Was 2020 Dave Doeren’s best coaching job at NC State?
Dave Doeren can only win one more game this season.
If N.C. State wins its yet to be determined bowl game, that would give Doeren his third nine-win season since taking over as the Wolfpack coach in 2013.
Nine wins wouldn’t be his coaching plateau. At his first head-coaching job, Northern Illinois, Doeren won 11 games in 2011 and 12 the following season.
Even if N.C. State (8-3 overall, 7-3 ACC) loses the bowl game, eight wins is a lot more than most expected when the season started. Because of the shuffling for COVID-19, the ACC eventually scheduled each school with 10 conference games. For the Pack, that came after a 2019 season when it won just once in league play and wasn’t very competitive in other ACC games, finishing 4-8 overall.
But the Pack won seven conference games this season, setting a school benchmark for ACC wins in a season, and beat Liberty for an eighth victory. It was quite a turnaround job by Doeren, who had done it before at N.C. State. His first Wolfpack team in 2013 was 3-9 overall and 0-8 in the ACC, then went 8-5 and 3-5 in the ACC in 2014, earning Doeren his first bowl game at NCSU.
Even with that kind of track record and resume, Doeren may have done his best work in the 2020 season and should be high in the conversation for ACC Coach of the Year.
Brian Kelly and Notre Dame’s cup-of-coffee season in the ACC, along with Manny Diaz having Miami ranked in the top 10 most of the year, might stand in the way of Doeren winning the league’s coaching award. But the 180 pivot from the 2019 campaign has been impressive.
N.C. State ended last season on a six-game losing streak, and aside from a two-point loss at Georgia Tech wasn’t competitive in most of its games. The Pack lost by an average of 24.5 points down the stretch, fielding many inexperienced players at key positions and with injuries decimating the roster.
The expectations, though, for 2020 were higher, with so many of those players a year older.
But the adversity began early. COVID-19, which struck most college programs equally, stopped spring practice. Then during fall camp, the Wolfpack was away from the practice field for 10 days. Even after getting through that, N.C. State started the 2020 season without its starting quarterback, Devin Leary, who missed the opener due to time away because of contact tracing.
The quarterback carousel continued from Bailey Hockman, to Devin Leary, back to Hockman (with a one-game cameo by freshman Ben Finley against North Carolina.) It was Hockman who led the team on a four-game streak to end the season.
Injuries weren’t as bad a problem in 2020, but the team wasn’t completely immune. The biggest loss was Leary, who broke his leg against Duke after showing so much promise (520 yards, six TDs) the previous two games, both wins. One of the team’s top tacklers, safety Tanner Ingle, could hardly stay on the field this season, first because of a hamstring injury, and three other times because of ejections for targeting.
Cornerback Chris Ingram never played this year because of an injury and another corner, Teshaun Smith, played one game before undergoing season-ending shoulder surgery. Tyler Baker-Williams, a junior nickel back, also missed two weeks due to COVID-19 contact tracing, yet the Wolfpack won both of those games with mostly underclassmen in the secondary.
For whatever reason, N.C. State never missed a beat.
Changes made to staff
Doeren and his staff, and their teaching of the X’s and O’s, obviously had a lot to do with the turnaround.
The offense went from scoring 22.1 points per game in 2019, to 31.1 this season. In 2019, the team’s season-high point total versus a Power-5 program was 27 points. The Pack has eclipsed that in seven out of 10 games in 2020. And after forcing just four interceptions in 2019, the defense had 10 this year, almost picking up four in one game on two occasions (three each versus Virginia and Duke).
In the offseason, Doeren re-hauled his coaching staff, adding new offensive coordinator Tim Beck and promoting Tony Gibson to defensive coordinator (from co-DC, safeties coach). He wanted new coaches in new places with new responsibilities to change the mood from a year ago.
“I went through some tough times last offseason and all the decisions I made weren’t because they weren’t good coaches,” Doeren said of the changes. “I wanted to get a type of feel in our building. I wanted the power of positivity to take over, not just with our kids and our coaches, with the chemistry and camaraderie, it’s what we do for a living but I wanted to have fun doing it. I wanted these players to have fun.”
Hockman, who finished the regular season with 1,820 passing yards and 12 touchdowns, said the power of positivity that Doeren preached quickly became contagious.
“He’s been extremely positive, just building people up and helping players excel, on and off the field,” Hockman said. “He preaches that all the time and he’s done a great job helping the team bond and get better and I’m blessed to have him as a coach.”
Hockman is a prime example. The UNC game was Hockman’s third start of the year, his first after Leary went down with his injury. The game didn’t start off well for Hockman and the team fell behind early. Finley came in and led the team to two scoring drives. At halftime, Doeren assured Hockman he hadn’t done anything wrong and would get his chance to go back in. That second half versus the Tar Heels, even in a blowout loss, was the turning point for Hockman’s growth this season.
It’s things like that that have been the most satisfying for Doeren, who turned 49 on Dec. 3.
“I think it’s just the way that these guys play and how coachable they are and how much fun they are to be around,” Doeren said. “It’s a joy to coach this football team. They truly want to be better. You can coach them hard, you can tell them the truth and they give you everything they’ve got and it’s just fun to be around guys like that.”
From four to eight
Eight wins, or nine, might not be enough for the ACC Coach of the Year trophy, especially if Notre Dame gets into the College Football Playoff. Even if he thinks he’s in the conversation for the award, Doeren wouldn’t admit it.
“I think that’s for you guys to decide,” he said to the media Saturday after the Pack’s win over Georgia Tech when asked if 2020 had been his best coaching job.
But Doeren has said that this has been a special year. What makes it special for everyone is just how challenging of a year it was for all of college football. For the teams that played, a COVID year presented so many challenges and obstacles and the fact that N.C. State was able to play all the games on its schedule in itself was a small miracle.
Some would look at the schedule as a reason Doeren shouldn’t be named the ACC’s top coach. The Wolfpack, normally in the ACC’s Atlantic Division, played all the traditional schools in the Coastal, and in doing so missed out on playing Clemson and Notre Dame this season. That, of course, was out of Doeren’s control.
“Bottom line is, we didn’t choose how they set this thing up this year,” Doeren said. “We didn’t pick who we play. We didn’t get to pick any of it.”
The Wolfpack went on the road and beat a ranked opponent (Pittsburgh) for the first time since the 2017 season and ended the year with two wins over ranked teams, also something the Pack hadn’t accomplished since 2017. The five ranked opponents on the schedule were the most since 1997.
When the season is over, Doeren will do what he always does: evaluate everyone in the program, himself included. He’ll figure out how much of the turnaround was because of something he did, or a player or a member of his staff.
Now, with a bowl game still to be played, he won’t take any of the credit. He’ll just be thankful to have one more game with this group, in a season that they didn’t know was going to happen at one point. And when it became obvious it was going to happen, success wasn’t automatic, even with so many players returning. Not everyone in college football handled the pandemic season the same.
“People that want to downplay what we did,” Doeren said, “Just look across the country, there’s a lot of teams that went the other direction that were really good teams a year ago that can’t win right now. And I think that there should be some credit given to everybody in this program.”
Eight wins as it stands wouldn’t be enough to build a Doeren statue outside the Murphy Center. He was hired by N.C. State and brought to Raleigh to win more than eight games a year. But 2020 wasn’t normal and even Doeren can admit, with all this team went through, he didn’t see this coming.
“Had you told me that we were going to deal with not only the COVID but the number of injuries that we had, and that we would win this many games, I’d probably laugh at you,” Doeren said. “To go from one win (in the ACC) to seven times … that’s pretty damn good.”
