A few articles are providing a little insight into the Wolfpack’s new football coaching staff that we thought that we would share.
* Love reading this – Coach O’Brien Wants to Hear from Former NC State Football Players!.
N.C. State’s Mike Archer has gained a reputation as a 3-4 defensive coordinator. Three down linemen. Four linebackers. That’s his style.
That’s what Archer learned as a defensive assistant with the Pittsburgh Steelers under former coach Bill Cowher. That’s what he used the last few years as defensive coordinator at Kentucky.
But a coach has to be flexibile, and Archer says he expects the Pack to line up in the 4-3 used the last seven years under former coach Chuck Amato.
“Our philosophy will be what our players can do best,” he said. “I’ve been a 3-4 guy obviously spending seven years with Coach Cowher in Pittsburgh. I’ve done it most of my college career. The only time I coached a 4-3 was when i was at Virginia.
“But I think with our personnel right now, with who has been recruited here, we will start out in a 4-3 and eventually we could wind up in some 3-4 principles. Time will tell.”
* Dana Bible is Back on Familiar Turf
“What we pride ourselves on is that we put our players in positions to do the things they do well,” Bible said Wednesday. “I’ve learned that what you might want to be [as a player], and what you can be, might be two different things. We play to our strengths.”
Now, Bible has joined O’Brien at NCSU, with a three-year contract and $225,000 annual salary, and it’s almost like a back-to-the-future sensation. In 1983, ’84 and ’85, he headed up the Pack’s passing game, coaching the quarterbacks and receivers for head coach Tom Reed.
“Erik Kramer was our quarterback,” he said. “Haywood Jeffires, Naz Worthen and Danny Pebbles were the wide receivers we had in the fold. We really believed something good was about to happen.”
It did — for Dick Sheridan.
After three 3-8 seasons, Reed suddenly out as coach. Bible, then 32, was without a job. Soon, he was flying to the West Coast after being hired as an assistant coach at San Diego State.
“The whole flight … I was never bitter, but I was really, really disappointed,” he said. “Leaving Erik Kramer behind was a hard thing to do, but I didn’t have a choice.”
Last September, BC played at State and Bible returned to Carter-Finley Stadium for the first time since ’85. He had heard about the upgrades to the stadium and was eager to see for himself.
“When we came around the bend on I-40 and then pulled down under the stadium, no one was more wide-eyed than me,” Bible said, smiling. “I came out of the locker room and it was me that you could hear saying, ‘Oh, my goodness.’ It was impressive.”
