How will Wolfpack react to loss? They say last year’s lessons are helping them recover.
Last year offered more lows than highs for the N.C. State football team.
Dave Doeren put one of the youngest teams in the country on the field. The result was a six-game losing streak to end the season.
So many guys were fresh out of high school. Others had been in the program just a year or two. Most of them were thrust into action way too soon. It eventually snowballed and the team finished 4-6, just Doeren’s second losing season since arriving in Raleigh in 2013.
This summer, Doeren said he saw a more mature group. Naturally, they were older, yes. But they had also grown up because of what they went through on and off the field.
Like many programs, COVID-19 forced the team to approach each day this offseason with a wait and see mentality. The season finally arrived and N.C. State won game one, 45-42, over Wake Forest. It brought a winning feeling to the locker room that carried over to practice — and led right into a buzzsaw in Blacksburg last Saturday. The Hokies brought the Wolfpack down to earth with a 21-point blitzing.
So now the big question. How will this team — if it’s more mature, as Doeren claims — handle it’s first on-field adversity?
“Last year coming off West Virginia, the first loss we had, you could tell that following practice the next week that people were kind of down,” sophomore running back Bam Knight said. “This year you have guys lifting people up, in the meetings, on the practice field, just the overall energy has changed. You even have freshmen who just got here trying to help upperclassmen and I think that’s pretty much the biggest difference we had.”
Doeren being consistent — not getting too high, not getting too low — has helped as well, Knight explained.
“He’s been the same guy,” Knight said. “Coming into the locker room (after the Virginia Tech game), we played terribly, he didn’t catch an attitude with us. He was calm and tried to explain what we did wrong, what we need to work on. He was good at throwing it out and telling us we have to go back to work. That’s what we’ve done, it’s starting off good this week.”
Knight is one of those players who was thrown into the fire last season. He led the team in rushing, and through two games leads in that same category this year, even though he hasn’t started. There are eight true or redshirt freshmen on the two-deep depth chart heading to No. 24 Pittsburgh (3-0, 2-0) this weekend. Five of those are on defense, where the Wolfpack (1-1, 1-1) have struggled the most.
One of the newcomers, Penn State transfer Daniel Joseph, says he learned a lot about his new teammates, even in a loss.
“I definitely learned we’re not going to back down to nobody, we’re going to keep fighting no matter what,” Joseph said. “That’s one thing I learned personally about this team, guys are not going to back down no matter the situation.”
Joseph, a defensive end, doesn’t know how the team handled losses last year. He wasn’t around for the six-game slide. One of the older guys on the team at 23, Joseph brings a businesslike approach. It was clear to him that his new teammates won’t tuck their tails between their legs after a blowout.
“I think this week guys have been a lot more motivated to come back and attack this week a lot more aggressively, which has been a great thing,” Joseph said. “People have played at a much higher level of intensity and competition throughout practice this week. I think that’s the greatest thing possible they could ever do. Just constantly trying to raise that bar higher and higher for yourself each and every week.”
N.C. State has turned the ball over three times and had 14 penalties in two games. They’ve given up 463 yards on the ground. The game against the Hokies was a punch in the mouth. But the guys inside the locker room all say the team picked themselves up off the canvas way better than they did a year ago.
“I think that last year it was a lot of guys first, so we would come off a loss and it wouldn’t necessarily be about focusing on specifics on how to improve, or how to not let what happened, happen again,” senior tight end and co-captain Dylan Autenrieth said. “This year we are a totally different team and we will learn from our mistakes. We had a great day or practice and I think it’s going to continue. We could win and we’re still going to continue to get better, it doesn’t only come from losing. I think that’s what this team does differently. We’re always looking for a way to get better.”
