You could say that NC State wasn’t ready to play in Charlottesville on Saturday. You could say the defense looked spineless against the run. You could say the offense was DOA and put the defense in bad spots. You could say Virginia was a matchup problem built to expose NC State’s weaknesses. These are all things you could say, and if you say any of them, you would be right.
Bright spots are not easy to come by after Saturday’s 34-8 loss, in which NC State finally got to its week zero national showcase game after the long offseason and then apparently blacked out for three hours.
Virginia is a football team that has a clear understanding of its strengths and a clear process to enable those strengths and build spokes off them. I’m not really sure what NC State’s identity is. That distinction really showed on the field.
Exactly what we expected
If you listened to The Lotcast the last couple weeks, you know that Virginia did exactly what we expected. The Hoos came out firing with a lot of designed quarterback runs, many out of 12 and 21 personnel, and they laid the game at the feet of their geriatric offensive line. Then, UVA took its play action shots when they got into 2nd and short situations.
For NC State, the goal was straightforward; hold the line on early downs and make Beau Pribula be a dropback passer in high leverage situations. Beau Pribula is bad in these scenarios, as is evidenced by his entire career. UVA was 3/14 on 3rd down and did not convert a third down through the air.
Pribula, though, ran for over 100 yards as the Hoos were constantly in manageable down and distance. State’s chances hinged on slowing down the ground game, and the quarterback run was the wrench in that goal for the Pack. Based on State’s alignments in the first half, Doeren’s halftime interview, and Popo Aguirre’s post-game interview, I am not sure NC State was prepared for what a cornerstone this would be for Virginia. Predictably, the Cavaliers ran wild and then leveraged that into two key explosive pass plays.
Doeren called the quarterback run in the postgame “the great equalizer.” This is one of the hardest things in football to defend. Any time you run the quarterback, you create or add to a numbers advantage in the box. State was caught in this situation a lot with Beau Pribula, which should have been predictable, but it really struggled to fit the QB runs, especially when it tried to do so from a two-high shell. State played more one-high looks in the second half and was a little better. Virginia does deserve a lot of credit. It was just that it ran the quarterback. It had a lot of fun ways of doing that. Truly, it would be entertaining to watch if it wasn’t functioning as an uppercut to your favorite team.
Disruption is of course the great equalizer of the great equalizer. If you can disrupt the flow of the play with some one-on-one wins, that can save the day. If you just stalemate every block, you must be gap sound and have a plan to even the math. State did not manage to get that far.
State is at a numbers disadvantage here in the box. UVA has two backs and a tight end. This is eight potential gaps, nine if you run the quarterback. State has six guys in the box, the nickel as the apex, and two safeties at ten yards. Harvey Dyson is the end man on the far side. The safety on the far hash is Brody Barnhardt. Dyson is going to work inside of the tight end’s block as he pulls and leads. This is called a spill technique and it’s meant to push the ball horizontally toward a player outside the box. This would be Barnhardt. His job is, presumably, to come down and make Dyson right, but he’s super late and the ball spills to nobody. All the backfield action seems to have messed with his eyes.
This is probably avoidable if you put an extra safety in the box. If you do that and you start cheating with the other safety, you open yourself up to a lot of vertical passing game, but that felt like the right bet for NC State.
You can see the problem develop with the quarterback run, and you can also see bad execution. The second-level players and the DBs were bad against the run from an individual technique perspective. State was already under the gun with the problem of facing a great offensive line and a running back playing quarterback, but it did not help itself with execution.
This one State actually fits relatively well with Popo setting the edge outside the tight end and AJ Richardson filling inside. Richardson just flies in though and never gets square to the runner. He has to trust that Aguirre will make the tackle if the runner gets outside of him. The double team from UVA’s right guard and right tackle also moves Joseph Adedire about six yards, creating all that extra space that Richardson has to tackle Pribula in. There isn’t a structural error here, but there are losses and execution errors.
State allowed 258 rushing yards. That is too many rushing yards to allow.
