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People. I honestly believe that Doeren was pretty sure the axe was still coming, despite the win.
He was given an out and out reprieve.
Cowdog – I could see that. I doubt the ptb thought we would have this kind of season – what with all of the close calls and all – that hasn’t been the mode of operandi in his first 3 years.
I, for one, still believe in DD. He inherited CRAP. And drawing parallels to HWSNBN 4th season can suck it. It is tons easier to turn around a BB team than a FB team. TOB had TWO NFL caliber QBs, and one won a superbowl. And when he was fired he left NOTHING, NOTHING!!!! This year with 65% freshman and sophs State came within some fieldgoals (yes we NEED a kicker) and 4 or 5 plays away from being 10 – 2. FSU and Clemson trailed us and we almost won both of those games and they have a TON of 5th year players and one has a QB in the Heisman hunt. Momentum is a funny thing. State was rolling along with Rivers and Company until GT came to town and 10 – 0 became 9 – 1 and we lost the next 2. I firmly believe if we had made the FG against Clemson we would have finished at least 8 – 4. DD wasn’t a miracle worker but that’s what everyone expected, because he had crap to work with from the start. And trust me, that defensive front 4 is as good as almost any I’ve seen at state with the exception of Super Mario’s 1st and 2nd year. Just my opinion, but it is realistic to look at just how close this team came to having a really good year.
Smarter than the average bear
^
You’ve picked the wrong week to start sniffing glue.Ahhhhh…..the wafting of “what ifs”. It is almost as if someone needs to strike a match.
McCallum
GreyWolf,
If you feel better, then that is good. There is enough stress and emotion for old folks like us so we need to explode every once and a while.
I was there from 63 to 68, so that gave me 5 FB seasons…and a couple of field trips with my HS Band to Riddick.
I looked up earlE’s record. It was much better than I remembered. However, the standard line in Riddick my freshman year (1963) was the 3 Yd’s and I do remember seeing the infamous strategy 3rd down Quick Kick many times. You are more familiar. I did NOT but one FB game in ’64 as I was working on the weekends at WRAL save a homecoming. I don’t remember much about that….except my old GF & I getting plastered and (fill in the blank). She was my DW’s of 51 year’s good friend. It gets really complicated after that….and time and privacy do not permit more.
Then for the rest of my NCSU career, I was focusing on studying….having pulled a 0.33 my Fall Sophomore semester…and did not attend in the spring….thanks to Banks Tally turning down my appeal.
BUT, I did do better and was an honor roll student for my Jr and Sr years. Funny thing, when you’ve got a beautiful and great skirt in the next room, you do NOT have to go out and chase….My wife recognized that certain conjugal rights were to be rewards for studying..
I DO have vivid memories of the Houston Game in 1967 and was in Reynolds for a Glenn Yarborough concert. He let us listen to the game from a transistor radio and left his mike out at intermission and called out frequently for an update. I have seen a LOT of live performances over the years and the finesse that he showed and did not TRY to compete with the game was brilliant. Dionne Warwick got mad when a fan had to go potty and pouted…
Coach Edwards and his players….many of which grace our CF banners and plaques was an excellent coach.
After graduation, I moved to the frozen north and then later to rural (They still have Yankee and Rebel soldiers in the Poetcasi Swamp fighting in the 70’s) North Hampton County. I saw them once deer hunting and they wanted to trade for my rifle…
SO, I sort of tuned out and when I moved to Statesville and later, Sanford, I started to attend to games…I also was an avid deer hunter and my fall Saturdays were sometimes in a deer stand…
Having been a Berry dorm resident for a semester, I got to know, in passing, Amato and Falzano (Sp) and some of the other athletes that had a small PA clan in the basement of Berry. You had to get passes to go through the halls and the dorm counselor would turn a blind eye (to keep from getting black and blue), when a very SLIM (and shapely) “player” would come in with a hoodie….and a couple of six packs. They did special privileges….
I know of other incidents, off campus where I lived, where the football players were treated to the NCSU equivalent of the Sweet Carolines….in a mixed room with many participants….but discretion will not permit any more details….
I certainly do long for the glory days and did not mean to dis EE…
Falzarano…One of the Mafia backfield of 63 of Jim Rossi, Pete Falzaro, Joe Scarpati, and Tony Kozarsky(the only non Italian)…Also responsible for a really weird nickname that I got tagged with when he mistook me for one of his other teammates in the tunnel. “Hey, Turk, is that you?”
