N.C. State coach Dave Doeren has led his Wolfpack through tough moments before. Doing so this week — after suffering one of the most stunning and improbable losses in recent memory in college football — will be a tougher challenge.
The Wolfpack led Saturday before quarterback CJ Bailey lost a fumble in the end zone while trying to burn the clock and take an intentional safety, turning a road win against a Southeastern Conference opponent into a 35-31
loss at Vanderbilt that has dominated national headlines and replay clips. That's left the 14th-year coach with more wins than any coach in program history facing the challenge of rallying a team from a devastating loss in time for Saturday night's visit from Appalachian State.
“It's a terrible way to end a football game that you controlled,” Doeren said Monday afternoon. “So there was a lot of pain in that locker room after the game, a lot of anger. I know the fans feel the same way.”
The moment will haunt Doeren and the Wolfpack (1-2) regardless of what happens from here. According to ESPN, college football teams were 1,046-1 over the last 20 seasons when having the ball and the lead with 10 seconds to go in a game.
The outlier was Michigan's loss to rival Michigan State in 2015, with the Wolverines' punter mishandling a snap and the ball ending up in the hands of a Spartans player to score a final-play TD.
N.C. State led 31-28 and faced a fourth-and-3 play from its own 5-yard line with 6 seconds left. Bailey could have taken a knee or scrambled out of the back of the end zone to all but seal the win while giving up a safety. Instead, the third-year starter started running toward the oncoming desperation pass rush, then took a hit that knocked the ball loose for Vanderbilt to recover as a winning TD.
Doeren said it was a scenario the team practices regularly, and that Bailey was “trying to get too much time off the clock.”
“When a play isn't executed properly, there's two things that are true,” Doeren said. "The player didn't do what he was coached or trained to do, and the coach didn't do a good enough job training the player to do what he wanted him to do. And both of those things are true.
“Like I said after the game: CJ takes ownership, I take ownership, (offensive coordinator) Kurt Roper takes ownership, we take ownership.”
Doeren said he and Bailey have spent time “just talking through” the whole sequence since Saturday.
“Letting him vent and talk, letting me do the same," Doeren said. “He and I love each other and have a lot of respect for each other.”
Doeren said he was “just so mad and in shock at what went down” immediately after the game, particularly with the Wolfpack playing well enough to win right up until that moment.
“You never sleep as a coach after a tough loss, particularly a loss like that when you feel like you were the better team,” Doeren said.
Asked about any other comparable experienced he could draw from, Doeren referenced a 2016 loss at Clemson. That game saw the Wolfpack miss a short field goal to win at the end of regulation before losing in overtime — and that third-ranked Tigers team went on to beat Alabama for the national championship three months later.
The pain lingered, too; N.C. State had started 4-1, only to see the Clemson loss start a four-game skid before the Wolfpack regrouped to finish 7-6 — the last win, coincidentally, coming against Vanderbilt in the Independence Bowl.
Doeren has brought it all up with this year's team.
“That devastated our locker room for a long period of time,” Doeren said. “I'm not going to let that happen."
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