Game Analysis: NC State DOA at Clemson

Dave Doeren may have a reputation for being unable to “win the big one,” but there was some pretty concrete evidence that his program had at least left the complete no-show in the past. Apparently not. Saturday’s non-effort in Death Valley was the second time in as many games against power-conference competition that the contest was on ice by halftime. In fact, through all four games, State has been outscored in the first half 96-30. Against FBS only, that's 82-16.

Clemson put so many points on the board so quickly that it actually helped State make the game look closer than it was, courtesy of nearly an entire half of football against the Tigers’ backups, third-strings, practice squad, intramural squad, and players’ moms. It was 45-7 at halftime.

The offense didn't do much, but did at least appear to arrive at the stadium. The performance from State’s defensive front in this game was just awful. This was the worst game I’ve seen from an NC State defensive front in probably a decade. The production from this unit this year has been baffling. Everybody wants to complain about the offensive line, but they’re complaining about the wrong line. 

State Cannot Stop Counter

The Wolfpack’s defense has a natural vulnerability to gap scheme runs, counter being the most common that it sees. This is a product of the tite front that it plays. These fronts have really come into vogue because they provide answers to spread offenses and wildly popular RPO concepts. Like any other defense, they have weaknesses, namely the creation of easy down-blocking angles for gap scheme runs, which is why counter is so popular right now. 

In a tite front, the defensive end is aligned inside of the tackle. When counter creates two new gaps on the front side, the outside linebacker becomes the E-gap player, more often called the force player, the mike becomes the D-gap player, and then the C-gap player is often the linebacker on the back side or a safety while run support rallies to the ball. If either one of those two screws up or gets blocked, the play is hitting C gap, often for a big gain. That flow to the C gap is the critical component of the play for the Pack. State is trying to box these runs in and force the ball toward the flowing defense. It has generally succeeded in getting the ball there, but that's the easy part. It has fit the inside gaps poorly, it has tackled poorly, and it has gotten off blocks poorly, so there have been lots of holes inside of the kick and the wrapper.

Last year, State saw a decent amount of counter and power, but the success rate was much lower than it is now. The defensive line created a lot of havoc that disrupted the timing of these plays, preventing a decent chunk of them from hitting at all while also taking a lot of pressure off the linebackers. This is not happening anymore. The number of gap scheme runs State has faced this year is huge, and the number of plays where a defensive lineman disrupted a puller is less than two.

This is the only one I've found.

DJ Jackson gets penetration from the nose tackle spot and causes a collision in the backfield that totally destroys the play.

This is not something you can reasonably expect to have every play, but State created enough of this last year to at least make teams question whether their offensive line could hold up in the down blocks. The line created penetration, squeezed down gaps, and refused to be moved at the very least. None of this is happening now. The pullers are clean all the way to the point of attack, ends are getting pushed past the nose tackle, and our pets' heads are falling off.

It’s also imperative for this defense that the offensive line doesn’t get easy releases on gap scheme runs. The line will get a double team on a G/H counter play or a dart play, and the nose tackle is supposed to eat double teams and prevent a release to the backers, which should help them stay clean as they flow. This is also not really happening. The level of play from the defensive line has been debilitating for State. 

The worse the line plays, the more pressure it puts on the linebackers to get over blocks and get to the point of attack, which the linebackers have not been nearly good enough to do well. If the offense can block the back side, it will have running lanes. The backers have to fire quickly, which makes them vulnerable to expansions of the counter concept. Clemson and Louisiana Tech both brought variations of counter RPOs that read the backside backer, and both had success with it. 

Caden Fordham would be C gap on this play. Clemson is reading him, and when Fordham sees the pullers and goes to play the run, the throwing window blows wide open.

The amount of heat that’s on the linebackers this year makes it easy to toy with them because they can’t afford to hesitate. Clemson hurt State badly with jet motions and general eye candy opposite the direction of the play. Freeze the backers and it’s advantage offense. 

I'm not sure what to make of this play. There is nobody within 10 yards of the C gap. Carter is in the box on the back side and ends up tracking the jet motion, taking himself completely out of the play. Also, watch where Red Hibbler starts and where he ends up. That's a loss.

