The NC State football team made a significant acquisition this year in former Wisconsin offensive coordinator Matt Canada. After growing a successful career in the Big Ten Canada chose to take his talents eastbound and down to NC State. The Technician caught up with Canada to talk about his experience with the Pack so far.
Technician: What made you want to become an offensive coordinator?
Canada: I’ve always enjoyed the game. I always enjoyed the strategic part about it. Obviously, I like coaching, and I like the game and all of those things. I don’t know of anything specific, but I do enjoy the strategy part of our profession and trying to find a way to get our players matched up to make plays.
T: What do you see as redshirt junior quarterback Jacoby Brissett’s best characteristics?
C: He’s very smart, he’s very talented, he’s accurate, he throws the ball very well. He does a lot of really good things, so I’m very fortunate to have him to coach. Brissett’s getting nothing but better every week, and he’s a winner.
T: You’ve got three great running backs. How do you use them in different roles?
C: We kind of see who gets a hot hand. Coach Des Kitchings, our running back coach, does a great job when he’s on the field watching them. He really controls the playing time of those three kids. They all have different things they do well. Ultimately it’s about who gets going in the game and who’s seeing it well, and then we go from there.
T: How confident are you in the receivers this year?
C: I feel good. We’ve got a lot of different weapons. We’ve got multiple guys to throw the ball to where you can’t just cover one player.
T: Wolfpack fans have come to expect a lot of the Wildcat formation this season. What’s your favorite part about running it?
C: It’s been good. We’ve handed it off; we’ve had the chance to throw the ball. It’s a fun deal for us, and the reason you run that formation is it gives you another gap that they have to defend, and it gives you numbers. It’s all about numbers.
T: Was the 2013 Rose Bowl the biggest game you’ve been a part of?
C: Yeah, probably. I mean, the Big Ten championship game in Indianapolis where we beat Nebraska to go to the Rose Bowl, that was in my hometown, and we scored 70 points against Nebraska that night. That was special. And to get to the Rose Bowl certainly was an ultimate goal there. In the Big Ten growing up, that was a big game for me, obviously. At the point of the Rose Bowl there were a lot of things going on for me professionally; I was on my way here. That was certainly a high point.
T: What went right in the first quarter against Florida State?
C: We always had a decent plan, our kids made plays and things went well, but we just didn’t quite finish it up at the end there. We had a couple bad breaks and turnovers. It’s a game of inches, and if those plays don’t happen, it’s a different day. I was proud of the way we played; we just needed to score a few more.
T: What parts of the offense need to improve going forward?
C: All of it. We’ve got to score more points. We were on a roll there for a while. We haven’t scored enough points to win in the last four weeks. Against Florida State, we could’ve scored more, so we’ve got to do that.
