There aren’t many inputs that have more reliably predicted results for NC State recently than the quality of its run game. This team is 8-11 against power five teams over the last two years. When it runs for over 200 yards, it is 5-1. When it does not, it is 3-10. When it runs for 200 yards, it averages 40 points per game. When it doesn’t, it averages 23.

This is not rocket surgery. You need to be able to run the football. Having your run plays progress the ball down the field is helpful in winning football games, and it also makes everything else easier by staying ahead of the chains, opening up play action, putting less demand on the quarterback, and giving the defense fewer answers. Only time will tell if NC State’s ground attack will find the juice this year, but let’s dive into its prospects here in part one of Trinity Road Times’ Supermassive NC State Football Previews.

First though, some quick background. I write these previews every year in four parts: the running game, the passing game, the defensive front, and the secondary. Each will release over the coming days in that order. If you like these and you want to get notified as they come out, I suggest joining our email list.

Now to the sports!

The Duke of Scott

The headline here is the return of Duke Scott, who is really good and has a chance to be one of the best players on this team. From really his first carry of his career, he started waving some big green flags, and he eventually broke out in the absence of Hollywood Smothers. Now, he’s back for his sophomore season and is set to lead NC State in carries.

Duke is not Hollywood Smothers. Let’s be clear on that. Smothers was an elite improviser and incredibly shifty in space to the point where you gave him the green light to do some things that are generally big no-nos for running backs. Smothers is All-American good. Scott isn’t that level of a playmaker, but he is also a completely different kind of player.

This is an explosive, one-cut runner with a more vertical style. I think some people told themselves he wasn’t fast because he got labeled as a “power back,” but that would be wrong. He is fast. The thing I like about Scott is the lack of wasted movement. He’s patient, but without indecision if that makes sense. Duke Scott runs hit fast. His tracks are generally correct, his decisions are on time, and when he makes his cut, he’s out the door. This is not a kid who will sink well-blocked run plays with poor reads, overcutting, or undercutting. He will get you at least what you have blocked. Scott does not create negative plays by being a dingus in the backfield.

Beyond that, he can be a good second-level runner. He’s not going to make defenders miss in space so much as he is going to run through tackles and finish runs hard. Arm tackles are a no-go here generally, but you can get your hands on him one-on-one in space. It’s just that it will often come with a price. He has good balance and is a powerful runner.

This is prototypical Duke Scott run.

Scott saw some of pretty much everything the playbook had to offer, and I thought he was good in all of it. He was good in Duo, where he can get vertical fast and looked comfortable making a second-level read of the weakside backer. He had some really nice reads in zone plays as well, and then he busted his second longest run of the year in a counter play against Memphis. Scott is a high-floor, relatively high ceiling running back. He’s not going to make chicken salad out of chicken shit the way Smothers did at times, but he’s a strong, versatile running back who does a lot well.

So can NC State match or improve on its ground production while still losing an elite talent? Yes is a possible answer to the question, but a step forward from the newer pieces on the offensive line/tight end roster is likely a prerequisite for that. This is the type of run you probably won’t see anymore.

Doeren rarely wants to rely on one back, and that’s an obvious decision. Doing so will wear a guy down eventually. UNC transfer Davion Gause joins the group and he seems fine. I also wanted to mention Jonathan Paylor, who is finally going to get his chance after a heartbreaking season-ending injury that occurred in a scrimmage last year. I don’t know what to expect from him, but he wasn’t a mega recruit for no reason. He is listed as a wide receiver now on the roster, but he’s a possible X factor wherever he lines up. I do think a year one Concepcion type role for him could exist, not in volume, but in usage type, where you may see him carrying the ball from the backfield and running slot fades.

(Always important to note that X factor means “unknown quantity,” not necessarily “really good player.”)

Offensive Line Restaffing

I would not call it a rebuild, but State does need to replace three players on the offensive line who either started every game last year or have been multiyear starters. That is Anthony Carter, Jalen Grant, and Jacarrius Peak. Grant did some things well but was limited physically, and Carter did not have the year I thought or hoped he would, so State could upgrade on the interior. Peak is a big loss, and that’s not going anywhere. The good news is that State’s revolving door a year ago at guard got a lot of different guys experience who will now have their opportunity.

There are probably seven guys for five spots here, presumably with both tackle spots spoken for and exciting sophomore Spike Sowells locked in at either center or guard. Here are your seven.

