Fired NC State football coach Dave Doeren says he'll 'always be cheering for the Wolfpack'

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — These are unusual days for former N.C. State coach Dave Doeren.

He isn't sure exactly what comes next after he was fired over the weekend midway through his 14th season. It brought an abrupt end to a tenure that saw him become the program's all-time winningest coach, yet be unable to make a breakthrough leap to higher success.

And that has completely changed the football-centric routines of fall that Doeren has followed since he started playing football in the fourth grade.

“I’ve coached 32 years, and I’ve never been unemployed,” Doeren said Tuesday, appearing via virtual news conference to make his first comments since the firing but declining to take questions from reporters.

“So these last few days in October, waking up with an empty calendar, with no alarm clock has been very different – to wake up on a Monday morning and not be thinking about the next game or the last game or what’s going on, never in my life.”

Doeren said he was excited to spend “some downtime with some damn good people” of friends and family.

“Sara and I will be cheering for N.C. State forever,” Doeren said of his wife. “I leave here with no grudges. I completely love this place, and we want to see this program shock the world.

“I might be in the mountains somewhere, sitting in a river fishing or at the lake. But I’ll always be cheering for the Wolfpack, I promise you that.”

Doeren, 54, had a 98-74 record with the Wolfpack and became the program’s winningest coach with a 2023 victory over Miami . He entered this year as the fourth-longest-tenured coach in the Football Bowl Subdivision and second in the ACC behind Clemson’s Dabo Swinney, and his teams had regularly won eight or nine games while consistently beating top rival North Carolina.

But his teams couldn't quite break through the 10-win mark or reach an ACC championship game. Then things quickly went awry this year, from a season-opening clunker at Virginia and a crushing last-second loss at Vanderbilt to being outscored 28-0 after halftime in a home loss to now-No. 14 Wake Forest .

Friday's loss at Stanford — a team picked to finish last in the Atlantic Coast Conference and owning one of the nation's worst offenses — ultimately became his final game for the Wolfpack (3-4, 1-3 ACC).

“This is now how I wanted to go out,” Doeren said. "But the more I thought about it, honestly, how many coaches get to go out the way they wanted? I just don't think that's how it works.

“I know this year was disappointing, and I take total blame for that,” Doeren said later. “But we did a lot of good and a lot of great while I was here, and I loved it. We built men who will be successful in this world, and I'm very, very proud of that.”

Doeren spoke for 18 minutes, thanking family members, coaches, players, fans and school officials from his lengthy tenure. He spoke about the challenges of the changing landscape of college athletics with free player movement through the transfer portal and players being paid; that had at least forced Doeren to adapt an approach that had relied on longer-term development of players rising the depth chart through the first half of his tenure.

There are also the broad financial pressures for schools trying to keep up with one another nationally, prompting Doeren to say: “This is a great job, N.C. State. And this is also a very hard job.”

Running backs coach and special teams coordinator Todd Goebbel is now the interim coach, with the Wolfpack hosting California on Saturday. Goebbel said Monday that Doeren had been able to address the team after his firing, with Doeren sharing some of that message Tuesday.

“I know for these guys that are here, change is hard,” Doeren said. “Like I told them when I met with them: Just go be great, you know what to do, and for them to live up to their gift and not let anyone tell them what they can’t do.”

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