"Whomp 'em, Up, Side the Head"!
He inherited CRAP. And drawing parallels to HWSNBN 4th season can suck it. It is tons easier to turn around a BB team than a FB team. TOB had TWO NFL caliber QBs, and one won a superbowl. And when he was fired he left NOTHING, NOTHING!!!!
Crap? Really? I guess it’s crap in that indisputable fact that HWSNBN managed to eclipse his replacement in Year 1 while DD still hasn’t. And he had taken a program that hadn’t been in the post season in 4 years in each of his four. Or maybe you are thinking Coach K and Tony Bennett both quickly turned around their Acc schools.
Oh, they named the battle of the 2 worst teams in the conference after his replacement? They didn’t.
Look, we will be lucky if DD can do to our football program what Sendek did for our basketball program. Turn it from a punchline to a joke to some respectability. Of course, our football program wasn’t a joke when DD was given the keys to the car.
Regarding NFL qb’s…DD had one the last 2 years. What was our record??
This year with 65% freshman and sophs State came within some fieldgoals (yes we NEED a kicker) and 4 or 5 plays away from being 10 – 2. FSU and Clemson trailed us and we almost won both of those games and they have a TON of 5th year players and one has a QB in the Heisman hunt. Momentum is a funny thing.
Yes. Damon Thornton’s charge call @ UMd says hello. As does Scooter Sherrill’s ankle. Look there are lots of teams that were very close – you know who remembers them – their fans, their players and their fired coaches who never got the ring.
State was rolling along with Rivers and Company until GT came to town and 10 – 0 became 9 – 1 and we lost the next 2.
Yes. I remember that well. But Amato would prove in the next year that he wasn’t the right guy to sustain the program.
I firmly believe if we had made the FG against Clemson we would have finished at least 8 – 4. DD wasn’t a miracle worker but that’s what everyone expected, because he had crap to work with from the start. And trust me, that defensive front 4 is as good as almost any I’ve seen at state with the exception of Super Mario’s 1st and 2nd year. Just my opinion, but it is realistic to look at just how close this team came to having a really good year.
I agree with a lot in this post although I think you are thinking of Mario’s 2nd and 3rd years. (Let’s not talk about how we managed to mess those years up.)
Yes- the Clemson game sucked in that up to the last 29 seconds the staff had done everything perfectly. But for some reason, he put the game in the hands of a unit that was struggling instead of a unit that was dominating. There are always risks, but as soon as I saw what we were doing I said out loud to my wife and sis in Death Valley “I wouldn’t do this.”
But I understood it.
We have the ingredients to be very successful next year. Hopefully, it will be special, because this year we had so much of what it takes and as the panthers luck shows this year and as year 5 showed for Sendek, sometimes, that’s as good as it gets for a bit. (If you doubt that talk to a Buffalo Bills fan.)
CD,
Totally agree with your assessment….from multiple angles..
Coach Doeren is not usually the most “overt” person in the post game pressers. He has a standard line about “You and me (team) against the world”. Friday’s tone was ratchetted up quite a bit.
There were also reports that AD Yow and Dr. Woodson and Coach Doeren agreed to some “expectations” in August and that even with a UNC win, he did not meet the criteria.
Other sources reported a growing coup in the Mega Fat Cats inner circles and that was a plan discussed to raise funds for a buyout, which would be highly irregular and NOT be affiliated with the WPC club as any WPC funds have to be used for Schollys or Facilities….NOT direct payments to coaches or for coaches salaries…
Don’t know what transpired….and should not….but Saturday morning’s coffee between AD Yow and Dr. Woodson was more benevolent than all the hype pre-UNC.
This is a two edged sword or maybe a rotating light saber. Pressure is on Team and Coach Doeren to have a super win in the upcoming Bowl…(Independence, Music, Native American Folk Dancing, Deplorables, whatever….although word on the street is that the NCAA will send UNC to the Deplorables Bowl as part of their sensitivity training and also their “death” penalty).
Next up will be 2017. Talk about going into a season where your job is dependent on some guys NOT riding a moped on a sidewalk, NOT getting assault charges or DWI, NOT getting injured, etc.
The “OK, you gotta win X games and beat Y Teams” mentality is also not the best recruiting tool out there. Unless we go 10 & 1, there will NOT be a contract extension after the 2017 season….in defference to the incoming AD in 2019.