• OT Jimarion McCrimon

• OT Teague Andersen

• IOL Spike Sowells

• OG Kamen Smith

• OG Yousef Mugharbil

• IOL Daniel Cruz

• OT/OG Rico Jackson

Andersen is back for his senior season and will start at tackle. He’s a high floor piece. State didn’t run his way that often last season because it wanted to run behind Jacarrius Peak, which is understandable. Andersen is not Jacarrius Peak. He doesn’t have that level of physicality and upper body strength, but he’s technically sound and will be a positively-contributing run blocker. He’s also a good cut blocker, which benefited several outside zone plays last year.

Opposite Andersen is Jimarion McCrimon, an all-conference transfer from East Carolina. McCrimon has some of the unteachables that Tujague likes to talk about, but would benefit from improvement in some of the teachables. He gets shed a lot on tape because he lets defenders engage him first and get their hands into his chest. McCrimon’s hands are slow and sloppy at times. That is the biggest area of improvement for him to maximize his natural tools.

Inside, State has a ton of questions, but Spike Sowells is in position to provide correct answers plus some extra credit. His game is quite aesthetically pleasing, and he’s a good guy to take a look at if you just love offensive line play. Offensive line is probably the hardest position to get snaps at as a true freshman, but Sowells got out there. The last two true freshmen who saw playing time on the offensive line were Ickey Ekwonu and Jacarrius Peak. If he turns out like either of those guys, his career will be in good shape.

Sowells didn’t look like a freshman. He plays low and he’s good at initiating contact off two feet and “forklifting” defenders in drive and down block scenarios. The freshman played a lot in the first half against UNC and I thought he really looked the part in that game. He’s also a pretty decent reach blocker. This is a versatile interior lineman with a chance to live up to the expectations that came about when he started making noise at the end of his recruiting cycle.

Sowells could play center or guard. Either way, that leaves essentially four guys for two interior spots. Kamen Smith and Rico Jackson both played significant snaps, while Yousef Mugharbil played a little less. Daniel Cruz, a Texas transfer, is the fourth.

Mugharbil and Smith I think are similar players in the sense that they had some juice but the game looked fast for them. When it was “see target, hit target,” you saw some good flashes, but both struggled with assignments, especially stunts, reductions, and defensive line movements that changed assignments post-snap. Mugharbil’s early season reps saw him struggle as a kick blocker in counter plays. I really do like Mugharbil’s general technique, though. I didn’t think Rico Jackson had the same ability to move guys. I thought he struggled.

Daniel Cruz has no tape, so I can’t comment on much about him other than he could play guard or center. One of the nice parts of this group is how many playable guys can play multiple positions. It just makes it that much easier to get your best five out there.

This is strong technique from Mugharbil.

This was one of the two areas where he hurt his playing time. He was not a great puller last year.

This was Kamen Smith’s best play of the season.

Overall, there are some concerns about the offensive line, but also reasons to be optimistic. I know I’m really out on a limb with that statement.

I think the offense will go as far as the offensive line will take them. Scott is not going to regularly make something out of poorly blocked plays, but he can absolutely turn a well-blocked play into a game-changing explosive run. For the guys up front, you can see how this could go well. That would look like McCrimon making strides, Daniel Cruz hitting out of the portal, and a couple of the young guys finding their way. That’s a believable story. You can also see how it could go poorly. The talent in this room just isn’t quite what it was two years ago. If it struggles to find good guard play, the run game is not going to be consistently good.

All New Tight End Room

Justin Joly, Cody Hardy, and Dante Daniels all wrapped up their college football careers last year. State got great use out of that tight end room, having lots of fun putting Justin Joly in many different parts of the formation while also finding some success with 12 personnel later in the year. It’s a new dawn though, for better or worse. The Wolfpack will need to hit on a couple of tight end transfers this year.

First is Hunter Provience, who joins the program after leaving Montana State in search of FBS opportunities. Provience is Cody Hardy but, like, different. He is a physical run blocker who takes pride in that part of the game, and while he’s not going to be a matchup issue in the passing game, he can be a functional piece within a passing concept. More on this in the passing game preview.

The transition to the ACC level will be the big question for Provience. This Eastern Washington linebacker is not the caliber of player he will see this year, no offense to buddy. But Provience is definitely willing. He will hit someone. What State was able to get from Dante Daniels and Cody Hardy toward the end of last season was nice bit of proof of concept for Gavin Locklear’s tight end room development.

