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This week, the Pendulum of Pain ™ swung back to the offense, but it had nothing to do with their down to down effectiveness. State had no problem marching down the field; The Pack punted only once Saturday.
I’ve been asking for innovation from this offense for most of the season. I think they misunderstood me - I wanted creative ways to win football games, not lose back to back games at home in which you were the postgame team expected to win.
Instead, poorly timed turnovers and an inability to capitalize on the scoring opportunities was State’s preferred method of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.
I won’t speak for anyone else, but there’s a numbness setting in for me this season. I watched every single play - watched State shoot itself in the foot over and over - and went to bed essentially shrugging my shoulders.
3-4 and 0-3 in the ACC with championship-contention expectations will do that to you, I suppose.
Another Game Where You Were Better
Watching State lose back to back games at home - something it hasn’t done since 2019 - is made even more staggering when you consider that State was largely the better team in both contests.
State was better by significant margins in most advanced stats. Your ~10 yards per play figure - which is absurd - was buoyed by two 70+ yard touchdowns. But the Pack boasted a healthy success rate, meaning they were consistently "on schedule" drive to drive.
The bad: State’s third down success rate was a miserable 17%, which is something State has seriously struggled with this season:
The red zone success rate is a bit misleading given State had several turnovers between Cuse’s 20 and 30 yard lines, but they played more than well enough to win on a down to down basis.
Postgame win expectancy is one of those fuzzy terms thrown around in the analytics world that doesn’t have a well socialized definition. A basic definition is as follows: win expectancy if the game were to be played again with each team attaining the same stats.
Per Bill Connelly, who runs SP+, State’s postgame win expectancy was 60.7%. College Football Numbers had State’s win expectancy at 92.7%!
The answer to “How the **** did State lose this one?” is a fairly obvious one.
The 80/20 of Saturday Night
State had 8 possessions Saturday. They advanced the ball inside of Syracuse’s thirty yard line 6 times on Saturday night. Only one of those trips resulted in a touchdown.
Folks, you can stop reading this article right now if you’d like. That’s your ballgame.
A missed field goal and three turnovers accounting for 50% of your offensive possessions will leave you zero room for error. You have to be perfect at all of the other margins. State was far from it.
In an attempt at quantifying how impactful these moments were, here’s Game on Paper’s EPA (expected points added:)
Kendrick Raphael’s fumble: 4.53 points
C.J. Bailey sack fumble: 5.93 points
C.J. Bailey’s interception: ~6.5 points
Syracuse took those three turnovers and flipped them into 21 points.
For all of our hand ringing on rotations, playcalling, NIL decisions…If a total of ~7 players had executed better on 4 plays, State likely wins this one by 10+.
The beauty and the curse of this game. The margins can be that thin.
Growth from C.J. - More Room to Grow
With State’s goals unattainable, my main objective for the rest of the year is putting Bailey in spots where we can see consistent growth that this program can build around for next year.
Saturday night was very encouraging.
He finished with a career high 329 passing yards on only 17 completions. The bulk of those yards came on 75, 73, and 42 yard explosives, which this offense is starving for.
The big area for improvement that I and others at Trinity Road Times have been emphasizing has been C.J.’s ability to 1) progress through his reads effectively and 2) turn it loose on downfield passing concepts.
That’s why the most encouraging thing for me coming out of this game was Bailey’s average depth of target. Here’s his downfield distance averages over his five major games so far:
La Tech: 8.4 yards
Clemson: 6.5 yards
NIU: 4.5 yards
Wake: 6.9 yards
Syracuse 10.5 yards
Now, ADOT does need some context. Having a 10.5 depth of target if you, say, complete 0/30 pass attempts passes isn't an impactful stat to look at.
But C.J. did have some impressive balls, this one to KC for his longest downfield completion of his career - slightly underthrown, but a completion nonetheless:
He followed that up with a dart into a tight window to Justin Joly on 4th and 12 was probably the most impressive throw of Bailey's young career.
With all the positives from Saturday, there's still an extra gear Bailey can hit, particularly with his decisiveness and ability to run through his progressions. Alec wrote an excellent article detailing Bailey's play here that is absolutely worth the read.
This guy is a teenager making the most of what’s in front of him, and he’s far from perfect. Thankfully he's got time to grow, and you're seeing the makings of a guy State can pair with some of this high quality skill talent.
Young Guys! Explosives!
