2025 Week 2 Predictions - NC State vs UVA

Recap from Last Week, Week 1 vs ECU

The 2025 NC State football season is officially underway! NC State’s offense showed flashes of explosiveness, with CJ Bailey connecting on a few key throws and the running game finding some success. Hollywood Smothers brought his usual energy and playmaking ability, but he faced challenges when the offensive line struggled to hold its ground. This was something we highlighted as a potential issue in our preseason episode of the Lotcast, and unfortunately, it came true, leading to pressure and disrupted plays. Defensively, the team had ECU like:

NC State managed to get a key fourth down stop that helped keep a driving East Carolina at bay. However, the defense also allowed ECU to hang around longer than expected, struggling at times with missed tackles and inconsistent coverage. Moving forward, NC State needs to improve offensive line protection, tighten up on defense, and finish drives more efficiently to avoid letting underdog opponents gain momentum late in games.

Speaking of which, on to our Week 2 predictions!

Week 2 vs the traditional non-conference foe UVA Cavaliers - Sat, 9/6/25

Following suit with what Wake Forest and UNC did in recent years, NC State and UVA have set up a home and home as "non-conference" opponents. The fans get to watch it getting the feeling of it being a conference game, although the game is meaningless in that regard, and each team can fill their quota of a non-conference P4 opponent. Seems like a win-win, and the only loser is the continued erosion of the heart and tradition of college football through ever-ongoing realignment and expansion... ANYWAY... The TRT staff made their picks for this dumb game that should be a conference game but isn't because of something called a Stanford?

So, what do you think will happen this week? Let us know in the comments below, and respond in the poll with your pick!

AI Image of the Week

This week's image really shows the bounds of dumb AI being a dumb dumb doodoohead. The prompt was, "a big bad wolf hunts a baby scared pirate wearing a blue and orange pirate uniform. the pirate has a small dagger in his belt, the wolf has giant slobbering fangs." I ran the exact same prompt from last week, just changing the color and adding "baby". The picture didn't come out right so I just ran it again. The computer clearly got confused and merged a pirate with the wolf, so you don't know where one ends and the other begins. The wolf's paw and pirate hand are combined. The pirate's scarves are the wolf's tongue. The pirate's left hand and baby pirate's right hand are the same. Overall, this picture is a glorious mess, and shows how AI slop still has some work to do.