The other addition is Vander Ploog from Oregon, who is a high ceiling low floor player that is State’s swing at replacing Justin Joly’s role. Ploog’s lack of tape at the college level makes him a difficult projection, but one thing that is for sure is that this kid is a serious athlete. He played basketball also and his carrying trait as a football player in high school was his large catch radius and contested catch ability. Again, more on this in the passing game preview. I imagine Ploog can still add weight to his 6’6 frame, and without much of a history to point to, it’s a question whether or not he can be a highly effective run blocker. His football history includes two years in high school and his lone year at Oregon. I guess we’ll find out. This is another guy without any college tape, so I’m not going to make any high-confidence projections on his impact.

The position’s only returning contributor is Preston Douglas, who got some burn in the bowl game last year. This room most likely gets made up of those three.

The Wild Will Formation

Finally, we’ll wrap up this preview by talking about Will Wilson and the quarterback run game, everybody’s favorite storyline from last year. It was genuinely hilarious how this thing evolved. It felt gimmicky at the beginning, and I figured it would work a couple times and then State would run it into a brick wall a for a minute before abandoning it. Instead, it became the most reliable part of the entire team.

This is the basic play that State ran.

You’ll see this again, but you’ll also see some expansion I imagine. It happened toward the end of last season, and State even called a pass play for him against UNC that keen observers may have noticed, even as Wilson took off anyway. There are ways to build offshoots of this play, and if it remains as unstoppable as it was, this team will have a chance to create some explosives off of various potential counters. Either way, our short yardage king will be back out there, averaging almost as many first downs per carry as yards per carry.

I thought Bailey also improved as a runner from his freshman year. State is a big fan of having handy some kind of gap scheme concept for the quarterback, particularly in the red zone. Any time you run the quarterback, you’re +1 in the run game, a principle that Roper has wanted to take advantage of but has been shut down by execution in the past. State needed better blocking from its running back and better field vision from its quarterback to make these things work. The quarterback definitely improved.

Scheme Notes

State generally carried four runs last year outside of the quarterback stuff.

• Inside zone

• Outside zone

• Counter

• Duo

Scott looked really comfortable in all of these runs, and I’d like to think it will continue to carry all of these this year. I am not a big believer in these offenses that only really carry one run, especially not now in 2026 with the value defenses put on scheme multiplicity. State’s offense is built to support a diverse call sheet while being able to run the full playbook from the same picture. That’s the 11 personnel (single tight end) that it lines up in so frequently, from which it could run all four of these runs. Ideally, it minimizes the defense’s ability to interpret tendencies.

Tight end play will be critical here. State typically runs GH counter, meaning it’s using the tight end as the wrapper or lead blocker, and Duo demands a tight end to be Duo, otherwise it is a different play. Ultimately, I think tight end and the interior linemen not named Spike Sowells will be the three positions that could swing possible results here the most.

NC State has a returning starting quarterback for the second straight year. It is one of two schools in the ACC that can say that. What a hilarious stat that is. There is no question that the retention of CJ Bailey was the long pole in the tent of this passing offense for 2026, and it’s a big win to be able to check that box. Unfortunately for the rest of the tent, almost all the other poles left. This year’s passing offense features a lot of new construction, but at least it gets built around a key centerpiece at quarterback.

Let’s talk about the size of the roster turnover here. Keenan Jackson returns as the leading receiver with 28 catches for 281 yards. The next leading returner is . . . Ethan Dowdy!! He had 3 catches for 24 yards last year. As noted in the run game preview, State also replaces three starting offensive linemen and all of its tight ends.

State truly is rebuilding everything around CJ Bailey, but while the Ethan Dowdy thing makes for a fun little tidbit, this actual situation isn’t that unusual anymore. To reconstruct this room, State added five receivers and two tight ends in the portal. A new set of skill position players is born for the Wolfpack, and they really need to be good.

This is part two of the Supermassive NC State Football Preview. Part three and four, which is the defensive front and the secondary, will release over the coming days in that order. If you like these and you want to get notified as they come out, I suggest joining our email list.