Members of the successful teams in the 6o’s and 70’s may miss an ACC Champion Banner due to the early call of the Grim Reaper….and that, seriously, is sad…
I guess we shall see….what we shall see….
Wonder what kind of personnel changes we might in the Coaching Staff? The game plan of Shock and Awe in Q1 was executed perfectly….flawlessly. Then playing them even in the rest was going OK, until Q4. Did we get tired or did Huxtable make some bad D calls? You will have to comment on that….
One thing is for certain….the BM and WM fans of UNC are aghast…and Gene, the Terminator, did NOT get any Kudos for his Superior Defense. Coach Doeren said that we knew their weaknesses and played to them and were successful….one of them was Gene Chizik….
Chop, YES CRAP! There wasn’t any talent to speak of at all on DDs first team here. And HWSNBN didn’t havee to do very much to be able to get into the post season. And if you consider his whole body of work as respectable then that’s your opinion, but if he was so great why didn’t he set the world on fire at AZ state?
I understand how people can throw rocks at DD. But the fact is this, we are NOT at the bottom of the conference or our division this year, and we play in the toughest division. We also beat UNX. And we only got blown out by one team (and that was part an parcel of losing the previous week from my perspective). The margin of error from hero to goat is razor thin.
Let me put this in another perspective. How would you like to have a job where your success or failure depended largely on 18 to 22 year olds? And you had some real adults helping you shape them into a team but the result of the outcomes rested squarely on YOUR shoulders. That is immense pressure. I have a great deal of experience in this because I lived it for 20 years. It’s called the military, and there the job you do is for keeps. You screw it up and people die. So Yes, I have a soft spot for the job DD does, the same as all of “our” coaches. They face hundreds of thousands of critics everyday, all willing to tear them to shreds for the least transgression. Sorry, from my perspective they were oh so close to a really good year. Those kids and those coaches HATE to lose. HATE it. Hind sight is 20/20 and that team was oh so close to being special. So I’m going to look at the positive. In spite of all those who want to throw DD away and start over I say he has another year no matter what anyone says. That decision is already made. Make the best of it, and instead of tearing him down root for him to be successful. Our division is tough but we were really really close.
Smarter than the average bear
Let me put this in another perspective. How would you like to have a job where your success or failure depended largely on 18 to 22 year olds?
I’d like to have a job that pays me what DD pays him. Succeed or fail, it is more money than he would ever need. He’s being held to the same standard as his peers. Win, or else. He gets 1 more year to try to win. So far, it hasn’t been good enough.
It must have been a “good” football season…
I went TWO Wolfpack football games.
#NCSU-North Carolina's #1 FOOTBALL school!I never once thought Doeren was being fired this year so I am not sure why he would have thought so. Yow wants to cruise to retirement and hiring a new coach is not cruising.
Before the year, I thought we’d go 6-6 (3-5). We went 6-6 (3-5), but we had some that I had down as wins that were losses and the other way around. I definitely didn’t see going into UNC with DD’s head on the line and coming out with a win. It was a pleasant surprise in what was a schizophrenic year.
I was very happy with Friday’s win. After it, the vote of confidence didn’t surprise me. Yow clearly doesn’t want to fire DD and that was just meeting the minimal floor to keep him around. She smartly put that message out there quickly while people are still smoking their cigarettes and basking in the after glow.
I want NC State to be successful but I’m not sure the “best” thing for the program isn’t quite clear. I don’t think it is DD long term, but I don’t think it’s Yow hiring a coach either given her track record and status. Probably the “best” thing for the program is to bring him back for another year with no extension, get rid of some of the buy out and money owed, and then accelerate Yow’s departure. To me it’s more interesting to see what happens with Yow over the next 6 months.
The sad thing is that we have some very good pieces and good coaches in some positions. I really like what we’re doing with the RBs, DL, OL, S&C and progress with the young receivers. The head man costs us 6-10 points a game, the place kicking rough, the back 7 as weak as I’ve seen it since MOC, and we’ve not really developed a QB. There’s a “patience” squad, but there are too many holes that I see to think that some light is just going to flip. That’s why I was for the “Kitchings plan” but that one obviously isn’t going to play out.
As for discussions regarding HWSNBN, I’d argue it’s not DD. It’s Gott. That situation is eventually going to get ugly, particularly if he can’t get it done with the talent he has this year.
