Why are FCS teams on the schedule? I know there’s rules, written and unwritten, to give these team chances to play teams from the FBS. I get that. But seriously, what do we gain from a 73-0 blowout where NC State largely played their second and third stringers after a lengthy blowout in front a Covid-level crowd. This is the definition of playing for each other, because they sure as hell weren’t playing for a home crowd. You can’t blame folks for choosing not to come back after a lightning delay, or leaving after halftime, or especially when they announced the fourth quarter would be shortened to 10 minutes.
This was a similar experience with my local high school team the first two weeks of the season. They have been blowing teams out and there’s a mercy rule in NJ high school football if a team is up by 35 or more points they use a running clock to speed the game up. It doesn’t stop for incompletions or out of bounds, so the fourth quarter was literally done in about 15 minutes of real time. I wish NC State had been able to do something like that against Richmond. I don’t think I’ve ever seen more of a sad sack effort from an alleged Division 1 football team. And this isn’t even the most elite team of the Dave Doeren era. Top era Finley-Harmon-Meyers-JaySam would have won this game by 100.
And EVEN WITH ALL THAT, I still walked away from the game being a bit disappointed. If you assumed there’s nothing to take away from this game, here are some of my nitpicks that could be bellwethers for the rest of the season:
I still don’t think CJ Bailey looks sharp. If you can’t drop back and feast on this defense, then I’m not sure there will be another defense this season you’ll be able to do that against. I left this game being even more concerned about CJ than even after UVA. Still throwing off platform or off his back foot. Still throwing late or inaccurately. As I said on the Lotcast, which types of throws are in his bag? Does he even have a bag? Not even a cross-body sling, more like a small fanny pack that fits your phone and wallet and stick of gum.
Lotcast 111 - The Born Identity?
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There is only so much to take away from a game like Richmond, but was a true identity born for this football team (yes, we know his name is Bourne).
The receivers still leave a lot to be desired. Similar to the concern with CJ, if these guys couldn’t get wide open by a country mile against the Richmond secondary, then there’s little hope to expect they’ll be able to get open against Vanderbilt or ACC defenses.
This means that we’re concerned with the QB and receivers, which are two pretty critical pieces of a passing attack. If the receivers struggle to get open, it creates small passing windows that are only open for a short time. But if your QB struggles with both timing and accuracy, what confidence do we have that he’ll be able to get those balls into that spot accurately and on time? That’s an open ended question I will leave for you to mull over and guess where I stand on it.
Things that went well:
Offensive line played their tails off in both pass protection and run blocking. Yes, it’s Richmond, but we’ve seen NC State OL’s struggle against lesser competition before, so this felt good.
Running backs all ran hard. This is going to have to be the strength of this team. Get ready for a crap ton of repetitive run plays followed by a third down Bailey incompletion.
Wheels. Duke Scott got to show off his speed which was cool to see. But who knew Will Wilson was so fast?? We’ve never seen that before, and it’s like, why don’t you put him in space to try and make something happen. I’ve been dying for a two-QB set. You could legit kill teams with some option sets with Bailey and Wilson.
The team looked like they were generally happy and having a good time. I’m happy for them to shed off the baggage of the UVA game that’s been hanging on them for two weeks and hopefully they’ll be able to go into the Vanderbilt game clean.
Speaking of which, it’s hard to predict anything that will happen in Nashville. That is clearly not the same team they had last year, and yet the boogeyman of the SEC still hangs over Dave Doeren. This game is a lose-lose situation for DD. If he wins then it will be like the ACC’s post last weekend about the conference going 3-0 against the Big 10.
Sure, you went 3-0 but it was against Rutgers, Purdue and Illinois. Not exactly the cream of the crop.
If Doeren wins: we can’t really celebrate him exorcising any SEC demons because people will say, “yeah, but it’s just Vanderbilt, they’re returning to their historical average and are still the dregs of the conference.”
If Doeren loses: all the haters come out of the woodwork complaining about him still not being able to compete against the SEC, we can almost hear the tweets being pre-drafted, “it’s year 14 and you couldn’t even beat Vanderbilt!?”
Now, Vandy might end up being pretty good this season. Their early season struggles might just be a factor of getting a 5-star QB up to speed for college football. We might look back at this game and see that they were a solid team overall. Or they could fall off a cliff, which would make a loss sting even more looking back at it in 10 weeks.
We do know their QB is working his way into the flow of the game at this level. And you know which school is always willing to allow opposing players have career days or get-right games? (another question I’ll let you answer…)
And in the return of an older segment, here’s the AI slop pick of the week:
This game opened at Vandy -4 and is currently sitting at -3. I do think it’s a pretty evenly matched game, and very winnable for NC State. Your guess is as good as mine as to what will happen, so go ahead and give us your pick below!