VT loss a sign that Dave Doeren’s time at NC State is finally fizzling out
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- NC State's loss to Virginia Tech highlights a clear decline under Dave Doeren.
- Doeren’s 13-year tenure includes competitiveness but no major breakthroughs.
- Postseason struggles and fan fatigue signal it's time for leadership change.
Outside of fiction, it’s rare to witness a turning point and know for certain that it was just that. These things often come to us only in retrospect, those moments when suspicions became certainties or probabilities became inevitabilities.
No time was needed to process or put N.C. State’s loss to Virginia Tech on Saturday into perspective. It was obvious in the immediate moment what it was and what it represented, and that was the final clarity that it’s time for N.C. State to move on from Dave Doeren and, in equal amounts, Doeren to move on from N.C. State.
This was as inexcusable a loss as any in Doeren’s tenure, a home loss to a team so bad, so lost, that it got its coach fired in September.
After three gritty wins to start the season, with a chance to go 6-0 well within reach, the Wolfpack now faces an uphill road just to bowl eligibility given the difficulty of its schedule in the second half of the season. And after barely squeaking into a bowl last year only to get embarrassed by East Carolina while embarrassing itself with its own lack of discipline, there’s no momentum to gather, no foundation left to fall back upon.
The time for the parting of the ways has come. For the best of everyone, Doeren included. It has been pretty clear since he grumbled “(Expletive), be happy we won,” after the Virginia win last year that Doeren is tired of being stuck in this cycle, too — fully aware of the tide turning against him.
N.C. State could have done a lot worse than Doeren when he was hired and there’s no guarantee that making a change will deliver a better coach, either, but there’s also a point where you have to try something else. Doeren’s clearly frustrated. The fans have never been more frustrated. It’s OK to admit, after 13 years, that it’s time for a change.
As a meaningful signpost, Saturday’s loss is up there with the loss at East Carolina in 2016, the one that strongly (and correctly) hinted at the ceiling on a Doeren-coached program, the apex of Doeren blaming everyone but himself for the team’s failings. (He would, over the progression of his tenure, grow out of that tendency to point fingers.)
And it’s up there with the season-opening loss to South Carolina in Charlotte a year later, when the Wolfpack did just about everything right but couldn’t make the kind of winning plays that distinguish good programs from great ones, a promising season sunk before it ever really got started, another sign — clear at the time and in retrospect — that Doeren probably wasn’t getting the Wolfpack over the top.
Nor has he since. His best teams never did get over the top, one denied a 10th win by UCLA’s COVID withdrawal — although even that team only qualified for the Holiday Bowl — and the run-it-back group the next season stumbling to the finish after Devin Leary was injured. That was the only Doeren team ever to crack the AP top 10; its season ended with a loss in the Duke’s Mayo Bowl.
Over his tenure, 12 other ACC teams have played in the ACC championship game — including, from the Atlantic Division, Wake Forest. N.C. State still never has. The Wolfpack has never played in a better postseason game than the Gator Bowl. It never won more than six ACC games in a season, outside of the COVID year. Doeren has a 48-53 record within the ACC.
After all that time, his most long-lasting achievement is still his fiery manifesto after winning in Chapel Hill for the first time in 2014, complaining about UNC fans with popped collars and “fancy belts,” declaring N.C. State a “hands in the dirt” football team for a “blue collar” school, a speech now commemorated in giant letters within the Murphy Center.
And yet only twice has the Wolfpack failed to make a bowl game in Doeren’s tenure. The program has been competitive, year after year, even if it often failed to win the most pivotal games or contrived to lose the least consequential ones (like Virginia Tech on Saturday). A steady stream of players have grown, progressed and developed into NFL prospects.
Ticket sales have never suffered, even as fans grumbled. His record against the Tar Heels is a commendable 8-4, including four straight wins over Mack Brown. Even as the fans and Doeren have worn each other thin, he’s still endeared himself to them with his victory cigars and red Solo cups, and he’s genuinely embraced everything about living here.
For a program that hasn’t won an ACC title since 1979, there’s nevertheless a lot to the good in Doeren’s time at N.C. State. But as that time stretches on, and the long-awaited breakthrough continues to prove elusive, perhaps it’s time to see what someone else can do. Even Doeren seems like he’s ready to find out.
There’s a lot of football yet to be played this fall, and the Wolfpack could yet pull a few upsets and put the Duke and Virginia Tech losses — both eminently winnable games — behind it. Doeren has unquestionably earned the right to see this out, to exit on his own terms, to finish this season with these players who came to play for him before both he and N.C. State figure out their next chapters.
And there’s no reason to act rashly, because there is absolutely zero doubt that Doeren will find a way to beat Bill Belichick at Carter-Finley Stadium on the Saturday after Thanksgiving. His best moments were often against the Tar Heels. Why not go out that way?
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This story was originally published September 29, 2025 at 12:17 PM with the headline "VT loss a sign that Dave Doeren’s time at NC State is finally fizzling out."
