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NC State has managed to be grating this year in ways I couldn’t quite imagine. I thought it was possible that watching the offense try to move the ball in 2022 and the early parts of 2023 would prove to be a masochistic football-watching experience that could not be topped, but the Pack has never backed down from such a challenge.
State added a tremendous amount of skill talent to the roster in the offseason, an overhaul that has managed to add a negligible amount of juice to the offensive side of the ball. The product is still bad, the only difference being that this time it’s harder to explain how it got there.
Statistically, State is not good at anything. No, really. The ground game is 101st in yards per carry, the passing offense posted 13.7 yards per attempt against Syracuse and is still 59th nationally at 7.5. The defense is 86th in yards per carry and 58th in yards per pass attempt. The best macro-level production numbers it’s posting are narrowly in the top half nationally. Perhaps the most disappointing number is the 42% third-down conversion rate Gibson’s defense is giving up. Last year’s defense sat at 28%.
So why is a team that’s bad at everything losing to a team that’s good at some things such a frustrating experience? Because at this point, all you’re looking for is positive direction, and the Pack actually did demonstrate that throughout the game. Truthfully, State’s young players were connecting some dots in this game that they failed to connect in the past games. It gave the appearance of a team that was ready to be good at some stuff. There were things that were worth getting excited about, but any time this trend threatened to produce something tangible, State would implode with haste and startling efficiency. That's a rather different experience than just watching ineptitude.
The whole game can more or less be defined by a missed field goal, an interception, and two fumbles. We’ll have our conversation about the quarterback play, the running back rotation, and the “officiating” here in a second, but those four instances are the game. This team got into the red zone off an absolute seed on 4th and 9, then promptly posted back to back illegal shift penalties and threw an interception. That is the entire game in a sentence.
A Lack of Identity
I had a really interesting conversation with some of our readers about State’s recent offensive coordinators in the Trinity Road Times premium chat. There are stark differences between who State employed from 2016 through 2022 and what it has now. Both Eli Drinkwitz and Tim Beck generally had smaller playbooks than Anae. Drinkwitz had one run play in the playbook. State ran outside zone. That’s who it was. Beck loved the vertical passing concepts. That’s why the offense died when mismatch-creators left in 2021. It's who he is though.
I was never a huge fan of either of those approaches. I like variety, as I think it pays to make college kids on the other team think more, but this is merely a stylistic choice. There isn’t a right or wrong answer. One thing I cannot deny though, no matter how I feel about those coordinators, is that their teams had an identity. Those teams knew what they wanted to do and who they wanted to be, and that’s what they were, sometimes to a fault.
This NC State team has no offensive identity. Anae’s playbook is huge. The run concepts are so much deeper, and you’ve seen it through two years. State ran a ton of GT counter last year. This year, it was very inside zone based at the start of the season. Since Clemson, it’s become much more outside zone based. Against Syracuse, State threw the ball at twice the clip that it ran it and called inside zone a bunch more than outside zone.
This team simply has no idea what it’s good at, or what it even really wants to be good at. There is no continuity from game to game in the process that State operates on offense. From the play calling to the personnel groupings, this team has no conviction in any of its offense and it’s just throwing stuff at the wall and hoping it sticks. It’s very strange to see from a team that so quickly established an identity with the return of Armstrong late last year. Who is NC State? What do these coaches want the answer to that question to be?
CJ Bailey's Best Game
This was CJ Bailey’s best game. As a young quarterback, he has expectedly made plenty of freshman mistakes, but the higher level throws started to come around in this game. The team is not going to approach the rest of the season as a developmental effort for Bailey, but if that’s your primary concern, you saw some immediate growth from the weeks before.
Bailey’s two biggest issues to this point have been hesitancy and accuracy down the field. His deep balls have been largely uncompetitive leading up to the Syracuse game, and the freshman has passed up way too many downfield throws to this point. Both of those issues persisted in this game, but with much less consistency.
This was an absolute seed and the best throw he’s made all year.
Bailey hasn’t trusted what he’s seeing enough. He’s had some issues with disguised coverages and maybe it got into his head as a young player. You’ll see him stick on a read too long at times, almost like he’s unsure about the window, and it derails the timing of the progressions. Knowing that, this type of throw is definite growth. It’s decisive and demonstrates anticipation, which is critical to throwing at zone windows. Look where Joly is when Bailey is already throwing the ball. That's how you attack a zone. Absolute banger of a throw.
This one was a banger too. Of course, it gets dropped, because State was committed to self-destruction Saturday night, but this kind of accuracy with elevation on the ball is not something he was doing in the earlier games.
He would complete a 42-yarder to KC later in the game that went 34 yards in the air. That was the first completion of the season for any quarterback of over 20 air yards.
The narrative was that State wasn’t giving Bailey opportunities, but the truth was that he wasn’t throwing the ball, or was doing it with poor accuracy, when those chances were schemed. It was clear early that State pushed him to be more aggressive. He was.
This is where you want to see more from him. This play had a lot of people talking, as Joly was obviously wide open down the seam. I want to walk through the concept here though, because there is some ambiguity.