CJ Bailey is Old Now

The guy once lovingly referred to as a baby giraffe is now an upperclassman giraffe. They grow up so fast. If I had to sum up the ask of CJ Bailey as he enters his junior year, it’s to go from a quarterback that you can win games with to a quarterback that can win you games. There is a distinction there. State is 3-10 against power five teams in the last two years when it rushes for under 200 yards and it’s 1-4 when Bailey throws more than 35 passes. The lone win there was at Cal in 2024, where Bailey led a frantic fourth quarter comeback and made several high-end throws. That’s the quarterback we’re looking for every single game.

For the larger part of his two years in Raleigh, he’s been a high floor operator that keeps the ball out of harm’s way, won’t sell a game, and will flash some really high level stuff. Being able to take those flashes and make them consistently who he is is what propels this quarterback into a higher tier. His low turnover rate can be a double-edged sword, as sometimes there will be throws on the field that get left on the field. Bailey can be late to window throws when he’s throwing off defender movement, and there are also accuracy improvements at all three levels that can hopefully come with mechanical growth. Sophomore Bailey was definitely improved over freshman Bailey, so you hope the trajectory continues this year. He’s a good quarterback. We want junior year CJ Bailey to be great.

It’s in there. Now it’s time to get more of it. Below are some examples of the extreme ends of this quarterback (more at the end).

Shopping for Receivers at Trader JoJo’s

As mentioned, State added five new receivers in the portal. It also adds a couple of freshmen and returns a redshirt freshman who could find his way on the field. Here are some quick thoughts on each player

Keenan Jackson

I like Jackson. He ran a lot of the crossing route that you can see in the Y cross play that State loved so much, and he scored a handful of times on it. I think Jackson has better ball skills than he’s been able to show, and I’m curious to see if State gives him more opportunities on the outside this year.

Victor Snow

Snow is a prototypical slot receiver, and he should be an instant impact guy who could fit into a lot of different concepts a lot of different ways. One element from last year’s offense that was pretty common was the double move, and Kurt Roper would sometimes tag these to oft-used quick game routes and concepts. Snow’s time to top speed makes him a compelling option to hit stuff like this with.

JoJo Trader

Trader is the best talent in the room. He did not make much of an impact at Miami. State really really needs him to be good.

Chance Robinson

I have no idea.

Devon Dozier

Dozier was obviously recruited to try and get a big body on the outside who can win 50/50 balls and offer a wide catch radius. He does not separate from coverage well, so most of his opportunities will be in the form of contested catches or getting open within the scheme against zone coverages. If Dozier is going to make an impact, I think it likely needs to come with better ball placement downfield from CJ Bailey.

Tyran Warren

Warren reminds of CJ Riley. He’s very tall and he can run a straight line quite fast.

Jerel Bolder, Tyreek Copper, and Amiri Acker are all freshman who could fight for playing time. Hopper is a true freshman, but a touted one who probably has the best chance to see the field of any true freshman on the team. If you did not hear the news, Teddy Hoffman is suspended for the year, so he is not included in this preview.

State has employed the commonly used strategy for mid-tier programs of harvesting high school standouts that didn’t get the playing time at their first college home. We have seen this work in the past, and we’ve seen it not work. This year, with JoJo Trader and Chance Robinson both being former blue-chippers, it really needs to work. These are probably the two guys that carry the ceiling for this group in their hands.

Plooging The Hole at Tight End

One of the biggest X factors for this team is Vander Ploog. The former Oregon Duck is one of two tight end adds, and he’s no doubt the higher ceiling player of the two.

Why is Ploog an X factor? Because State’s offense likes to build scheme multiplicity through 11 personnel formations. Most of its snaps come out of 11 personnel, which means a single tight end set, sometimes called the “power spread.” Below is a common alignment from NC State in Kurt Roper’s first season.

Being able to feature an “everything” tight end opens up almost the entire playbook from these alignments, and it makes it harder for defenses to know what’s coming, to personnel match, or to adjust to strengths and weaknesses of certain formations. This type of role is certainly a possible outcome for Vander Ploog’s career. He’s a high-end athlete with a long basketball career, and his leaping ability transitioned to the football field well in high school. He can create mismatches with his size and compelling catch radius

It’s a fun prospect to think about, but the more grounded analysis is that he’s only played a couple years of football, did not see the field at Oregon, and is thin for his 6’6 frame. Ploog becoming this level of contributor quickly is possible, but it isn’t likely. There’s no doubt though that this is State’s swing to find the tight end versatility it had with Justin Joly. If it does hit, it could be exciting.

