NC State Football:
Staff-Building Decisions Crucial
As Rivers Takes Reins In Raleigh
By David Glenn
North Carolina Sports Network
(last updated Nov. 9, 2026)
Philip Rivers, the greatest quarterback in NC State history, is going to be the next head coach of the Wolfpack.
Multiple North Carolina Sports Network sources confirmed that news on Saturday. The same sources said to expect a press conference in Raleigh, introducing Rivers, on Friday or next Monday (Nov. 16).
Rivers will succeed Dave Doeren, whose 17 seasons as the leader of the Pack definitely could be described as a mixed bag.
NC State’s decision to “hand the reins” to Rivers, someone whose only previous coaching experience has come at the high school level, already has been panned by some in the national media as reckless or even idiotic.
The honest assessment is that of course it’s a risk — even a major risk — for any Power Four program to give its head coaching position to someone who has never coached in a game above the high school level.
However…
By now, most know the history — or lack of history, really — when it comes to successful jumps directly from high school coaching to major college coaching in football.
If you want to go back more than 80 years, yes, elevated high school coach Paul Brown won a national championship at Ohio State on his way to becoming a Pro Football Hall of Fame inductee for what he later did as a head coach for decades in the National Football League.
Otherwise, not so much.
The somewhat similar experiments from more recent times include Gerry Faust at Notre Dame in the 1980s and much more recently guys such as Todd Dodge at North Texas, Tony Sanchez at UNLV, and Trent Dilfer (another long-time NFL quarterback) at UAB.
All of those high school head coaching risks led to colossal college football failures, meaning those guys either resigned or were dismissed with very ugly records after five seasons or fewer.
Once you accept the significant risk involved, though, there are a handful of very important, intelligent, follow-up questions that should have been — and probably were — part of the back-and-forth conversations between NC State and Rivers over the past two-plus weeks, or since Doeren was fired Oct. 24.
If Rivers already had good answers to these questions, then his hire is a risk worth taking. If he didn’t or doesn’t have good answers to these same questions, that’s when the Wolfpack would be inviting disaster. “Hope” is not a plan, even with a legendary former player at the helm.
The questions include this multi-layered one: Whom do you have in mind as your NC State football general manager, what is his relevant experience for that position as you envision it, and can you get him at a price that fits our budget?
Jatavis Sanders, one of Rivers’ backup QBs with the Wolfpack in the early 2000s, has some related experience from his time on staff at Alabama and elsewhere, but given Rivers’ quarter-century in high-level football at this point, you’d hope he casts a very wide net, taps into his endless list of connections, and finds the right fit, whether it’s Sanders or someone else.
The same questions have to be asked — and have to have good, solid answers (not just hope or speculation) — when it comes to Rivers’ top targets at defensive coordinator, offensive coordinator, strength and conditioning director, and a few other key job descriptions.
Ideally, Rivers would have some well-qualified folks (e.g., South Carolina defensive coordinator Clayton White, a former Wolfpack/NFL linebacker who was a senior with the Pack during Rivers’ freshman season in 2000) lined up already, because they definitely will be directly tied to whether his tenure at NC State thrives or skids in the coming years.
At Duke, where Manny Diaz has had three extremely impressive seasons as the Blue Devils’ head coach, including the 2025 ACC championship and a 41-3 whooping of the Wolfpack in Raleigh on Saturday, the head coach swears that his very first hire in Durham, “director of football sports performance” David Feeley, was the starting point for everything else that has fallen into place so successfully for the Devils.
At UNC, legendary coach Bill Belichick, a guy with Hall of Fame-caliber coaching credentials but zero previous experience at the college level, nearly sabotaged his tenure in Chapel Hill by initially making the wrong hires at general manager and offensive coordinator. As a direct result, the Tar Heels lacked talent last year, finished 4-8 and had one of the worst offenses in the Power Four leagues, and both GM Mike Lombardi and OC Freddie Kitchens had to exit after only one horrific season. With a more competent cast around him, Belichick appears ready to take the Heels to a bowl in Year Two.
At Georgia Tech, head coach Brent Key — a beloved former All-ACC player for the Yellow Jackets — had three solid seasons in Atlanta after hiring up-and-coming offensive coordinator Buster Faulkner away from the rival Georgia Bulldogs and then finding Texas A&M quarterback Haynes King in the transfer portal. With Faulkner and King, Key went 16-8 in the ACC over the past three seasons. Now, after Faulkner left for the Florida Gators and King ran out of eligibility, Tech is dead-last in the ACC with a 2-7 record, Key just fired half his coaching staff, and the head coach knows they’ll be coming for him next if he doesn’t get back to surrounding himself with the right people.
It’s not difficult to see the potential upside for NC State.
Rivers is a universally known name in football circles. His gridiron IQ and brand recognition are through the roof. When he talks to high school football coaches or prep stars or their parents and mentors, he won’t have to spend any time explaining who he is, as many other coaches do.
In the early 2000s, Rivers became one of the greatest players in ACC history, and then he went on to an incredibly successful NFL career that ended up stretching over more than 20 years.
Should a prominent college transfer or high school prospect believe that Rivers can help him get to the next level, while experiencing a university and a football program that Rivers himself chose as a high school recruit back at the end of the 1990s? Given Rivers’ personal journey over the past 27 years, most of that in the NFL, of course he should!
That’s part of the fun here.
But just how much fun NC State will have during the Philip Rivers Era depends a lot on what happens soon after the coach’s introductory press conference. Keep an eye on those key positions around him, because they likely will make all the difference.