You’ll also note on the above play that Kaufman at safety loses contain on the inside. It’s a poor job of knowing where your help is. He needs to be inside of the receiver who is arc blocking, and he and White can box in the quarterback and at least prevent a touchdown. This leads us to the next issue. The defensive backfield has been just plainly terrible in run support. 

As you start to add tight ends to the formation for counter, it starts to bring defensive backs into the box to fit the run. This is why State benefits from physical defensive backs. Teams love getting defensive backs into the run fit because they’re smaller players and often less physical. With State in the 3-3-5, it’s easy to do this. 

I don’t even know where to begin with what we’ve seen from the defensive backfield this year. Run support and run fits from them have left everything to be desired. Guys are playing the wrong gaps, they’re tackling poorly, they’re playing with bad technique. There is nothing that is going well here. Teams love adding tight ends now, because it forces the defensive backfield into the play, and that is unquestionably advantage offense in 2024. 

I'm fairly confident that this is Bishop Fitzgerald's fault.

Both Fordham and Fitzgerald play the same gap here like both are expecting the other to get outside of the wrapper (78). I can't imagine State would ask Fordham to do that from that far away, which would mean that Fitzgerald missed the assignment. There have been a lot of missed assignments and bad fits from the defensive backfield when they've gotten involved in the run support.

One alignment that has given State problems is this 12 personnel look with the balanced tight ends. In a tite front, the play side tight end is releasing unimpeded, and he can block any of these flowing linebackers very easily. Tony Gibson has offered a few different adjustments to this. One is to bump the end one gap over and shade the nose tackle on the shoulder on the center instead of aligning head up. This prevents the free release from the tight end and avoids the dreaded “double bubble,” which is two consecutive gaps without a defender aligned to them. It works well here. 

This prevents the free release from the tight end but it also creates a double team. Vann does well enough, nobody gets any kind of release, the flow is mostly clean, and Cisse makes a tackle.

Another fix has been to ask a play side linebacker to shoot the C gap instead of flowing to their original gap. This prevents the free release from the tight end, but requires another player to fit the gap the linebacker would have. This new player is usually a safety that has to get over there in a hurry. State has avoided the gap integrity issues the free release creates when it has used this, but the fits, technique, and tackling of the safeties have been abysmal. 

Here is an example (same play as two above).

Betty attacks the tight end while Fordham flows over him and Ftizgerald comes down. Normally, when you bump gaps against counter, Betty would be outside of Fordham. He prevents 9 from getting an angle on Fordham. The play obviously explodes though because the gap assignments are not played correctly.

When you put all of this stuff together, it’s no wonder every team is running this at State 10+ times a game. They have demonstrated no ability to stop it. The only team that did not build the majority of their game plan around gap scheme runs was Western Carolina, which likely figured it couldn’t hold up doing so. The Catamounts only ran counter once in the game. It was the longest run of the game and they scored a touchdown on it. 

That’s about all I have to say about that. Quite literally, nobody did a good job in their run responsibilities on Saturday. Clemson averaged over eight yards per carry as a result.

Offense Existed Kind of

State’s offense in this game was better than the defense, at least. The story was obviously going to be CJ Bailey, and he was alright for his first start. State by no means got great quarterback play in this game, but given the context, it was far from a huge problem. 

Bailey is pretty good throwing anything under safety level. In-breakers, flood concepts, things that allow him to rip the ball are things he can throw pretty well. He was accurate and on time with these types of things within the window of reasonable expectations for a first career start. There were a few goofy things that happened, but those are the kinds of things that don’t feel relevant long-term. 

The biggest issue with Bailey right now is that he can’t really stretch the field. This idea got floated that he brought this while State was missing it with McCall, and I honestly think it came from the fact that Bailey has a big arm. It takes more than that, though. His longest completed pass by air yards through a game and a half is 20 yards, and he’s 0/6 beyond 20 with two interception-worthy plays and one on-target throw. This counts the DPI flags, so you could argue it's not a fair number, but these were all underthrown. If you want to throw those out, he's 0/3 with one on-target throw and two pick-worthy plays. He underthrew every deep ball in this game. The combination of touch and accuracy to get elevation on the ball and be on target isn’t really there right now. It’s something that will need development, and that’s of course understandable and fine. 

