebacker corps banked reps, and that's one position group that those guys have been able to play in every game. So you see growth when that happens. That’s the value of that of staying healthy, and look forward to him for a while doing what he's doing and doing it even better as he gets more and more confident and comfortable.”

Dave, I'm curious what stood out to you when you looked at the film with Devin, specifically when things were rough for him particularly in the second half, passing the ball but was there anything in particular that you liked a lot and what you were really most concerned with from the film with him?

“I think the thing you like, other than how well he can throw football, is just how competitive, how into it, how coachable, the conversations that you're able to have. Like the mistakes that he makes are going to happen. You don't want them to happen. But this is first start.

“He made some really good throws, I thought he had a great corner ball throw to Cary [Angeline] on the sideline. He missed an easy out route throw, which he’s thrown a million times in practice, and so just getting him consistent. I think they did a good job sitting on some routes, which probably made him a little bit nervous on some throws. He's just got to learn how to get through that.

“I think that game is going to be a huge piece for him to grow from. I just like how he comes to work every day. I like you're talking to him, he gives you feedback. He's not ever in a panic. He's just, ‘Here's what I saw. Here's what I did.’ All right, let's talk about it.

“There's a lot of things to be excited about. Obviously not excited that you throw a deep ball down the middle of the field with the post safety there, things that he's got to [not] do. And the receivers got to try to break that up for him to that happens, but he's going to grow a lot from that game. He's going to get another team that wants to blitz every snap this week. So another opportunity.”

Are you looking at sticking with him for the rest of the way? Or is it still a week to week kind of situation?

“I can't give you 100% on anything in life right now. I just don't think I can do that. I would love to say that he's going to grow and get better and better and better. And I hope that happens for him. I do.

“I think he's worked himself into the place that he's at for a reason and he's our starting quarterback right now and look forward to helping them continue to get better.”

Coaches spend an inordinate amount of time watching videos and it's rare when you come up against a team that looks like it has absolutely no weaknesses. From what you've seen, would you pretty much agree with that?

Yeah, they're really good. They're experienced. They've got great players. They're well-coached. They got staff continuity, all those things, and their kids know how to win. But I also know that anything can happen on a Saturday. That's why you put the ball down and play.

“We got nothing to lose in this football game. Just go play as hard as we can, be better than we were week before, finish plays better than we did the week before. Anything can happen. That’s got to be our mindset each week, just try to find a way to be better.”

What about them impresses you most?

“I don't know if I can give you an answer. I mean, they're good. They're number one in everything in the conference, so they're good.”

Pack’s obviously going through some immediate adversity. But there's the overall big picture of the program, too. And when adversity hits, there are some followers who forget about the big picture. Talk a little bit about the big picture and how optimistic you are about the future.

“I think when you're playing the second most number of freshmen in the country, and you're seeing Drake Thomas get better. You're seeing Peyton Wilson get better. You're seeing Josh Harris, Savion Jackson, you're seeing Bam [Knight]. I thought Jordan Houston ran as hard as he's ran in that game that we just played. That's exciting.

“It's painful right now because we're not getting to enjoy the improvement, but it's exciting. I've been through this. We went through it here when [Bradley] Chubb and [Jerod] Fernandez and all those guys were freshmen. It was painful. It was a pain. They all ended up being really good players for us because they went through it.

“You don't walk on hot coals and come out of it with nothing burned on your feet. It's going to hurt for a while, and but I'm very optimistic, going to remain that way. We recruited two really good classes back to back that are now being forced into not just playing time but very important roles on our football team. We have four seniors listed on the two deep on our entire roster, so they're being asked to lead and play. That’s unique… but it's awesome for the future of our program.

“Week by week, just one day at a time, keep getting these guys better.”

See guys like Bam and Trent [Pennix] both on the depth chart, where are they at as far as health aftar that game?

“Couldn't tell you, we’ll see.”

Payton, what was it like last year to keep him off the field? He does seem fairly relentless.

“He was hurt. Last year was more about just trying to get going through not playing. Like his emotions of how hard it was to not play. I think Levi [Jones] and Jeffrey [Gunter] are going through that now … guys that really want to play. They can't because they transferred in here.

“You're watching the game and you think you could be helping the team win. That's challenging. But I do think it gives you really good perspective on how much you truly love football, so that when you get back, you don't take it for granted. You're seeing that, and he's playing relentless football, and it's got to keep getting him to play smarter football.”

You haven’t had any turnovers for four ACC games. Is there any reason for it?

“Thanks for bringing that up. I wish I could tell you why. I mean, I think when you watch the film, you're seeing some really good hits. Seeing guys put their face on the football. You're seeing guys punching, rip at the football. We had a couple balls batted in the air Saturday that didn’t bounce to us. You turn on some film sometimes you see, balls batted run on a touchdown.

“Some of is luck. But we practice that skill set daily. We work it, we preach it, we talk about it. I don't know what else to say other than it just hasn't happened yet. Some of it is we're not making enough plays on the ball. Not just picks, like PBUs. We need to have more of those as well.

“But it'll come eventually. It's how it works.”

On similarities between 2016, which nearly won at Clemson, and 2019 teams.

“That team was a lot different than this team. That team we knew who was on the roster we were playing. We were playing with a bunch of sophomores that were really good players, that was Chubb and those guys’ sophomore year, I think you're talking about, and we didn't have 11 starters injured for the season that year.

“We were able to get better and better, and we finished we won three of the four games that year because I thought our young team got better over the course of that season.

“I've had a different starting lineup for eight straight weeks. So it's not even close to that type of team. It's not. The thing that's similar is that we had a very talented young group of guys on that roster. Same thing here, but we had the same lineup almost every game and that year.”

When you talk about the future of the program and young guys and developing with the guys themselves, are you finding it a difficult thing to sort of get that message across right now? Because obviously I'm sure they're frustrated. You're getting short handed with injuries.

“I think everybody's different. I think some guys and Jordan Drake, Payton Jakeen, Harris, those guys are getting better. They understand the value of their reps. Then there's some guys that we need to get better now, they haven't matured as fast, but they're playing. So it's a day to day thing with them.

“It's not a confidence thing. I think it's more of just, it's a lot. You were in high school classroom last year. Just the amount that has changed in their lives and the intensity of all that is just different for them, and managing it all and helping them understand the grind and how important the nutrition and the sleep and different to have to do that your first year.

“I'm impressed with some of those guys and how they're dealing with it, and like you would expect some of them it's harder. It's an every day. It's not just coaching football over here. Every day you're talking about how’s school going. You're talking about picking them up and getting them positive or how their families are doing or their body weight. …. Payton's weight it was doing this [fluctuating] and now it's [stable], taking care of his body better so that he can have better stamina.

You talked about Jordan Houston running hard overall, do you think the running game took a step forward last week?

“In some ways it did. It's really hard when you're down 21-0 to all of a sudden just run for 200 yards, but when we ran the ball we ran efficiently, were four and a half yards a carry in the game. There were some explosive runs, and I thought Jordan did some really good things. Bam was only in there for nine snaps, so he didn't get a chance.

“But [Houston] and Trent both had some good runs in the game. The line and the tight ends protected and got hats on hats and so there were some positive things there. Things that we can definitely grow on.”

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