Blake Harrell is in his first full season as ECU’s head coach but is hardly new to Greenville, having served as the defensive coordinator since 2020. The Pirates went 5-1 after he took over as the interim coach last season, which was good enough to get the interim tag removed. He goes into 2025 eager to re-capture the elusive doused-in-plastic-toy-bowling-pins feeling that haunts us all.
Harrell met with the media on Monday to talk about his team’s matchup with NC State and CJ Bailey:
“I think he does
a great job with his eyes down the field. He has his eyes down the field, and he’ll scramble around. He obviously has the legs to run it and take off on you. They got some quarterback run game with him. They’re pulling guards and tackles and running counters in there, and the little two play series they got going on. But he can make the throws too. I mean, he can make the field out throw, he can throw it down the field, and just, I think he does really good job. And they’re going to change the offense a little bit for him, I think, to fit him. I think if CJ Bailey wasn’t such a big part of that offense, and no disrespect to Coach Roper, because he’s done a great job, but maybe they would have went outside for an offensive coordinator. It just tells you how highly they think of CJ Bailey and keeping that staff together, and keeping that offense together, and keeping that culture together, which obviously coach Roper and CJ Bailey are a big part of what they do.”
There’s been no shortage of respect shown from both Harrell and Dave Doeren in the lead up to this game, as you’d expect given the way the bowl game ended. Both have talked about managing emotions, and Harrell said he expects his team to “go up there and play the game the right way.”
On a side note, if you’re in Greenville, is it reasonable to declare that Raleigh is “up there” rather than, say, “over there”? I conducted extensive research into the matter.
As we see here, and based on earlier precedents established by Ryan Finley and others, Raleigh does indeed qualify as “up there.” Furthermore, Raleigh stands a couple hundred feet higher above sea level than Greenville and could be considered “up there,” relatively, regardless of compass orientation. Anyway, glad to get this settled.
What were we talking about? Right, football.
East Carolina went ahead and released its Week 1 depth chart to the public yesterday, and that post notes that NCSU and ECU have exchanged two-deeps. So Dave’s being fair with the Pirates, just not with the rest of us plebes.
