Watching State play Virginia week zero was like popping a balloon that contained a fan base’s worth of hope. Friday night’s weird weather delayed 73-0 smackdown was a nice attempt to stuff the hope back into the patched up receptacle. We’ll see how long it holds.
This result was polarizing in the opposite direction. I thought State would handle Richmond down to down, but I had zero expectation of a record breaking performance. These numbers are absolutely stoopid:
In addition to program records for yards (734) rushing touchdowns (8) and points and touchdown marks that have held since before World War II. You will not see a more dominant game summary screen from Game on Paper this year:
Offensively, State brought out their best early. On our Lotcast podcast this week, we talked about getting C.J. on the move to throw, and running out of the pistol to give State’s offense some flexibility. They did this on their first two plays, and they went for 12 and 43 yards respectively.
We were pretty confident that State’s offensive line was good to start the year, and they looked good again at Virginia, effectively matching UVA’s veteran line in “line yards created.” State’s run game looked incredible, regularly getting Duke Scott and Davion Gause to the second level. State’s running back room combined for 19 missed tackles forced and 294 yards after contact on just 29 carries. This is the clear strength of the offensive unit.
That’s not where the questions were, though. Most State fans were interested in seeing how C.J. Bailey would respond to arguably the worst performance of his career. There wasn’t a ton to take away from his night. Going 13/17 and seeing him throw the football down the field was an improvement, but Richmond’s defensive backs were consistently “wrong” and beaten. He did complete one deep ball to Keenan Jackson, who emerged as his go to option, but there just wasn’t a large enough sample here to feel tremendously better from Week Zero.
I’m still not fully understanding what the deal is with skill rotations. Vander Ploog played 1 snap after having State’s biggest offensive play in week 0 - it’s possible he’s still not healthy, but what about Victor Snow? 2 catches for 12 yards on the year. It seems there’s a good sample now that says Tyran Warren and Ashton Locklear are a step down in quality from Snow, Jackson, and Trader, and they continue to see significant run.
State’s first two games to start the year have been anomalous, with State being on opposite ends of blowouts, so I’ll wait another week to get frustrated on this. But moving forward, I will continue to beat the drum: get your best players on the field and let them work. You’ve got to with what we’ve seen from the passing attack so far.
Defensively, I continue to feel better relative to my beginning of year expectations. Richmond’s offense did nothing, and even though they aren’t very good, seeing that kind of dominance after a promising start against Virginia is a good sign.
I was interested to see how State handled linebacker without AJ Richardson, and it was Bailey Benson - a former Wake Forest transfer - who surprisingly got the nod. He played well and graded out as State’s third highest defensive player on PFF with an 80.4 overall grade.
State appears to have a group of younger situational guys they really like. LaCorian Hodge comes in on passing downs at linebacker and had another good showing. Ziggy Moore and Elijah Satchell, true freshmen backers, also played well and looked the part despite their youth. Most years, Dave’s teams have a couple of young guys that come out of nowhere to contribute meaningfully. It looks like that will be the case again next year.
I don’t put a ton of stock into this performance. It is directionally true that great teams in football beat the pants off of bad ones. But this performance didn’t answer the questions related to State’s major week zero flaws, particularly around the quarterback position.
Friday was like the piece of gum you pop to cleanse your pallette after eating something weird. The momentary relief is nice, but if you don’t consume anything else significant in the near term, that taste is coming right back.
State has a golden opportunity to eradicate that bad taste and chip away at a long standing narrative. Going to Vanderbilt represents a double whammy of Dave Doeren struggles, where the Pack will look to 1) beat an SEC team, and 2) do it as an underdog on the road.
Vanderbilt looked like a super beatable football team against Delaware, barely scraping by 35-26 and still rotating quarterbacks. Five star true freshman Jared Curtis got most of the game, but the fact that it has taken him this long to beat out *squints* fellow competitor Blaze Berlowitz is significant.
In my opinion, this is an opportunity you can’t let slip away.