.png)
Hold onto your butts, WPN. N.C. State is officially a chaos team.
There’s no other way to put it: down 17-6 late in the second quarter, State looked dead. The icing on the cake came when Grayson McCall was quickly ruled out of the game going into halftime. An 11 point deficit for true freshman C.J. Bailey playing at home with an uncomfortable crowd behind him…you’d be lying if you said you weren’t nervous.
Give credit where credit is due: State fought and frankly looked dominant in the second half, winning it 24-3 and yielding only 119 yards in the process.
But at this point, down your starting quarterback and heading to Death Valley, there are still many more questions than there are answers.
It’s certainly possible that Bailey provides the spark this team needs right now, but is that spark powerful enough to propel State towards its goals?
Injury Luck
N.C. State’s quarterback room has been through it. Post Ryan Finley, the Qb room has been the opposite of stable:
That doesn’t include the 2019 season where State played 3 different QBs as they navigated a terrible season.
Having consistently good play from your QB position is the biggest indicator of success in college football. It’s a testament to what Dave has done in Raleigh that they’re a top ten program in wins over the last four years despite this.
McCall Situation Hurts
Yesterday Dave Doeren said McCall is “day to day” with an undisclosed injury, but that CJ would be the guy “moving forward.”
Putting his play aside for a second, you have to feel for Grayson McCall.
I can't imagine transferring to a new school for your final year of eligibility with championship aspirations, and then not playing to your ceiling, knowing you're not there, and getting hurt at home in your third game. He’s gotten some tough treatment on social media from Pack fans, too.
Before Grayson exited the game, he wasn’t very good. The continued trend of looking off open receivers in favor of check downs or scrambles continued. I would highly recommend this in depth breakdown by fellow TRT wordsmith Alec Lower digging into the details of both McCall and Bailey’s performances from Saturday.
So what’s next? We heard Doeren allude to “imaging” that needed to be done on Grayson before determining his status on Saturday.
Purely speculating: seeing that McCall was on the sidelines and upright after the game, and factoring in Dave’s “imaging” comment, I’m wondering if this is some sort of upper body injury.
Taking that speculation one step further: we never saw a major hit that appeared to hurt Grayson. He immediately went to the locker room as soon as his final drive concluded. Is it possible he was dealing with something entering the season that he’s been trying to play through?
I’m grasping for straws here, but the reality is the Grayson McCall we’ve seen through three games is not the Grayson McCall many folks evaluated in the offseason - this isn’t the 3x Sun Belt PotY.
Honestly, the "why" doesn't matter much at this point. State is now 3 non con games down, starting its quest for what it wanted entering this season: a championship. And it doesn't look like it's in a place where it can compete, at least in its current state.
Props to Bailey - But Pump the Brakes
I’m not sure what Cedric Bailey envisioned for his first long term action as a State quarterback, but I’m pretty sure it didn’t take the shape of Saturday.
Trotting in with 2:41 left in the game, Bailey commandeered a 3 and out, watched La Tech hit a 75 yard explosive play (with a block in the back call that went uncalled, of course,) and then capped it off with an interception that gave the Bulldogs another 3 points.
That didn’t bother him at all coming out of the locker room.
Bailey settled, read the field well, and dished out a couple of Sunday throws like this one to Noah Rogers:
State had a really good second half offensively. Bailey showed a willingness to push the ball down the field, the O-line actually had some success running counter stuff. It felt like there was good, repeatable stuff here. There was confidence, there was excitement.
Here’s how Bailey ended up finishing the day - shoutout to Phillip Danford for his excellent work charting Bailey’s throws:
Bailey started off sluggish - 1-3 with a pick - but completed 7 straight passes en route to an impressive performance as a freshman. The offensive structure didn't change much with him taking snaps, and he pushed the ball down the field more than I thought he would, which is what this offense badly needs IMO.
With all that being said, Bailey is a true freshman. He’s 18. He’s going from playing a bottom 30 FBS team at home to one of the most threatening environments in all of college football.