Just for the sake of argument I’d like a list of the coaches in the last 10 years that took over a lower to middling at best college OR PRO team and made them a winning program in 4 years. Then when you’ve gotten that list we’ll compare it to the list of ALL the coaching changes in those same 10 years and see what percentage actually made significant progress. For data sake we’ll say the lower to middling winning percentage at the time of takeover was .500 or less for 2 of the 3 previous years as a baseline. To be considered successful the winning percentage for the 4th year must be .750 Which represents a 50% or so increase in winning. For us this year that would be 9 – 3. My bet would be that list is VERY short if it exists at all. Maybe 5% or so. Decisions based on data not just dissatisfaction.
With that in mind I’d like to hear who you’d get to replace DD. And let’s be realistic, a 5 million dollar coach we are not going to get. BTW, I happen to know just one such coach personally, but he is not FBS. Matter of fact he took a school that had no team at all and in 4 years won .750 of his games, by year 6 his team lost in the semifinal of the championship by 3 points.
Smarter than the average bear
Yogi: Those stats work other ways too. I’d like to find the coach that ever got over the hump after a 4 year conference record of 9-23, particularly if that coach inherited a program that was coming of multiple .500 (or higher) conference records.
There is NO coach that will be guaranteed to succeed at NC State in football. I have argued for quite some time that the “input$” are stacked against NC State in football, and that our soundest strategy might be to try and achieve mediocrity for the lowest price. As for translation to a record, given the way schedules are built now, buy outs, recruiting advantages, facilities disparity, etc., a middling Power 5 team should be 7-5 (4-4).
Beat BC or ECU and Dave would have been right there. We should have shrugged, renewed his contract another year and turned our attention to basketball. That’s a sport we should actually have championship exectations.
He had to win against very long odds at UNC just to get to 6-6 (3-5), so he shouldn’t get extended and should be feeling some heat. That’s a pretty low bar.
Finish 5-7 (2-6) and he should have been gone based on pulling the trifecta for a second time. I think most fully expected that we’d lose to UNC and are probably surprised at where we are today.
Let’s not polish this too much. I’ve been watching NC State football since the early 1980s. DD is giving Reed a run for his money as our worst coach. He’d have to have a miraculous string of conference records just to get to MOC’s level of mediocrity.
Yogi, I think your question can be simplified. How many lower to middle dweller programs actually spend the money to hire a Coach and staff that can possibly pull them out of that hole. I would say your list of 10 Coaches will be relative to what they were paid. Yes, there are diamond in the ruff coaches who break the mold. However, MOST lower programs never break out of that level of play because they don’t pony up the cash needed to bring in a top staff. Most think they have a hungry young or lower level coach that can get it done bit they usually don’t. It’s a business like or not and slot of times you get what you pay for. I’m not in any way dogging DD with this statement just saying what is often true.
Just for the sake of argument I’d like a list of the coaches in the last 10 years that took over a lower to middling at best college OR PRO team and made them a winning program in 4 years.
Adam Gase is working out for us in Miami. It’s playoff games for us every Sunday from here on out, starting with Baltimore. Herman inherited a gold mine at Texas just like he inherited at Houston. They’ll scream he’s their savior after next season. Those 2 come to mind.
DD deserves another year. There is no reason for us to not win 9 regular season games. Anything less and we can happily say good riddance.
From my perspective TOB and CTC both inherited top notch NFL caliber QBs, and when they were gone the surrounding players didn’t do too much. Brissett was pretty darned good but not close to Rivers and Wilson. Both of those guys were worth at least 3 wins on their own. TOB put us in a hole. Total lack of talent AND total lack of effort to get us talent. At least DD is out there beating the bushes. It’s taken us 4 years to get a line on both sides of the ball, and make no mistake the D line is stout. Dalvin Cook only gained 65 on us. Clemson didn’t run over us either. Call me a softy, I just think the gloom and doom isn’t justified yet. Had he won ECU, Clemson, and FSU my bet is someone would be fussing because BC and Da U beat us and we should be 11 – 1. Just saying. Most thought 7 – 5 was our ceiling, and we should have beat BC and ECU. ECU was early in the season, BC was a few bad breaks and Ron Cherry. THAT is the guy that needs to be fired. As a passing thought, did anyone notice how the chop block penalties went away?
Smarter than the average bear
It’s taken us 4 years to get a line on both sides of the ball, and make no mistake the D line is stout. Dalvin Cook only gained 65 on us. Clemson didn’t run over us either. Call me a softy, I just think the gloom and doom isn’t justified yet.