State is trying to get the ball to Noah Rogers here, who is at the bottom of your screen. This is called a bow concept. You’re going to get a shallow hitch from KC in the slot and a Dig at about 12 yards from Rogers. The goal here is to conflict the hook/curl defender, which is the second guy from the sideline on the short side. If that defender sits on KC’s route, Bailey should be able to layer the ball over the top to Rogers. The one guy that can affect Rogers’ route is the post safety, so Joly’s seam route is supposed to carry that guy up the field.
The one part that I do not know is whether or not Joly is in the progression. He may be a pure clear out here, or State may want Bailey to read the bow concept and then read Rogers like a yankee concept where he’s throwing to Joly if the post safety bites down on Rogers. This is getting into what State is coaching, which is unknowable. He definitely thought he was getting the ball, though.
Regardless, Bailey gets stuck on Rogers here. He sits on this read, doesn’t throw the ball, and then takes off. He isn't decisive like we saw above. Syracuse plays cover 3 over 5 underneath defenders. It does not look like Bailey was expecting this coverage, as Syracuse showed a four-man pressure. The fifth underneath defender in the middle muddies the picture a little. He could have layered this in there, but that's the guy that appears to make Bailey hesitate.
He doesn’t seem to be confident in the zone windows, which will always be smaller below safety level with five guys in coverage. If Syracuse rushed four here and Joly carried that safety, Bailey hits Rogers easily for a first down as it would be wide open. Instead, he's holding the ball too long while he looks at it. I thought this was a bigger problem against Wake Forest, so credit is due to the quarterback for quick growth.
This was State’s third and goal play late in the game. The Pack goes formation into boundary and tries to get a jump ball in the endzone. Bailey throws the ball out of bounds.
State has run this exact play several times now and the best result it’s generated is a pass interference call. Rogers can make this play in the endzone too. I wish State would ditch these concepts because they just have not worked. The receivers are built for this, and that’s fine, but this didn’t have a shot from the get-go.
Overall, it was a good night for Bailey. State pinned the whole game plan on him, and he handled that better than expected. There is still a lot of development to do, but every week you're seeing him do something well that he wasn't doing well last week. That's awesome. Additionally, other than one play, the offensive line gave him a heck of a pocket all night, so they deserve props as well.
The Running Back Rotation
Daylan Smothers looked pretty good in his first game back, and he should be leading the team in carries from here on out. He just looks like the best back right now. Smothers made some plays in this game that you just aren't getting right now from the other backs. He took a check down 72 yards because he broke three tackles. State is not getting broken tackles from its starting back.
Here's inside zone with Jordan Waters.
Waters reads this well and it hits where it's supposed to, allowing the back to get to the DB who is not in the blocking assignment. Again, he gets brought down by an ankle tackle. This is a first down run if he breaks that. State ended up having to kick a field goal here, but thankfully was bailed out by an illegal formation penalty from Syracuse's kick-block unit, something I'm not sure I've ever seen.
Beyond that, you've really seen some questionable reads since the NIU game. There is just too much going on behind the line of scrimmage from both Waters and Raphael. You need more decisiveness. Smothers ran well in this game. He was decisive and made adjustments to his track quickly when necessary.
Here's outside zone with Smothers, a play that State ran twice, got 18 yards of offense, and then decided to never run again.
Granted, this is a light box, but it's a good play. First, what an excellent reach from Anthony Belton. You can't do much better than that. This is not a hard play to read, but Smothers does it right, something that hasn't always been the case with the backs this year, even in well-developing plays. I'm not sure the little false step was necessary, but other than that, it's a good job of just doing what you're supposed to do. Smothers is such a freak athlete too that he adds an extra yard with a broken tackle.
Here's the other outside zone.
First, another strong reach from Peak. Maybe State should run this play more than twice a game if its tackles are winning like this. It's actually not that well blocked of a play from the interior. Anthony Carter is not doing the right thing at all, and McKay doesn't get back to the linebacker who is shooting the A gap. It's a great run from Smothers, though, and he's able to flip his track back to the edge, outrun the penetration, and make the defense wrong despite a free pass for the backer through the A gap and a guard just kind of wandering off.
Somebody Figure Out what Targeting is
No, I’m sorry, but I will not be letting this go just because State played poorly and had 700 other opportunities to not lose. Last week, a targeting call that could be teach tape for the league goes uncalled. This week, a terrible call where a defender goes low and leads with his shoulder leads to an ejection. This trash is unacceptable. Davin Vann gets a 15-yard penalty for participating without a helmet, but apparently nobody was watching the hands-to-the-face that caused the helmet to come off in the first place, because anybody can do anything they want to Davin Vann on the field. This is apparently not holding.
Thankfully, the play only resulted in a 30-yard completion.
Conclusion
With every preseason goal vaporized by this point, I'm excited to see what some of the young kids that are playing now can do. Bailey is showing growth. Smothers should be used heavily. Tamarcus Cooley is a freshman that has played well. It looks like Kamal Bonner will be playing a lot now. What can State do with a developing core of youthful players?
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