It’s always nice to see a good storyline play out in sports, especially when it’s your team and that storyline is it staring down and defeating a specific demon that’s threatening to become “just who they are.” That’s what happened on Saturday, when the Wolfpack blew a double-digit lead in the game’s final 20 minutes for the third straight week. It’s cliche, but it’s at this point that somebody has to make a play. Somebody out there has to stand up and say “here and no farther.”
That individual was Harvey Dyson, whose chase-down tackle and forced fumble may have been worth 10 points and almost certainly changed the outcome. Dyson chased down Louisville running back Keyjuan Brown with NC State about to go behind for the first time all afternoon, forcing a fumble that eliminated a Louisville red zone possession. If NC State is to make anything noteworthy of this season, this is the play that swings it.
Dyson is one of several guys who played a good game after a start to the season that underwhelmed many. CJ Bailey leads that parade, as he was really good. The ask for Bailey before the season was to become a quarterback who could win you games. As of Saturday morning, NC State with CJ Bailey was 3-13 against power-five opponents when rushing for less than 200 yards, with two of those wins coming against terrible teams that scored fewer than 20 points. State is now 4-13 after the quarterback played one of the best games of his career. The Pack gave up almost 500 yards and put forth a mediocre ground game effort thanks to some injuries, but it still won because of explosive plays through the air. That is the definition of the next level for the passing game.
Offense Ignites the Explosives
The combination of Bailey and Kurt Roper was on a bit of a heater against the Cardinals, who were ripe for plucking thanks to a lack of growth since the start of the year. This particular Jeff Brohm experiment seems to confirm the original theory. Louisville is talented, objectively the more talented team, but it is just so sloppy and disorganized. State generated tons of explosive plays attacking its messy and predictable zone structures, and that was really the story of the game on offense. The Wolfpack outcoached the Cardinals.
Let’s start with State’s offense and how it attacked Louisville. The Cardinals are a predominantly post-closed team. That means a lot of one-high safety looks, allowing for full boxes against the run and weaknesses in the seams of the coverage when it plays its cover 3, which it does a lot . . . and poorly. These types of defenses can be attacked vertically, and that’s exactly what NC State did, getting into vertical concepts in many fun ways.
Bailey was really seeing this defense, and Louisville’s attempts to counter with 2-roll coverages (cover 2 from a one-high look) were easily defeated by the quarterback. Take a look below.
NC State will run 4 verticals from its two-tight-end set. Louisville is in a one-high safety look and will play cover 3, which is ripe for 4 verticals, because 4 is more than 3. Douglas’ motion helps Bailey confirm cover 3. From there, the quarterback does an excellent job of reading the safety’s width and widening him with his eyes before working back to the opposite seam to a wide-open Providence. This is called a slide read, and it’s done very well.
Here, State will run 4 verticals into another single high, or closed post, zone coverage. Louisville is trying to catch State napping here with a coverage disguise, as it will show single high but play cover 2 (called 2-roll). You can see it take place at the snap. Douglas’ exit motion to run the outside vertical creates some problems. Louisville does not distribute those routes well on the short side, and the safety doesn’t seem to even notice Douglas, while the flat linebacker is late to trail. Bailey is all over it.
Once again, 4 verticals to attack the post-closed structure. Once again, Louisville will play 2-roll in an attempt to catch Bailey off guard. The hole defender for Louisville does not widen with Victor Snow’s over route, though, and Bailey fires it in there. None of these disguises even seemed to bother him.
It’s really all very good. Bailey deserves a ton of credit for the way he saw this game and how willing he was to let it rip. I’m not sure what happened to him on the interception, but I’m glad we don’t have to talk about that play. The crazy super late jump ball fifty yards down the field to Keenan Jackson was an ill-advised throw, but I’d still rather his mistakes look like that than him holding the ball. The most notable part of this game for him is that he was playing fast. Bailey’s indecisiveness has been a killer when he’s been bad. There was virtually zero of that on Saturday, and that’s ultimately the difference in the game.