Amen, brother.
Yogi – Mike learn and Kirk Ferentz are 2 coaches who have done that.
If you look at the class of 2013 – DD was one of 17 coaches hired. Only 2 others have a win differential (from last 4 years of previous HC) worse than DD. One of those coaches was fired this year (Darrell Hazel @ Purdue.) I suspect the other – Mark Helfrich will get the ax in the next few days. For overall conference winning %, he actually finished 12th out of 17. (Keep in mind though that both mark stoops and MacIntyre have had pretty good years and this year exceeded anything DD has done.
It’s also worth noting that DD is the first of our last 5 coaches to not have matched the previous season conference win total of his predecessor.
Still, I see the progress that you mention on the lines. That is why if I was in Yow’s position, I probably would have done the same thing after the UNC-ch win.
Regarding Sendek – it should be noted that his results in Raleigh exceeded the person he replaced AND the person who replaced him.
In addition, his results were better than the person he replaced at ASU. He is a good coach, he just isn’t one of the best. (Ironically, I have always thought that he would be a better football coach since it would match his methodical approach better.)
chop, comparing DD to others in his class was not the data points. How many from that class were replacing previous coaches with .500 or lower AND those coaches had winning percentages of .750 or more within 4 years. The premise I set up was only to determine how many reached that successful thresh hold, not a one to many comparison. To do that would require a much stronger dataset including strength of schedule (remember at the first of the year our SOS was like #5 in the country). That’s something most have forgotten or thrown out. October alone was a monster not even Alabama faced, and it killed us but we were in every game except ville. I look at this as a degree between success or failure. The margin between those two was greatly minimized this year. I bet if you were to ask ACC coaches which games were their toughest wins this year NC State would be near the top of that list. I know for a fact Dabo and Jimbo would say that.
Smarter than the average bear
No one has a winning % of .750 or higher. But several have either had +.500 record or have had +.500 conference record for a year.
Mind you, that wasn’t what I was expecting this year. To me, this year was about building momentum for next year…and I think that is still possible with a good bowl performance.
But this is where the current staff has fallen short isn’t it? They have a decent record vs UNC and a decent record vs the scrubs. DD needs to break through. He has failed in years 3 and 4 to get that win to make people pay attention on a national level and to truly make people want to abandon their tailgate in Raleigh.
I don’t think it was widely known just how bare the cupboard was when TOB was asked to move on. Obviously we saw Coach D’s first year (and really the second as well). The talent level has been upgraded but is still lacking in some of the skill positions. I mention this not an an excuse for Coach D rather as an example of how difficult it is to climb the mountain from the valley. I see improvements but maybe not enough yet. I do see enough for another year.
chop, THAT is exactly my point. The number of coaches that make any appreciable difference within 5 years is almost nil. Most are lucky to have a 25% increase in wins. Notable exception, Nick Sabin. Took over a Bama program in disarray and instant winners, but then that’s why he gets the really big bucks. PLUS, he’s proven himself to be a winner (Miami excluded, he could not overcome management and owners). Look at Texas and Charlie Strong, his resume was a ville program that Petrino built. Tanked. I’d be willing to bet that over 40% of new coaches have a worse record than their predecessor in their first 2 years (I have some data). That’s sort of a setup bet because a large contingent of that 40% are first time head coaches, and their success percentage in the first two years is REALLY low. And when you really think about it DD was not that far removed from being a first time head coach. Think DY should have seen that coming?
Smarter than the average bear
Yogi – this was 4 years of data and I am not looking for 25% improvement. Frankly, since this was a “proactive” firing, I would have taken a break even. Heck, the big question in my mind is whether or not he matches TOB’s 6 year mark, which will mean he has had 2 really good years.
Well I, for one, think TOBs marks were skewed by having Wilson, the same as CTC with Rivers. Certainly with TOB Wilson made three of his seasons and he was too obstinate to recognize it and sent him on his way. But that’s another story. I still feel this year was not a sky is falling year. Season’s are made or not made sometimes on razor thin results. 5 missed field goals were the difference in 9 – 3 and bumping off two top 10 teams. Add to that a called back touchdown and you could make the case for 10 – 2 and a top 20 ranking and maybe playing for the conference championship. What would be the conversation had that happened? My guess would be “how do we keep Dave?” Just sayin’.
Smarter than the average bear
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