Hunter Provience and Preston Douglas just won’t be a mismatch through the air like that. We talked about Provience’s role as a run blocker already. This guy can absolutely be part of the pass game too. Don’t let his low receiving numbers fool you into misunderstanding his route volume at Montana State. He ran plenty of routes. But he’s more likely to get open via rubs/picks and within the scheme than he is to pose a mismatch against a DB that the offense wants to target. His lone touchdown in 2025 came out of a mesh play.

Put The Pro in Pass Protection, Hopefully

Finally, we’re back to the offensive line. Teague Anderson, Spike Sowells, and ECU transfer Jimarion McCrimon are the three guys I think showed some juice in pass pro a year ago. Anderson is a known commodity at this point. He’s consistently solid. Sowells is definitely ahead of the average rising sophomore. He sees things well and has a good anchor, which is important for all offensive linemen but especially interior linemen, who will naturally see more power as they match up with interior defensive linemen.

McCrimon also anchors well, even as his technique needs improvement for the same reasons we talked about in the run game preview. This rep kind of sums him up to me.

Kamen Smith, Rico Jackson, and Yousef Mugharbil all took their lumps. With the young guys, it was more about managing assignments, post-snap movement, and not chasing penetrators and giving up free lanes to loopers. Check out these examples below.

Spike Sowells seems to really to have the juice, and he provides some good examples of how this should look.

I’ve come to expect solid pass protection from any Garrett Tujague offensive line. I expect McCrimon will get a step better, Sowells will show out, Andersen will be rock solid, and this group will be reliable again. It may get out-talented on occasion like it did against Miami last year, but I’m not sure there are any beast defensive lines of this schedule (don’t quote me on that). If the young guys can handle stunts and games a little better, it should be just fine.

Scheme Notes

A lot was made of the Kurt Roper relationship with CJ Bailey, and the most noticeable change in the passing game was the shift toward more pure progression passing concepts. Freshman Bailey really struggled with coverage disguises. He definitely improved as a sophomore, but State also leaned more into passing concepts that don’t demand as much coverage recognition.

A pure progression passing play is exactly that. The quarterback starts in the same spot every time (unless he’s hot), which can build confidence in the process for a younger quarterback as it removes ambiguity. Below is the most frequently called pass play of the year for NC State.

Two of Bailey’s best games of the year were games two and three against UVA and Wake. State had a tremendous amount of success with these plays in those games, and it was kind of embarrassing for Wake Forest how badly it got picked apart for 60 minutes by some variation of this play. Teams eventually settled down on this. Pitt and Notre Dame defended these concepts well, but State was able to negotiate the last third of the year with some timely offensive adjustments.

My biggest question is how diverse this passing offense will get, not just in general playcalls, but in the types of reads it wants to give its quarterback. For example, this split-field scissors concept was something that Bailey threw multiple long touchdowns in last year.

Adding complexity is where you started to see more unpredictable outcomes for NC State. Below is a full-field read called HOSS, which was a Robert Anae play that State ran rarely last year.

Bailey threw a touchdown in a very similar situation against ECU. Below is another example of the good side. Georgia Tech is going to rotate to cover 3 from two high in a slightly different way, but CJ sees this and then also delivers a nicely layered throw when the safety doesn’t rotate hard.

Previous previews

The Running Game

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Nothing disrupts a gameplan faster than a defensive front that creates havoc. Havoc breaks down the mechanics of a play, it eliminates the deepest routes in many passing concepts, it affects the quarterback’s ability to throw on platform, it changes the math on run plays, you get the point.

This year, NC State has to find a way to create more havoc, particularly in the passing game. I’m less concerned about TFLs in the run game, as there are schematic implications to those numbers, but in 2025, the Wolfpack was 123rd in the country in sack rate.

It was a solid team against the run, but its lack of pressure generation did nothing to help a bad secondary, and that’s how it ended up with the numbers that it did. This year, not only is it tasked with changing this, but it must do it with a completely new starting lineup across the board.

Welcome to part three of Trinity Road Times’ Supermassive NC State Football Previews. If you’d like to be notified of the final parts, I suggest joining our email list.

Everything is New Again

NC State replaces all six starters from its defensive front a year ago, and of all the position groups on the team, this one might come under the most scrutiny as the season approaches. It was close to a full rebuild here, with three rotation players joining the starters on the train out of town. Here is a full list of the departees who played significant snaps last year.

