Here are my thoughts:

If you want to fire Doeren because of games like last night's implosion, you have good reason. A new coach isn't going to regularly win 10 games here, but it is understandable to be tired of Doeren. If you want to fire Doeren because you think we should be winning conference championships and don't think he can do it, you are completely out of touch with the reality of college football. But hey, continue being delusional, who am i to stop you?

9/28/2025 9:32:47 AM

^100%

9/28/2025 9:47:16 AM

Correct. Set football expectations accordingly. Be competitive. Ben entertaining. Go to bowls. Beat unc. That’s about the most reasonable thing we can expect.

People with the “he’s been here 13 years and has 0 ACC titles” or no 10 win seasons…uh yeah, we haven’t won an ACC title in over years. Only won 10 games once and that was with a 14 game schedule. Those are not things that any coaches ever achieve at State.

9/28/2025 9:55:27 AM

More bowl game wins would be kinda nice. Dave is what, like 3-6 in bowl games?

9/28/2025 10:11:08 AM

Friendly reminder to all the people complaining about Doeren "padding his win totals by playing cupcakes": the 2002 team that won 11 games played 5 non-conference games, 4 of which were against powerhouses New Mexico, East Tennessee State, Navy and UMass. Oh and that wasn't a good Navy team. It was their first year under Paul Johnson, they went 2-10. They went 0-10 the previous year and 1-10 the year before that. They were AWFUL. So we played the worst D1A team and 2 1AA teams that year. 3 buy games!!! Imagine if Doeren tried to pull that now!

[Edited on September 28, 2025 at 10:11 AM. Reason : Maybe he just needs to wear sunglasses and shiny shoes]

9/28/2025 10:11:19 AM

Quote :

"uh yeah, we haven’t won an ACC title in over 40 years."

Is what it should say

9/28/2025 11:54:32 AM

Quote :

"Per terms of extension singed in 2024: Dave Doeren's "annual salary" is currently $3,125,366 (goes up $125K on 1/1) plus $3M in supplemental compensation (goes up $125K on 1/1). NC State would owe Doeren his "annual salary" thru end of 2029. So $12.5M buyout."

9/28/2025 4:53:23 PM

Lol

9/28/2025 5:28:27 PM

Won’t owe him a dime when he steps down at the end of the season.

9/29/2025 8:47:49 AM

Don't do drugs, k? ^

9/29/2025 9:12:09 AM

We can do this the easy way, or the hard way...

9/29/2025 11:26:00 AM

The FCC chair is gonna revoke CW's license if they don't take Doeren off the air.

9/29/2025 12:32:44 PM

DD is overpaid and underperforms.

I haven't been a fan of his for a while now. But haven't been active about canning him because "who would be better?"

I don't really care anymore. Get rid of him.

9/30/2025 12:03:38 PM

Quote :

"DD is overpaid"

I mean he's overpaid in the sense that all college football coaches are overpaid. In the hierarchy of college coaches and in particular the ACC, he is decidedly not overpaid.

Also, with regards to both his salary and the budget of the football program, he probably slightly overperforms, not underperforms.

Again, this is not advocating for keeping him around. But if you want him gone, at least use arguments that are true

9/30/2025 12:39:30 PM

Quote :

"no 10 win seasons"

didn't help that we had 9 wins before our bowl game was cancelled

9/30/2025 4:41:27 PM

^^100% correct.

There’s plenty of reasons to part ways with DD. Saying he’s overpaid is just wrong.

9/30/2025 5:31:29 PM

Has it really gotten that bad that an underperforming coach gets around $6,000,000 annually?

10/1/2025 11:33:14 AM

Yes. That’s the going rate.

USA Today 2024 article gave these figures. And if it’s a year old, I’m guessing the numbers are only going up.

Narduzzi is getting 6.7M
Jonathon Smith at Michigan State is getting 7.25M
Gundy, just fired fired was getting close to 8M
Kleiman at KState 5.5M
Like Fickell 7.7M

DD is getting paid in the top ~40 ish of coaches. Our results over the last 13 years are probably top 40 ish in the country.

10/1/2025 12:19:33 PM

Thanks for data drop.

10/2/2025 12:56:56 PM

A lotta Doeren chatter the last couple of weeks and I don’t think today’s result will change any minds.

Here’s my rambling thoughts.

A defense of Doeren’s performance:
(None of this is a reason not to move on from DD, just providing perspective for what’s been accomplished)
Doeren has objectively been the most consistent coach of the last 30 years at State. MOC went 6-2 in his second year with a Peach Bowl win over Miss State. He went 5-3 in 1997. His other 5 seasons were 4-4 or worse in the ACC. The Amato years were fun. But Amato was better than 4-4 in the ACC just once. He went 5-3 during that 11-3 season. In TOBs 6 seasons, one season of 5-3 was his best. Everything else was 4-4 or worse. 5 of DD’s 12 full seasons have been 5-3 or better in the ACC. 5 out of 12. The previous 20 years before DD’s arrival, we finished better than .500 just 4 times in those 20 seasons. Hard to compare across eras but anyway you slice it, Doeren has had more success than his predecessors. DD has finished the season ranked 3 teams in 12 seasons. That happened 3 times total over the 20 years before DD. In a harder to quantify way, we have played more meaningful football games under DD than the previous 3 coaches. I’m talking about games in late Oct or into Nov with actual ACC title/division implications. DD has pretty much resoundingly failed in winning any of those games. I’ll get to his failures later. But we’ve been within a game of playing for the conference title multiple times under DD. That sounds a little participation trophy-ish, and I’m not gonna argue with that. But if the goal is the be relevant late into the season and have chances to play for the title, we have at least been in that position with DD. NC State is a mediocre football program. Most coaches come here and produce mediocre results. DD has posted slightly better than mediocre results. And he beats UNC for whatever that is worth.

