Last Word on Dave Doeren’s FSU Apology

I know what I saw.   We ALL saw it.

Kudos for NC State coach Dave Doeren for taking the high road, but we saw what we saw.

On Tuesday morning Doeren via Twitter released an apology of sorts for his understandable rant Saturday night about FSU players (and previous opponents) faking injuries to slow down the Wolfpack’s fast paced offense.  The ruse, if true, provided the Florida State defense much needed rest and the opportunity to substitute personnel.  Exactly what Doeren’s style of offense is designed to prevent.

Here’s Doeren’s apology:

“I have apologized to Jimbo Fisher and want to apologize to his staff, players and FSU fans for my comments that took away from a tremendous football game. I left an emotional locker room and took those emotions with me to the press conference. It was a great college football game with tremendous plays made by both teams. That is where the focus deserves to be. I have the utmost respect for Jimbo, his staff and players. FSU played a great game and earned the win.”

Doeren’s original complaint implied that the injuries suspiciously did not appear until the second half when the game was on the line.  Doeren said, “We went fast in the first quarter, I guess there were no fake injuries.”

Doeren further elaborated on what I and anyone who watched the game saw: “One of the players they stopped the game for Saturday, the guy walked off the field as slow as humanly possible, and he’s back in the game.  I get it, if they are hurt, they’re hurt. I’m not going to say a guy isn’t hurt, but if they come back in the game then he might not have been hurt.”

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For a team that the media touts every year as a team with the ACC’s most talented athletes, forgive me if I’m a bit skeptical when I see these same studs go down to injury one by one.  Then as if miraculously healed by Pope Francis himself they re-enter the game plays later.

Predictably those aligned with FSU wrote this off as much ado about nothing.   In Bud Elliott’s SB Nation’s Tomahawknation article, he called Doeren’s accusation stupid and cited two players one of which did not return (Derrick Mitchell) and the other (Eddie Goldman) one of their best defensive linemen as examples.   The fact is there were more than just two.  Mitchell may have had a legitimate injury, however  Elliott proved nothing with “The Goldman was a very good player AND why would FSU use him defense.”

One word:  Exhaustion
That’s the whole point of what Doeren’s offense attempts to do.  Wear the defense out.  I don’t care how good of a player you are.  If you are exhausted, you have been neutralized.

Having said all that, the reality is had the Pack not lost two costly second half fumbles they would most likely be 5-0, regardless of any perceived shenanigans.