Three beautiful plays from 3 coveted in-State recruits. We've already talked about the bomb to KC - here's the other two:
Noah finally gets his first touchdown, and it comes on improv from C.J. who did a good job of keeping his eyes downfield as things broke down in front of him.
This one was reviewed - and Noah did step out of bounds - but it was ruled he was contacted out of bounds by the defender, which...we'll take.
Probably my favorite of the night here - Hollywood freaking Smothers.
He’s been out the last couple of weeks, and with the incompetence being shown by the rest of State’s running back room right now, I think you ride him as the hot hand in the near term.
If State is going to lose in hair-loss inducing fashion, they can at least be exciting while they do it!
Defensive Response
It was hard to feel good about this defensive unit coming off of last week’s gaffe against Wake Forest. And then news drops that Caden Fordham isn’t warming up...later confirmed that he's out for the season. Ruh roh.
Gotta give credit where credit is due, this group really stepped up.
Syracuse came into this game with a heavy RPO offense that has been one of the most explosive in the country. They entered Saturday 21st in Expected Points Added per Pass - this was a good passing attack with legitimate weapons.
The Pack wasn’t perfect, but they mostly held Syracuse in front of them between the 20’s, and then bowed up when the Orange approached the red zone. Syracuse only got three points on 3 trips inside N.C. State’s 25 in the first half. They also had to run 76 plays to get their 24 points, indicative of a defense that mostly held explosives in check.
Kyle McCord entered the game as one of the top statistical quarterbacks in the country.
McCord has played his best under pressure this year ironically enough, likely given Cuse’s RPO scheme and his experience at Ohio State. I didn’t love when State went cover zero for this reason. He looked more uncomfortable with State dropped multiple added guys into zone coverage, which I thought we could have seen a bit more of.
To me, State looked a step slow trying to get home when blitzing. McCord knew where to go with the football - he looked much more uncomfortable when State dropped eight into coverage and forced him to make reads.
He had a hell of a game, finishing with a 91/100 PFF grade, logging him an "elite" performance on tape. Sometimes the other guy just plays better.
All in all, State could've been better defensively, but yielding 3 points per possession is respectable, especially against this passing attack. It was enough to win the game.
Back Pain
A bulging disk kept me from attending this one in person, but I'm not sure it was the most painful back related pain I encountered this weekend.Kendrick Raphael was clearly better than Jordan Waters last week. So naturally, Raphael turns in his worst performance of the year, dropping a back breaking fumble and only 27 yards on 6 total touches.
Waters wasn't much better - 4 carries for 14 yards. He's on pace for his worst PFF grade as a starter in his career, with a 3.9 YPC.
We reach the point in the season where tendencies have been established, and I'm starting to feel like a broken record as a result. State run game struggles are a team effort - OL, TE, and certainly running backs.
This unit in particular is disappointing on film, and I'll again point to Alec's analysis of the stink coming from this group.
This isn't just on State's personnel, though. After running two successful outside zone plays with Hollywood for 15 total yards, State never went back to it.
Running back play continues to be maddening to watch. I'm hopeful we'll see more Hollywood moving forward.
Why We're Watching
This tweet seemed to rub some folks the wrong way:
First of all, this is not a declaration that the rest of this season's results don't matter. I’m also confident 7 games into the year that this will end up as Dave's most disappointing season given expectations and resources, and there will be plenty of time to dig into the nooks and crannies of how and why this came to be.
The rest of '24 is about building for the future.
True, the creation of the transfer portal does throw a wrench in the idea of long term development of players, but that's a challenge every program will face.
State has been on the receiving end of two portal quarterback misses in back to back years for different reasons. Having an opportunity to evaluate if Bailey is someone worth building around is critical. Early signs are positive; having a good young quarterback on the roster will be a great recruiting (and retention) tool come portal season.
Outside of Bailey, you're starting to see others flash. We've touched on Rogers, Smothers, and the true freshmen Terrell Anderson and Keenan Jackson.
Defensively, tackle DJ Jackson had an excellent game this week. Freshman Kamal Bonner looked good in his first career start. Tamarcus Cooley - poor dude, victimized by a horrible targeting call - is now set to start the rest of the year with Ja'Had Carter stepping aside. Brandon Cisse and Devon Marshall are looking the part.
Who knows how many of these guys will be here next year, or what State will pursue in the portal. All we can do now is watch and hope for the future.
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