Dave Doeren's Thoughts After Opening Practice

Wednesday marked the first day of official practices for the North Carolina State football program. Head coach Dave Doeren, now in his 13th season at the helm, took time to speak to the media following the opening practice session.

Here's some of what Doeren had to say to the media:

Transcript

Doeren: "First day. Excited to be back on the grass with the guys. Obviously, competing against one another. You do so much of these walkthroughs and things throughout the summer.

The guys are training and today is a chance to get your first glimpse. I was happy to see the conditioning of many of the players. It’s good to have some guys back that were out last year.

Q: To see Isaiah Shirley, Caden Fordham, and some of those guys playing for us again. It was fun to see, and they look great. You can see there’s some continuity with CJ (Bailey), different from last year, being a returning starter with his receivers.

Doeren: "I think we’re all offensively excited to see Duke Scott. He had a really good spring. He’s building off of a tremendous summer in the weight room. Spike Sowells, young offensive lineman that did a really nice job early in the spring, and had a good summer.

Defensively, there’s just a lot of new parts that came in, and so whether they’re new or, I guess, they’re all new when you talk about transfers and freshmen, but it’s good to see Brian (Nelson II), the corner, transferred in here. He had a good day today, very smooth mover. Ronnie Royal, I thought, took advantage of a lot of reps today, did a nice job in there.

It’s going to be a process, getting these guys into a lot of situational football and competitive drills, to see how they handle the load. It’s the first day of practice, not a lot of install, but there’s a lot of competition coming in this training camp. But, I’ll be able to give you a lot more detail with guys after that."