The Offense was Somehow Worse
Debuting a third-year O’Brien Award Watchlist starter at quarterback, State put together an offensive performance that the Iowa Hawkeyes would be jealous of. CJ Bailey was bad. His new group of skill position players were also bad. It was a perfect storm of stink that led to 84 passing yards and Vander Ploog’s 21-yard catch outpacing the totals of every other receiver on the field. About the only thing that wasn’t bad on the offense was the line.
Virginia’s connectivity and route distributions were really impressive in zone. It was an excellent performance from the Cavaliers’ back end, which I know some people will probably interpret as an excuse, so allow me to say that both State’s receivers and its quarterback deserve low grades.
Bailey’s mechanical issues have long contributed to an inconsistent arm. This did not change at the start of year three. The few windows that were available to him ended with the ball in the dirt, occasionally after it hit the arm of a defensive lineman.
Let’s start here. This one is easy.
This is called a sail concept. CJ is reading the depth of the defender that’s at the numbers around the 15-yard line. He is throwing off of that guy’s depth. The go route runs the safety off and the read defender climbs to the shallow route, so a huge window opens up. This is as easy of a defender read as you will get. Read is good. Timing is good. Throw is bananas.
This is an explosive play that turns into a punt. Bailey actually does a good job of seeing the coverage rotation here. The route he throws would function as a clear out against cover 3, which is possible here with UVA in a single-high look. They rotate to cover 2, and this is the throw. It just isn’t accurate.
The receivers struggled as well, particularly some of the outside receivers that were new to the roster.
This is a three verticals play against a quarters shell. Virginia is aligned in a quarters look presnap, but it has both corners pressed on the outside receivers. These are opportunities for speed and size to win on the outside without safety help if you occupy the safety. In this case, UVA does that for State by rotating and playing cover 1, which is man coverage with one safety. You can see Bailey look at the safety toward the bottom of the screen first to ID the coverage postsnap.
He’s just picking which outside receiver matchup he likes here, and that’s likely a presnap decision. This is why Tyran Warren is on the team, to run go routes in one-on-ones. He’s fast, but he doesn’t win off the release and creates no separation. Then he misreads the ball in the air.
State wanted playmakers on the outside this season. That’s why it went after Warren and Dozier. It tried manufacture some opportunities like the one above, but the returns were negative each time. About the only receiver who did anything of note was Victor Snow. He had one catch for five yards, but there were some good routes out there. I do still expect Snow to have a good year in the end.
I didn’t think Bailey failed to throw the ball to a ton of wide open receivers in this game, but it definitely didn’t fire off some available throws. He missed some, which you’ll see below, but there also was very little separation against man coverage and the UVA zone structures were strong. The dig route is a great cover 3 killer but the corners got great breaks on those routes several times when State tried to run some form of it. This passing game mess was really the perfect storm of poor quarterback play, poor receiver play, and a high-end performance from the Virginia defense.
Here are a couple more clips for the clip inclined.
I think this is a bad progression from Bailey. The leverage is bad on the corner route at the bottom, but he doesn’t ditch it fast enough. There is a throw to be made to the crosser if you get there on time, which would be the third progression, but he’s late and in no position to throw the ball by the time he gets there because his feet are moving around too much.
This next one is an example of the quality of the defense. There is nowhere to go with the ball here.
Cover 3 “buzz” from UVA, which is a rotation to cover 3 from a two-high safety look. The corner to the short side sits on the comeback. He is not concerned about getting beat deep. The linebacker tracks Preston Douglas (19) on the drag. The “buzz” safety looks up the deeper cross. The corner to the field is in the window for the backside dig route. There is nowhere for this ball to go.
This one is a QB miss. This is a standard mesh flat play with the flat route building the bottom of a hi-lo read. Those crossers are supposed to pick each other against man coverage, but sit down and form a triangle with the guy at the 35 yard line against zone. There are two different points on this triangle that are open once Bailey comes back to it. You need to throw this ball.
Conclusion
The size of final margin was a bit surprising, but the result of this game had to be predictable. There were little pockets of hype with this team, but it seemed like almost all of it came from national people who just saw CJ Bailey and the schedule. The question marks with this group ran deep. State had to hit on a lot of things to be the kind of team that could capitalize on this schedule. It’s only played one game so far, but it stunk in that game real bad. None of those questions were answered. In fact, more have now been created.