Anonymous coaches dish on NC State, ACC for Athlon

One of my favorite offseason features every year comes from Athlon, which serves up anonymous opinions from coaches on the other teams in their league. In general, the coaches still manage to be pretty diplomatic, but there are at least a few bits of gold in every installment.

Athlon published its ACC edition on Wednesday morning. In the NC State portion, coaches discuss Dave Doeren’s flirtation with Tennessee, and also they offer up a few compliments for the offense and Doeren’s approach to the defense.

I always like to check the NC State part to see if there is anything about which I need to be mad online. But once I am through with that, the first place I go is the UNC section because obviously:

“There’s no secret to beating them. They can’t stop the run. Haven’t been able to do it for at least three years and maybe more. If you can run the ball and keep that offense off the field, that’s an easy formula. The problem has been stopping them on offense.”

Now, sure this particular coach spent some time complimenting the offense after carpet bombing UNC’s defensive staff, but I prefer to focus on the latter on account of it’s funny.

If you were wondering about what factors—other than draft results—might be driving the state’s best defensive talent to Raleigh, the above remark offers good insight. UNC’s lacking defenses have been a damper on that program for years, and why as a high school prospect would you trust those coaches to develop you? There has been no indication that UNC’s defensive staff is much good at anything.