The Bad:
DDs teams are boring.
DD has fallen short (consistently) in those big games where we have a chance to win the division or play ourselves into a more nationally relevant position.
Those opportunities seem to often come against WF. That feels even more deflating. Losing to a top 10 Clemson or FSU with the division on the line is easier to stomach than losing a very winnable game to WF.
DD lacks many signature wins. No huge upsets over Clemson or FSU like his predecessors had. Those wins were often followed up by losses to BC anyways. But the excitement of winning vs a top 10 opponent does pump some adrenaline into the fan base in an otherwise ho hum 7-5 season. DD simply hasn’t had that big time upset or big win that catches the attention of the CFB world.
Back to the first point about boring teams. We don’t have a great identity. DD likes to talk about winning the LOS and playing blue collar football. We haven’t actually been able to live up to that identity in several seasons. I’d argue this years offense is probably the most exciting and fun offense we’ve had since…JaySam, Hines, Harmon, Jakobi Meyers maybe? We kinda just play boring football. And if you’re gonna go 7-5 regardless, boring isn’t the way to win over fans.

TLDR. Fire him. Don’t fire him. Idc. I just want us to be fair and reasonable about what he’s actually done here. And what reasonable expectations are.

One last edit: there’s no guarantee the next coach is as good as DD. The previous few have not been as good as him. You could argue that unless there’s a big shift in how we fund football, there’s a good chance the next coach won’t have the same success DD has had. That’s not necessarily a reason not to move on from DD. At some point the fan base just becomes tired of him and you move on. I get that. But I don’t know that there’s a coach out there that is gonna come in and get us over this 8 or 9 win hump without a major shift in our resources.

[Edited on October 4, 2025 at 8:01 AM. Reason : H]

10/4/2025 7:54:25 AM

With the possibility of Belichick leaving UNC, should we use this opportunity to upgrade from Dave and hire Belichick to be the next coach of the Pack? He isn't making it work in Chapel Hill, but I think we could be the school that really gets the most out of him.

10/8/2025 3:31:55 PM

I mean, BB wasn’t great at this first NFL job either. It’s that second stop where he really takes off

10/8/2025 3:46:44 PM

^^ He's had several 5 or more wins in the conference seasons but he also had one season where he didn't win a single conference game. Going winless in the conference was once an embarrassment reserved for Duke. It was his first year so maybe he gets a pass.

He did have a year where he only won one conference game (against a 5-7 Syracuse). That was his 7th year.

He's had five seasons where he won 5 or more conference games.
He's had six seasons where he won 3 or fewer conference games. I wouldn't be surprised if this season is his seventh.

That's probably better than where the program has been at historically?

I think you hit the nail on the head with him being boring though. We know he'll lose the big games before they start, we know he likes to be complacent when he builds a lead, so much so that the game comes down to the wire in the final minutes. Or maybe he really is trying to run up the score instead of running out the clock but can't?

So a CTC or TOB coached team that goes at best 5-7 but somehow pulls out a win against a top 10 conference opponent once every 4 seasons or a DD team that goes 7-5 and has no chance of pulling off a big win in any season.

Like you say, it's boring. If NCSU is destined to be close to 0.500 a new coach would at least spark some interest in the next season. Someone new to armchair quarterback and complain about but at least people get some passing interest in the program during the discovery phase. With DD it's yeah, the offense will be nonexistent, yeah, the defense will give up 15 yards every single time it's 3rd down and over 5 yards to go, yeah, the opponent is ranked #24 so we no shot in hell.

10/10/2025 4:25:16 PM

Went back and checked.

TOB
One season with 5 or more conference wins
Two seasons with 3 or fewer conference wins
2-6 worst record

CTC
One season with 5 or more conference wins
Three seasons with 3 or fewer conference wins
2-6 worst record

MOC
Two seasons with 5 or more conference wins
Four seasons with 4 or fewer conference wins
2-6 worst record

Damn, we sucked harder than I remember.

10/10/2025 4:29:56 PM

Yeah the bottom has really fallen out twice for him. Year 1 was semi excusable if you view it as a total rebuild. But the 1-7 year was just awful that far into his tenure.

We’re just a mediocre ass program and always have been

10/10/2025 5:55:52 PM

Does a 1-5 finish take dave out?

10/11/2025 6:19:09 PM

Probably. Or he’s just gonna retire.

10/11/2025 6:48:17 PM