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ATLANTIC COAST CONFERENCE FOOTBALL MEDIA CONFERENCE

September 26, 2018

Dave Doeren

Greensboro, North Carolina

DAVE DOEREN: Proud of our guys. You know, got a good road win, playing a good Marshall team last week, and I thought we played off of each other and kind of just helped each other throughout the game, when momentum swung. But there was a lot of positives in the football game. I thought we did some things offensively in the pass game that were very special. I thought Ryan and his receivers were playing at a high level, and defensively to create three takeaways with the two interceptions and the fumble recovery at key moments, it was great.

And to have a chance now to be 3-0 and coming home to play a really good Virginia team, Bronco and his staff have done a very nice job. Their guys are playing hard for them, and they're a tough match-up with what they do schematically on offense. The quarterback is really playing at a high level in space and has some good playmakers around him, and I think they're using their personnel wisely. Defensively just all the different pressures that they bring, guys have to understand the rules of the system.

Looking forward to the match-up and a great ACC opponent here coming to town.

Q. Obviously there aren't a ton of teams that can throw the ball the way you guys do with your quarterback and the receiving corps. Virginia hasn't really played an offense like yours; does that make it difficult for you to prepare for them?
DAVE DOEREN: I mean, there's a lot of film on them. It's the same defense they ran last year, same defense he's been running for a long time. You can go back and look at a lot of film on teams that threw the football a year ago and years before that and just have an idea how they try to attack formations and different looks that we have that are similar, and a lot of it's studying that personnel because obviously they've had some different offenses they've faced and you can still see the match-ups when you watch them, how their guys play. They play hard, and they understand what they're doing and why they're doing it.

But there's plenty of film to look at for sure.

Q. And for you guys, obviously you've been so effective throwing the football. The running numbers aren't there. Is that a concern, or is that just because there's an emphasis on your throw game?
DAVE DOEREN: I think it's a little bit of both. I mean, obviously we want to be able to run the ball efficiently at four yards a carry, and we're not there yet. I do feel like we made progress last week. I thought we were more physical on the line of scrimmage. I thought our tight ends improved from week 2 to week 3 in the season. But we're not getting the explosive runs that we're used to getting that helps your numbers. So yeah, we want to be better there. But we also want to play to our strength, and we've got some very good receivers, we've got a special quarterback. Our O-line does a great job protecting. We're not going to beat our heads against the wall, either, but we want to be efficient when we run it and be able to help the pass game with our run game.

Q. How strange is it to have been in the ACC now for six years and not having played this team? Are you okay with that? Would you like to play more often?
DAVE DOEREN: I think it's disappointing. I mean, I wish there was a different format where we got to shuffle the deck a little bit more. I don't know that that'll ever change. But you know, we have players that were here for five years and never played Virginia. I just don't think that's right. But I don't -- I'm like the President, I'm giving you all the problems and no solutions here. I'm just trying to do the best we can, and obviously we get to play them this year and try to do the best we can with that opportunity because we won't see them again for a while.

Q. Once you get over this, you can work on this Supreme Court situation.
DAVE DOEREN: Yeah, yeah.

Q. I was trying to find out just the balancing act a coach faces when you're protecting a narrow lead and have the ball but there's too much time left that you can't take a knee a couple times and end the game. Do you have a staffer kind of working on the math? Do you rely on analytics? How do you handle what you do in those situations?
DAVE DOEREN: Yeah, we have analytic conversations every week as a staff, and I have a call sheet that has all of those things put together on the types of plays we need to run. Obviously if it's not a situation where we can just kneel it out, whether we need to delay a knee or run a play, and if we need to run a play, what type of play, and trying to be safe and use clock, and field position is a part of it, too, because it's different if you're running plays out of your minus 5-yard line versus the 50 on what type of plays you can run. Analytics is a part of it, but we're very prepared for that. We spend a lot of time in the off-season going through different situations, and as a staff we do it every week.

Q. I know when the rule first came out that almost every coach I think I talked to was in favor of the new redshirting rule. I'm just wondering if you guys had anticipated some of the transfer situations that are happening now with regards to that redshirting rule, and if the consequence of that has made you rethink your approach to whether or not it was a good call or not to change the rule that way.
DAVE DOEREN: Right. At the end of the season, I'm sure that'll be something that gets discussed. I haven't put a lot of thought into that. Just with our football team here, our guys are excited about getting the opportunity to play, and just being positive because I can't change the rule. It has helped our team. We've been able to get some young guys some reps and you're seeing them grow as players.

You know, transferring is a part of the business these days, and if that helps those guys do that and they don't want to be a part of what's going on, then so be it. But from a playing time standpoint and a player development standpoint, I think there's a lot of positives to the rule.

Q. I'm writing a story about the nomadic lifestyle of assistant football coaches, and I'm wondering just how difficult it is for coaches to jump from one program to another and on their families, how tough it is. And secondly, do you see that there's a little more security now with longer contracts for assistants?
DAVE DOEREN: You know, the first part of your question, I think it just depends on the phase of your life when you're moving. When your kids are really young, for the husband and wife, it's not as challenging. Obviously you're dealing with selling homes and buying homes, and that's never -- not always an easy thing to do. But when you're starting to pull kids out of their schools and move them, that's to me where it really gets hard as a coach because your children are affected so much by that. If they move into a place where they end up in a better situation, then that's great, but that's not always the case. That is the difficult part of it.

You know, as far as the contract lengths, I think it just depends. I mean, I think some of these contracts have buyouts that make it harder than others, and some of them are in schools that have more money than others, and ultimately it just comes down to whether or not people are willing to keep a coach or not keep a coach. I do think it's good security with the pressure that's on coaches these days and the lifeline that you have to have those kind of lengthy contracts if you can get bought out.

But every university is different. I mean, a 10-year deal at a lower level school is not going to get bought out; a four-year deal at a lower level school is not going to get bought out. But when you talk about the Power Five, some of those schools will. I think it's a little bit based on the amount of money those schools have.

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