Clemson will certainly 1) bring pressure - they always do - and 2) disguise their coverages on defense to give Bailey a confusing picture to work with presnap.
I don’t know that there is a more difficult set of circumstances for Bailey to walk into as a true freshman. The last freshman to win on the road at Clemson was a guy by the name of Tyrod Taylor. He played pretty well for a freshman that day, but had a tremendous amount of help:
People around State see Bailey as a future star and a key piece to their program moving forward. As a 21 point underdog as I’m typing this, my hope is that we see the flashes there, knowing that he’s going to make mistakes.
Defense Steps Up
Football is a game of responses. When you get hit - literally, metaphorically - what do you do next?
This unit started the day without Aydan White. Two snaps in defensively, it lost Brandon Cisse. Your top two corners are down only several minutes into the game.
The hits kept rolling in the second quarter. Multiple explosives gave La Tech touchdown drives of 6 and 1 plays in length before heading into the locker room down 17-6.
It would have been easy to come out in the second with low energy. Instead, Caden Fordham immediately deflects a pass, and Davin Vann forces another pick six with a hit on the quarterback.
From there, the defense forced two more three and outs, and gave up only one field goal in the second half. That's exactly what we've been waiting to see from this unit.
We also saw some big individual responses:
Caden Fordham had a monster game, with a fumble recovery, pass deflection, and 11 tackles
Devon Marshall came in and played really well in Cisse’s absence, yielding only 2 catches for 1 yard and claiming the second highest PFF grade on defense
Travali Price fought last week through an injury and didn’t look himself, but rotated back in and looked much healthier
We thought the offense was going to carry this team. It may get to a place where it can, but in the meantime, a defense with confidence is going to be a must for State to have a chance to salvage its season.
Expectations Reset
Here's where I throw various predictive models at you for context around State's performance so far this year.
Per ESPN FPI, N.C. State is:
76th rated team in the country
projected 5.7-6.3 record
.3% chance to win the ACC
State is 66th in Kelly Ford’s power rating. They’ve dropped 22 spots in SP+ to 51st this week.
Games aren’t played on paper. It's early in the season, you should take these numbers with a grain of salt, etc.
It's also undeniable that this team is falling short of expectations. It's quite difficult to look at stats like these and feel good about where the Pack is right now:
119th in yards per play (4.2)
79th in points per play (.328)
95th in Rushing success rate (38%)
114th in defensive 3rd down percentage (44.19%)
Havoc rate of 7.1% - which is in the 8th percentile in the country
...I can keep going, but you get the point.
Across most statistical models, State is a team that has trended in the wrong direction with poor play through the first quarter of its season.
They see a team that has struggled to pick up first downs without explosive plays on offense, and a defense that isn’t disruptive or getting off the field on third down. Overall, a team playing well below expectations.
The "signal" here probably isn't in the win projections, or in each individual stat - we saw how much better State got with a transfer laden team last year - but that State has backslid so much in a year that they've claimed as an opportunity to compete for an ACC Championship. ACC Championship contenders play nothing like State has played in the first three weeks. Not even close.
If you’re looking for positivity, one major flaw with metrics is how it accounts for the “unaccountable."
I.e with N.C. State: how do you quantify a starting QB who might be dealing with an injury impacting his ability to push the ball down the field? How do you account for a team punting on an entire second half due to one play?
A model can’t do that. I do think State is probably better than what these models are telling us right now, and I still believe in the ceiling of talent on this roster.
Even so, I’m not sure how we can look at what this team has done against two poor opponents and one really good one, and feel like State’s goals of reaching the ACC Championship are realistic anymore.
6-6 still feels like an outlier given the talent we know this team has. Things can change quickly in college football, and we know transfer heavy teams take time to gel.
Watching the second quarter play out on Saturday, I was confident this team was doomed. In the second half, State looked like a top third ACC team.
My hope is this team is competitive next week in Death Valley - and that most of these injuries are short term - and State can come back home to face a ranked Northern Illinois team, get a win, and start building momentum with a favorable schedule to finish out the year.
But from where I sit: it's hard not to adjust expectations right now.
コメント