This is not a highlight play but this is Bailey playing fast. This is a shock concept, which is a hitch-fade-stick combo that allows the quarterback to pick one based on the coverage. Bailey gets a big cushion by the corner on the hitch from Trader to the wide side of the field. You don’t see the hitch get thrown in shock too often because it’s such a long throw and can get undercut. But Bailey likes the look here, and the flat defender is trying to collision Snow so this gets ripped for a third down conversion.
Preston Douglas is becoming a bigger story each week, and State is getting so much value right now out of Douglas motions, some of which you see above. He is nowhere near the matchup problem Justin Joly was, but he’s become a reliable gadget for Kurt Roper, and Roper is using him to build heavy personnel sets, challenge communication from the defense, and run vertical attackers from those heavy sets.
Douglas has stepped up the blocking the last two weeks as well. He was really poor against Vanderbilt, but the physicality has come on lately, and it’s activating pieces of this offense. Football as a whole has seen a tight end resurgence, and State is very much living in it with Provience and Douglas.
The only negative coming out of this for the offense is the injury list starting to bloat. I have concerns about better defenses getting to face an NC State team with three backups on the offensive line. The backups have played admirably and deserve credit, but they are a noticeable downgrade from the starting group. With Duke Scott also questionable going forward, this team’s budding identity will be challenged, but it found a way to win without a huge contribution from the ground game on Saturday. This was the perfect opportunity for CJ Bailey to deliver at a higher level, so we will celebrate that for the time being.
Defense Takes the Ball
Defensively, NC State wasn’t necessarily good down-to-down, but it was opportunistic, and that was enough. You could see where some of the talent advantages lived for the Cards, but the playmaking from State’s defense served as the equalizer.
Louisville had 11 drives in the game. It cracked the red zone seven times, but had three empty possessions resulting from a fourth-down stop and two lost fumbles. It doesn’t matter how you get stops, as long as you do. AJ Prim, Ke’Von Carter, and obviously Harvey Dyson had huge forced fumbles, all of which led to points for NC State, and two of which definitely took points off the board for Louisville.
State was also able to create some key negative plays. Two of Louisville’s three punts followed a third-down sack where State’s pressure paths got Louisville’s protection twisted up in a knot.
Late movement here from State seems to confuse the Louisville protection. The Cardinals are in man-to-man in the protection because State has five on the line, which would make the back responsible for LaCorian Hodge rushing the A gap from the second level. The back works to the edge instead, which is what he would do if Louisville was in a full slide protection. The running back is executing a completely different protection structure than the rest of the line. State’s late movement to get five guys on the line may have caused a miscommunication, or Louisville may just be a mess, or both.
This is Dyson’s sack to end the game. State gets a free rusher through the A gap despite only bringing four. Chase Bond at the bottom does a good job occupying the guard before working to contain while Elijah Satchel’s penetration occupies the center’s gap. This clears the A gap for Dyson to go one on one with the running back, but the back just goes ahead and runs right by him. He is responsible for Satchel if Satchel comes through the left-side A gap, but when Satchel goes right instead, that responsibility becomes the center’s, and the back thinks he’s clear. He releases, but Dyson is looping to the left (man-to-man) side of the protection and the back never sees him. They pass like ships in the night, while the guard has no chance to get to Dyson, and State gets a free pass to the quarterback.
This is a simpler one, but Joseph Adedire is going to blow up this zone play. Louisville is running outside zone to the right, and State is going to reduce the other way, which just means the linemen are going to play over a gap. You can see Adedire at the bottom is lined up in the B gap, but he attacks the A gap after the snap. His get off has always been good, and he cuts this play off immediately, forcing it to the backside. Remember, this ball wants to stretch horizontally, but it’s forced off track immediately. This is another of many instances of State using early down movements and pressures to snap off run plays.
Closing Statement
There will be time for “what does this mean?” NC State is still a home dog to Wake Forest and now has a host of new injuries to deal with, so there is still plenty of work to do. But greater teams would not be faulted for falling apart under the circumstances at play had State blown another lead and lost this game. The fact that you got a huge game from so many guys and, because of that, you found a way to win- well that changes the whole vibe. It really felt like we were at a tipping point with this year, and State has once again gotten off the mat. Let’s enjoy the highlights of this one, because it was an extremely fun win, and that’s ultimately the point of all this.