• Cian Slone - Jack, Starter

• Tra Thomas - Jack, Rotation

• Travali Price - Defensive Tackle, Starter

• Brandon Cleveland - Nose Tackle, Starter

• Chazz Wallace - Nose Tackle, Rotation

• Sabastian Harsh - Defensive End, Starter

• Caden Fordham - Mike, Starter

• Sean Brown - Will, Starter

• Kenny Soares - Will, Rotation (became starter due to injury)

That’s five of your top six linebackers and four of your top six defensive linemen out the door. The leading returners in this group are Isaiah Shirley, Chase Bond, Joseph Adedire, and AJ Richardson. State also added four new faces from the transfer portal, and it will need some of those to hit and some of its lower usage guys from a year ago to trend upward if it wants to be strong here.

There are a lot of question marks surrounding this group, thus the run defense and pass rush are leading concerns in the preseason. State had a pretty good run defense last year when it got high quality play from guys like Cleveland, Harsh, Slone, and Fordham. Missed tackles at the second level were the only bugaboo that stopped it from being better than pretty good. I’m not sold that this year’s group has the same level of player in a lot of places up front.

Defensive Line: Only Two New Faces?

Field end (defensive end that aligns to the wide side of the field) is one of these spots that poses a question. Sabastian Harsh was an old fashioned Dave Doeren diamond in the rough. He led all defensive linemen in tackles and his physicality was impactful edge-setting run plays. State did not add a player in the portal who can play this position, so it figures to belong to Chase Bond and Joseph Adedire, which were the other two players to see time there.

This is a demanding position for State, as this player is asked to do a lot. State will 2-gap this player with what is called a “heavy technique,” it will ask them to be an edge contain pass rusher, it will flex them inside when it shifts into a tite front, and it will even drop them into coverage. Below is an example of a heavy technique.

Field end was a massive concern going into last year, but like I said above, Sabastian Harsh ended up doing more than holding his own. State needs to achieve that level of versatility with its current crop of available returnees.

Chase Bond played here for most of his snaps last year, often on passing downs, and would occasionally flex inside when State would go into its “peso” package, which was a double 3-tech, double backer situational pass rush package. He has some twitch as a pass rusher that intrigues you, and he nearly had back-to-back sacks on Carson Beck, but Bond needs to develop more physicality to be an every-down player. State would stunt a lot when he was in the game, as that’s a good way to try to and use a size disadvantage against the other team.

Joseph Adedire is still my underdog of choice on this team. He played some last year, almost exclusively in this spot, and I still think he’s flashing a ton of really good stuff. If you followed these previews last year, you know I love this player. He plays with such good hand placement and leverage that he’s able to generate a lot of force and win reps against much larger tackles. He isn’t a twitchy pass rusher, but he has real vertical explosion off the snap, and he can win with speed that way. That also makes him valuable in stunts as the penetrator that occupies the tackle and frees the looper.

Probably the biggest concerns for me on the whole team come from the interior of this defensive line. The defensive tackle was the weakest spot on this line last year, and State again added nobody here. It will be Isaiah Shirley and somebody who has zero snaps (AJ Prim?). Katron Evans was added at nose tackle to replace Brandon Cleveland, but his eligibility is in question. If Evans can’t play, it will be Josiah Victor as the number one.

Here’s an outside zone play from Notre Dame against NC State’s second unit in an odd front alignment.

Victor is a guy that presents well long-term. He has pretty legit power and can be a plug for you, but how much he improves from his freshman season suddenly seems like a very important question. The ceiling is high, but the player is young. Isaiah Shirley is also a third-year player now. I really think he’s better trying to penetrate off the snap as opposed to some of these “react-attack” style techniques that State uses frequently.

It’s reasonable to expect a natural progression to a career. I am confident that these young returning players will get better. But State needs a lot from them. A lot of guys are going to play that have very few college reps.

All Jacked Up

The jack linebacker can be thought of as sort of a hybrid defensive end and linebacker. The hybrid nature of this position is an important enabler of the scheme multiplicity that State plays with, and it has yanked a really good fit out of the portal this year. This is, of course, Harvey Dyson, who shares a name with a vacuum cleaner but definitely doesn’t suck. Dyson led the AAC in sacks last year with eight, and unlike a Dyson Vacuum, he has a bag. The senior jack backer is a twitchy athlete who really uses his hands well and can win with a variety of moves. Speed is definitely more his game, but he flashes some bull rush stuff too and definitely isn’t completely without some power elements. He also had multiple sacks last year off a dirty “bull slip” move.

