Why I'm Sold on NC State's Offense

I was born in 1996. Now, I was not making many predictions about ACC Football as a one-year old, but it wasn’t long after that that I began attending games. I have been doing the writing thing since 2014. This is the first time I’ve ever predicted an NC State ACC Championship.

Doeren has put a lot of teams on the field the last half-decade that had a reasonable chance in retrospect. Two I would argue probably should have at least played in the game. They did not though, usually because of some specific weakness that undid them, often painfully. Part of the optimism with this team is the lack of apparent weaknesses.

Particularly, I'm sold on the success of the largely overhauled offense. This group is primed to take a leap forward that covers more ground than you might realize if your merely read stats from last year's roller coaster. That's because those stats aren't super flattering.

It’s okay to be real about what State’s quarterback play was last year. Brennan Armstrong played nine games for State and MJ Morris played four. Morris was just bad in nearly every facet, particularly against Clemson and Miami. I thought he played okay against Duke but his receivers offered him little help. For the most part though, he was quite poor. Armstrong was the team’s best running back and one of the toughest players State has ever had. You could give him a plaque in the Murphy Center for what he put his body through for State. In the pocket though, he was inconsistent at best. His 61.1% completion percentage was 79th nationally and his 6.8 YPA was barely inside the top 100. His accuracy was up and down and he left some explosive plays on the field. 

It was a struggle for State to throw the ball for a good portion of last year, the 334 yards against UNC being the anomaly. On the ground, State averaged a mediocre 4.2 yards per carry for the season, good for 68th nationally. There are 133 division one teams. It’s hard to be more middle-of-the-pack than 68th. 

When you piece all these stats together, the picture it starts to form is one of a pretty bad offense, but NC State did not have a “pretty bad” offense in 2023. It had a very bad offense for a good chunk of the season that developed rapidly into something far more useful in the back half of the year. That development is the key point, at least with regards to the ground game. This trajectory matters. Who State was at the end of last year matters, especially when you consider how much of the makeup of that group is coming back this year. The year-long averages miss this. 

Over the first nine games of the year, State averaged under 4 YPC. The official number was 3.96, which over the course of a whole season would be good for 87th nationally. Against just power five teams in that stretch, it wandered its way to 3.4 YPC, which is just ghastly. Over the final four games, State averaged 4.96 YPC. That number over the course of a whole season would put it 23rd in America. 

The tremendous difference is a product of many changes, most of which are relevant to the coming season. Getting Dylan McMahon back, plugging Jacarrius Peak in at right tackle, and moving Tim McKay to guard changed the whole storyline for the offensive line. The general development here combined with the personnel optimization improved the run blocking unit quite a bit, and State started leaning on a lot of QB gap scheme concepts that it didn’t run successfully much in the early season. Armstrong was really good here. A boosted role in the run game for Concepcion and the shift of Kendrick Raphael to RB1 helped also. Both were far from perfect as backs, but still better than what State was working with before. These three guys getting most of the reps was a big upgrade over what State was working with mid-season. 

Now, State brings back four of five starters on the offensive line and plugs in Zeke Correll at center, who centered the best offensive line in America last year. It returns both Concepcion and Raphael and adds Jordan Waters, who should be the best back since at least Zonovan Knight if not Nyheim Hines. 

The only major contributors to the run game that moved on are Armstrong and McMahon. So much of this unit that found a head of steam at the end of last season is back. If that’s not a reason to believe, I don’t know what is. 

Beyond that, State has obviously upgraded at running back, which was arguably the worst position on the team last season. The group really struggled with the technical aspects of the position, which is kind of the bare minimum. Waters is on the complete other end of the spectrum here. He is very technically sound. He is going to read development correctly and not leave yards on the field via bad reads or poor cuts. When you combine that with a line that gives you so much reason to be optimistic, it starts to paint a pretty exciting picture. 

This is the kind of the stuff that hurt State from the running back room last year.

Allen actually does a good job not overcutting on this play and extending the track toward Tim McKay (52), which keeps the linebacker from running under McKay, but then this cut is not good. As soon as that block develops, Allen needs to be cutting underneath McKay after he reads the leverage. Look at the size of the hole that ends up going to waste. Tons of yards were left on the field because of this stuff, and it's the kind of mistake that you won't get with Jordan Waters.