A hallmark of freshman quarterback play is generally bad pocket presence, and Bailey certainly has this right now. 

He bails out of the pocket here for no reason and ends up making a throw of significantly higher difficulty than he would have had if he stayed in the pocket. Of course, he makes the throw, which is nice, but it costs State at least 5 yards and an opportunity for Joly to break a tackle. There is some arm talent here for sure, but you’d like to see him make it a little easier on himself. Again, first career start. This is not an indictment of the quarterback in the long-term, but it may matter if you’re looking for your best bet to win now. 

Beyond those on-field evaluations, I do really like this kid. State got whacked, but he didn’t sulk or ever really stop having fun. That may sound fluffy and corny but I think it does matter. Attitudes do matter, and he seems like a natural-born lead-by-example guy. Given how utterly grating the football has been so far this year, maybe you just need a guy who remembers how to enjoy a game. 

The concepts for Bailey in the first half were pretty dink and dunk. Anae loves him some boot flood, which State ran multiple times in this game. There was a lot of Ohio, some mesh stuff, and one recorded HOSS concept. The flood concepts and underneath man-coverage beaters were common for sure. State is just not that interested in stretching the field, which does make some sense under the circumstances, but still something I can't really get down with. It did try to do this more later on in the game with some of these formation-into-boundary plays that try to create isolation on the outside. I recorded two of these, both in the second half. 

The FIB stuff is good to see. It’s a useful way to try and stretch the field against a team playing a lot of man coverage. Clemson gave State a fair amount of this. I’m dying to see this team try to get more vertical, as I felt like there were opportunities to do this against Tennessee and State almost never tried. 

This week's passing concepts

The ground game had hints of some juice to it. The left side of the offensive line continues to be strong for State. I’m not sure what happened to Anthony Carter that got Val Erickson in the game, but when State had its starting five out there, it was a solid effort.

State ran a lot more wide zone in this game, getting away from inside zone as its primary call. I thought Correll had a nice game, and both tackles are good in outside zone. There was good development in this game, but as has been the story, one thing blew up the play. We got a couple back side protection issues, a bad read on a read option, and an unnecessary holding call messing up some pretty good front side stuff on Saturday. A lot of the actual blocking is good, but the offense as a whole is still struggling to put a complete effort together.

Kendrick Raphael is the best running back on the team right now. He has more shake than Waters and he runs with more power than Smothers right now. He’s just a more physically well-rounded back. Last year, he read plays too fast. He has definitely progressed this season, and with him being pretty good in pass protection too, I think he should probably be RB1 going forward. 

It’s not close to where it needed to be, or where we expected it to be, but I remain optimistic that State can put something useful on the field offensively for the rest of this season. It doesn’t look good for an explosive vertical passing attack, which was part of the excitement around the initial personnel set the offense had. This ground game is going to start hitting here in the near future. It has just had so many plays that were so close and couldn’t hit because of a bad back read or one block losing on the back side or something else. Again, not as fast as we expected, but it’s going to come around. 

Final Thoughts

This game was hideous. The defensive effort from top to bottom just sucked, and there is not really a nice way to accurately describe how bad the defense was in this game. Basically, nothing was done right. Gibson is on the clock here (I mean he has decisions to make, not that his job is in jeopardy). Clemson and Tennessee are obviously the two best teams on the schedule, but that doesn't count for much when State got so thoroughly dismantled in both games. Every team is going to run counter right at State's face. If it can't figure out how to deal with this, it's going to give up huge rushing numbers for the entire season. Any offensive development would just go to waste in that case.

Dave has been here before, kind of. Slow starts haven't been uncommon. State missed 15 tackles in the season opener against ECU in 2022. In 2023, the line was terrible against UConn and the eye discipline in run support was bad for several games. Neither of those starts were good, but neither approached how bad these first four games have been. Doeren and Co. certainly have their work cut out for them.