The jack backer as a whole only accounted 5.5 sacks last year between Tra Thomas and Cian Slone, and that’s a number that ideally goes up. Tra Thomas led the team with four sacks, and he was the beneficiary of some schematic wins late in the season. From a scheme perspective, State basically threw everything but the kitchen sink and then also the kitchen sink out there. Creepers and sims, stunts and games, 5 and 6-man pressure paths, straight up cover 0, if you can legally do it, State probably did it, and it likely didn’t work. It needs a higher win rate one-on-one to start. Thus, Dyson will bare a large burden for the Wolfpack. He really needs to be a problem.

The rotational pieces matter a lot on the defensive front, because it has to rotate more than any other positional group. I really have no clue what State has here. Omarion Abraham is probably your second-string nose tackle, and he briefly played in the bowl game. AJ Prim could be part of this. He has not played a snap yet, but added like 65 pounds this offseason. Ke’Von Carter could be on the field as the jack backer, as could Sterling Dixon. Carter played in almost every game last year. Dixon played in none due to injury but is obviously talented.

Replacing Caden Fordham and Friends

Off-ball Linebacker play really surged last year down the stretch. Kenny Soares turned out to be a nice little find and Caden Fordham was obviously good. State is hoping to find that production this year and preferably better tackling in the first half of the year. That quest begins with the addition of Raul “Popo” Aguirre and Da’karri Nelson. State also returns AJ Richardson and LaCorian Hodge, who both played some in the off-ball linebacker spots.

Aguirre is a solid portal piece that should slot into a starting role at linebacker after playing a lot as a rotational player for an elite Miami defense. The junior’s strengths on his tape are really his play in space and his ball reads. He covers ground well and makes a decent number of out-of-area tackles. He’s also a good fit for a team like State that wants to layer its run fits more, and that ability to execute a stack-track-fallback type of second-level technique shows in a lot of his tackles in the run game. Here’s an example.

The areas for improvement are really in the physicality. Aguirre isn’t huge, and he isn’t overly physical. Some improvement defeating second-level blocks could take his game up a level. It’s something to watch for. Aguirre could be a very good and very high-output player for State, especially if the defensive line can help keep him clean.

AJ Richardson is back. If you forgot who this is, it’s just because he missed most of the year with an injury. When healthy, Richardson was a 30ish snap-per-game rotational linebacker last year who will have an obvious chance to play much more than that this go-round. Realistically, he’s capped by his athleticism, but he’s a good form tackler who led the MEAC in tackles two years ago.

State also added Da’Karri Nelson, who played as a rotational piece in 29 games at Penn State, some of which was special teams. He gives State an athletic prospect to try and cash in on.

Scheme Notes

The DJ Eliot defense has so many levers to pull that I could write an article twice this long on just the various things it likes to show offenses. Being able to use positional versatility to create confusion and passive QB pressure, fit the run with a light box, and play in and out of even and odd spacing as a defensive line are all elements of many modern defenses. You’ll see all of this stuff again this year.

There’s nothing about this defense that can’t win if it has good players and executes. It’s fair to feel concern about some of the spots here with the roster turnover and lack of portal activity. Hopefully State gets some big steps from some returnees. It will need it.

Previous Previews

Running Game

Passing Game

NC State needs to post better passing defense numbers in 2026. The sky is blue, water is wet, and BBQ is a food, not an activity. Obvious statements are obvious. For most of last season (but not the entire season),

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State’s defense was unregulated air space.

It’s not all on the secondary. We covered the pass rush in the previous article, but the secondary is very much included in the gaudy passing numbers NC State allowed a year ago. The Wolfpack allowed 7.6 yards per dropback, which was good for 113th nationally, and opponents had a 43.6% success rate throwing the ball, which placed State outside the top 80.

Explosive plays through the air were a huge storyline for last year’s group, and no doubt solving that was an offseason priority. The bad news is that the Wolfpack said goodbye to Devon Marshall, who was easily the best defensive back on the team. The good news is that this group definitely got better in the final quarter of the season, and several of the pieces that played in those games are back. State allowed 7.8 yards per attempt for the entire season (105th), but that number was just 5.4 over the last three games (8th!!).