Check out the running game preview if you want to read more about Jordan Waters.

An effective run game is going to open up play action opportunities, and while there is a lot that Grayson McCall did well at Coastal, this is a place he really shined. Coastal’s offense was electric with McCall, and a big portion of that was a result of a potent ground game and a diverse call sheet of play action shot plays that McCall executed at an elite level. 

It’s the shot play execution that State did not have a great deal of last year. Armstrong made some throws where you could really see the arm talent, but he was erratic and didn’t always move in the pocket with intent to extend the play. Armstrong was not a full-field read pocket quarterback. McCall is better at this stuff.

(Armstrong also got 0 help ever from his outside receivers, another place that State has upgraded.)

I want to show you some examples of McCall vs. Armstrong/Morris operating the exact same passing concepts. This is called a yankee concept, something we’ve discussed on the podcast a few different times. 

Image source: throwdeeppublishing.com

It was probably the number one shot concept McCall threw at Coastal. Yankee is at its best against cover 3 or cover 1, although this example below is a quarters look. The concept features a deep post on the front side and an over route, deep cross, or some form of mid-depth route that breaks over the middle coming from the back side. If the middle safety bites down on the underneath route, the deep post will have inside leverage and the long ball is there. If the middle safety falls with the post, the underneath route can take advantage of that space, particularly against a zone.

Here’s McCall throwing it. Like mentioned, McCall ends up with quarters here which is not ideal, but when that circled safety runs with the deep route, it opens that window. McCall sees it and finds the deep cross in the vacated space.

Here’s a different concept with the same intention. This is Mills, which is a similar route combo to yankee but from the same side. A dig or over route around 15 yards and a deep post over the top. The post gets inside leverage with no help if the middle safety bites on the dig, which you can see happen below. McCall is so good at reading these. He makes it look easy.

Now here’s the yankee concept from the bowl game with Armstrong. In addition to the yankee concept, State adds a simple hitch from its number one at the top of the screen, which can take advantage of the bailing corner in cover 3. 

This should have been a touchdown. Armstrong gets the middle safety biting and the boundary corner doesn’t stay with the post. You can actually see them try and communicate on the post. It's basically a bust and it’s absolutely wide open, but the ball goes to the free access hitch instead, where it's off target anyway. 

Part of the frustration with Armstrong is he would do stuff like this and then throw a literally perfect ball to Dacari Collins on an outside fade. It was just inconsistent. McCall’s consistency in decision making and accuracy is a big development for this team.

Here’s one from MJ Morris. This is a shock concept, a three route combo that provides man and zone answers from a 3x1 set. Number one runs a hitch, which can take advantage of the bailing corner in cover 3 or 4 zone. Number two runs a fade out of the slot, which gives you an opportunity to win one on one in a man situation. Finally, number three runs a stick, where he can sit down in a hole in the zone or work toward the sideline against man. You can watch all three receivers do these in the clip.

Morris is going to get a cover 1 man look from Miami, and if you aren’t looking for Concepcion here, you’re doing it wrong. Morris does appear to look that way but seems to get uncomfortable in the pocket and never throws the ball. KC is of course is wide open. This probably should have also been a touchdown, and it’s a bad miss.

Here's McCall operating the same exact shock concept. He has man, so he takes the slot fade, stands in with pressure in his face, and delivers an accurate ball for an explosive play.

Armstrong wasn't bad. He was a good football player who was just a wild card as a passer and struggled with some suboptimal tendencies at times. MJ Morris was pretty bad, and got progressively worse over his four games. Watching McCall read and execute some of these concepts is just different from what we saw last year, and it gives State so much theoretical explosiveness.

When you combine a strong ground game with a quarterback who can tear the top off a defense with this level of accuracy, the product is often quite positive. That’s the source of the optimism. Not just that State has good players, but that State has good players whose skillsets gel well and give the Pack a tremendous amount of offensive diversity and potential for balance. There is so much to like here. I absolutely cannot wait.

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