Stanford Loss Highlights Broken Processes for NC State

This was just so so bad.

After Wake Forest pushed NC State’s season to the edge with its blowout win in Carter-Finley, Doeren’s group was offered the gift of scheduling: a bye week to prepare for a two-game stretch that featured two programs in apparent freefall. State’s response to this opportunity was to fall right off that ledge and join them.

The Wolfpack’s showing in Palo Alto on Friday was gutless. At a pivot point in the season where Doeren teams were historically gutty, it left a feeling that whatever power source had kept this thing chugging for fourteen years had finally run out. Doeren’s program always had a response when it felt like the ship might sink. It’s been the animating force of his tenure’s longevity. This was the moment. No such response could be found.

Stanford simply did whatever it wanted on offense. Micah Ford averaged seven yards per carry. Davis Warren threw for 300 yards and four touchdowns. NC State was powerless to stop an offense that, even after this game, still ranks 97th in the country in yards per play. The Wolfpack felt like it was gasping for breath as it clung to sight of one of the worst power five teams in America. There is no excuse to be this bad.

Unfortunately, this is not a left turn for the team. State’s roster build was mediocre, its management of the assets it does have is not delivering, and none of this was difficult to predict. There is a reason why every member of our staff had this team 7-5 or 8-4 in the preseason. The hit rate on question marks had to be unreasonably high to do something more.

State is inefficient in the NIL era. That’s the best way to describe how we got here, and it’s a shortcoming that has been spotlighted over the last couple of weeks, when two modestly funded programs (at best) racked up 864 yards on the Wolfpack defense. Both were obviously the better team for the whole game. Neither outspends the Wolfpack.

NC State is not realizing value from its current NIL pot. This specific team is infected by both questionable decision-making with the funds it has and the management of the pieces it did decide to spend on. We can argue about how much money it has and how that caps the program, and it does cap the program, but that’s a bridge State hasn’t given itself a chance to cross. Conversations about NIL funding begin when the program hits its head on its ceiling. This iteration of the Wolfpack is looking up at it from its back right now.

CJ Bailey is by far the most expensive asset on the team, and his retention’s opportunity cost was significant. Now, Bailey was awful against Virginia, but he hasn’t been the anchor on this boat. He isn’t bad, but it’s hard to justify that large of a pie slice when his production is not congruent with that cost tier. This was true last year, too. But State built the entire plane out of CJ Bailey for 2026. The skill positions were just stocked with his friends. None of these guys, short of Victor Snow, had proven anything on the field, and you’re bringing them in to play significant reps. Ultimately, it couldn’t retain several good players, and it was not able to replace them with anything at a similar level.

The frustration peaks when these pieces that were the focus of the offseason are not maximized. Personnel limitations will exist with the current budget, but again, those limitations aren’t the chief issue when you aren’t reaching them. The management of State’s receiving corps has raised flags for years now. Even beyond its offseason decision-making around the position, it hasn’t maximized the talent it does have for the better part of the last three years.

State’s last two offensive plays against Stanford were back shoulder fades into the boundary for Keenan Jackson, and he made an excellent play on both. The ball skills have always been real with this player, and yet, in his sophomore season, he was running the crossing route in Y cross repeatedly. From the staff through the quarterback, State has never prioritized these situations for Keenan Jackson, despite an obvious lack of other playmakers with this skill set. Prior to that sequence, Tyran Warren had more opportunities to win one-on-one on an outside fade. He has 0 catches in those instances.

The worst part of the Stanford game was, of course, the other side of the ball. Offensive line injuries put a governor device on the offense. The defense doesn’t have that limitation, but they’ve been much worse than the offense. Friday’s performance would fail to meet a subterranean bar.

The route distributions of NC State’s zone coverages are not good. State has used a good bit of cover 3 on early downs lately, usually with a rotation to it so it can bring a five-man pressure. It’s worked well against the run at times, but the spot drop zone structures have no connectivity. Davis Warren picked it apart on the very first play. Play action became a significant problem for the squeezing of second-level windows, and the defensive backs were beat in man coverage with regularity.

Poor awareness and connectivity is the theme with the back end. There are so many mistakes getting made that open huge windows for the quarterback to throw into, many early on in Friday’s game. Drop a comment if you want to see the film. I’m assuming nobody does.

The tackling remains a huge issue, as it has since the start of last season. But you know this already. Guys don’t play with good technique here. State’s defensive line was blocked easily. I mean, you can really just keep going if you want to.

This, to me, ties directly back to the earlier discussion about realizing value from the portal. It’s not just evaluation, it’s also activation. The execution of principles within the scheme is not sufficient. State cannot manage crossing routes in man coverage. It has many mechanisms to do this, one of which includes trading the mesh or drag route to the hole player. At least twice in the last two games, it has bungled this communication.

It’s not just about winning individual matchups. It’s technique, eye discipline, communication, and an understanding of the principles that allow the scheme to account for the ways it is being attacked. It’s coachable and installable elements of the game. This is a systemic failure from the defense, an inability to get the pieces to move the way they need to move. It’s disconnected.

With all that, it’s hard to imagine we aren’t approaching the official end. The last three years have offered maybe three weeks where NC State felt like it could have some juice, which were the first three weeks of last season. It put that to bed with a series of breakdowns against Duke and then one of the worst losses of Doeren’s 14 years against a coachless Virginia Tech.

There are just so many things here that are not working, so many broken processes right now, and the results are reflecting it. This group does not have the talent to win the ACC as it’s currently built, but it should absolutely be better than losing to Stanford.