Some of that is a product of a better pass rush, some of it is a product of less than stellar quarterback play, but some of it was also a product of improved secondary play. State cycled through a fair amount of bodies last year, but four of the five starters from the last three games are back. Despite a rough 2025 overall, there is some reason for optimism in the secondary.

Safety is where the Pack could make significant strides. It was probably the worst position on the field last year. JJ Johnson was supposed to be a life raft for a group that was gutted by the transfer portal, but he was awful, and Ronnie Royal did not look ready to be out there. Down the stretch, State got some nice flashes from Asaad Brown and Tristan Teasdell, and it also added King Mack from Penn State, who figures to start and is one of the better players it pulled.

Mack covers ground well on the back end and he should be a good anchor in coverage for the defense. In addition general coverage stuff, Mack has some worthwhile tape fitting the run from depth, which NC state will ask for sometimes when it plays from a two-high shell. This was not always a great process last year, but I think Mack should improve it.

Asaad Brown finished the year at safety alongside Tristan Teasdell. Both are back. Brody Barnhardt also returns, who understandably wasn’t great in his first career games. All three of these guys got some valuable burn last year in addition to Ronnie Royal. King Mack figures to start at one of the safety spots. There are enough bodies to compete for the other spot that it would be a rather impressive toe stubbing to find nothing serviceable there.

Teasdell played hard and clearly wanted it, which is nice. He is tiny, but willing to tackle, play in the box, and fit the run correctly. That last part I think was the most impressive part of his brief stint. Brown was also a good tackler at the end of the season. Everyone that played safety for State last year has improving to do, but Brown and Teasdell showed a good framework for the position with their ability to at least execute the rules correctly and understand route distribution.

State has growing positivity at nickel too with Jackson Vick returning. Vick is another guy who looked like he was having a real rough time out there halfway through the season but finished up strong. I particularly remember the Notre Dame game being a very bad day for him, but the trajectory was altered after that mid-season stretch. His general field awareness in zone and pattern matching coverage structures was notably better later in the year, and that’s something that State as a whole was lacking (read: garbage at) early in the season.

Brian Nelson and Ondre Evans are your likely starters at corner. Nelson played in every game and started the last three games of the year], while Evans transferred in from Georgia. I don’t really buy Brian Nelson as a high-end corner, despite some All-ACC mentions preseason, but he’s not bad. In most of the all-22 I have has him aligned to the field side, which is generally the corner that’s tested less in one-on-ones. Not sure how that will play out this year, but I’m interested in seeing him with a larger workload. I have absolutely no idea what Ondre Evans will give NC State. He was a big-time recruit who did not play at Georgia in either of his first two years. It’s definitely a question mark as to how well these guys are ready to hold up.

The biggest difference between the beginning of the year and the end of the year was just the mechanics of the coverage schemes starting to function better. State had more guys on the same page, so it was busting less, it was guarding grass less, and it was able to realize the strengths of its coverage schemes more. It still lost some. I think the safeties could be better at the break of the route when they’re picking up verticals in quarters, for example. But you have a base here to build from.

My big question here is what State’s coverage distribution will look like. This was a quarters heavy team for the early parts of the season, and that is what it wants to be. It tried to play more cover 1 where it could through the second half, as it was clearly struggling to get the nuances down. Just like the defensive front, it went through a lot of changes last year.

The team is generally a quarters base and it likes to use cover 3 rotations and tampa 2 as change ups for the coverage. From a pure coverage perspective, so excluding the impact on run fits, I think corner play probably determines the path this defense takes. If it’s good, it helps minimize the explosive threats a quarters defense faces and it also gives you more confidence to even the box and play man. If it doesn’t, it’s going to have fewer answers. When you look at the explosive passes State allowed last year, a lot of it boils down to three concepts.

Post rout hi-lo reads (Mills, Yankee)

Sting Routes

Mesh Plays

The fact that some of this stuff improved as the year went, despite the youth on the field, and you now return a lot of pieces from that improvement is reason for some optimism. The secondary is the most interesting unit on the field to me. Solid corner play and a more cohesive all around unit would give you some real juice here I believe. The hope is State can benefit from the extended reps for the youngins from last year.

This concludes our Supermassive Football Previews for 2026. Check all our previous previews below.

The Running Game

The Passing Game

The Defensive Front

Apologies for the audio glitch at roughly the one-minute mark.