The Monday After: Wake Forest

Raise your hand if you thought you were being punked watching the first 7 minutes of this game. If you watched this one live, you'll understand what I mean when I say that State's first few minutes went about as poorly as this food truck's night in Deactown:

For a team of Wake's construction to beat State, you needed to give them some freebies. Check and check. A kickoff return touchdown immediately. Letting Robbie Ashford experience a mini-renaissance as he hits downfield passes for chunk plays.

It took a minute, but State said enough with all that.

State outscored Wake 34-10 over the final 53 minutes, and could have had more points if not for a drop Terrell Anderson will want back for a while. Beating Wake isn't going to be the highlight of the season, and it was far from a perfect effort.

State's offensive EPA was 5.24 compared to Wake's -14.48. All things being equal, that's a ~20 point difference that was cut to ten by penalties and subpar special teams play. You can't have that kind of impact from penalties and special teams moving forward, but that's an encouraging mark when considering offense vs. defense.

These are the types of early season games, though, that can enable special things. How many teams down 14-0 before they blink come back and win?

This was a good win - not one that will be studied for years to come, but an ACC road win nonetheless. You take them however you can get them.

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The Better Back Wins

If presented with these two stat lines before the game, I'd probably guess State won this game by three scores plus:

As poor as State's pass coverage was, State gave Demond Claiborne absolutely nothing. His 2.9 YPC mark was the 3rd worst mark dating back to the start of last year. His longest run of 8 yards was also the 3rd lowest in that time frame. I fully expected at least one explosive rushing touchdown off the back of the Virginia game. It was great to see State largely solve its run fit issues with a short week of preparation.

On the other side, Mr. Smothers was spectacular. 9 more missed tackles forced. 84 yards after contact. 27 total touches bringing his average to 24.3 per game so far. That seems like a large workload for a man of his stature, but as friend of the newsletter Alex Gee often says, Hollywood has a keen ability to minimize the impact of the hits he's receiving from defenders. He's sixth nationally in rushing yards with 380, and is doing his best to make his case as the best back in the ACC.

I'd continue to feed him at this rate in high leverage spots. It's great that Duke Scott continues to get more comfortable, as evidenced by plays like the one below. Give him some opportunities and keep Hollywood fresh, but I'm not afraid of the 25 touches a game strategy any longer.

Bailey's Growth is Real

It's a small sample size against three teams that aren't tremendous, but the growth we've seen from C.J. Bailey this year already is beyond promising.

His performance in Winston:

• 23/32 (72% completion) with 201 yards, 3 TDs, 0 INTs

• 80.5/100 QBR

• 87.2 PFF Grade - his second highest ever (Behind @ UNC with a 90)

The season long snapshot is excellent:

It's always nice when the numbers look pretty. You get talked about. It feels good. But numbers can lie. I want to see good inputs, the quarterback doing the right thing consistently, to lead you to those numbers.

In week 1, we talked about happy feet, missing reads, escaping the pocket too early. Just 14 days later, we're looking at a different quarterback.

Bailey is standing in and sliding up into the pocket when needed. He's balancing extension of plays with knowing when to concede with a throwaway, a wild concept to consider a year ago. He's doing a tremendous job of reading what's coming from the defense, as Alec dives into on this ​Trinity Road Times article you should read​.

So yes, the numbers look great and that's awesome. Yet it's about how we're getting there that makes me so excited for this player. Duke will be C.J.'s toughest test - it was arguably his worst game last year - and he won't be "brilliant" every week, but I love the upward trajectory of Bailey's game.

Quarterbacks everywhere are taking steps back - Arch Manning, LaNorris Sellers, DJ Lagway - while CJ is moving forward. If this trend continues, State is going to have the better quarterback in most of the games they play, and he'll continue growing his national brand as one of the better QBs in the game.

Run Blocking Growth

While it hasn't been as significant as Bailey's, the O-line continues to show meaningful growth week over week.

State posted its highest team run blocking grade to date against Wake with a 63.3, which still isn't incredible by PFF's standards (60 being average) but does show improvement from its mid 50's grade against ECU and Virginia. Per Gameonpaper.com, State's offensive-line yards per carry was double what it was against ECU, and the eye test shows a group coming together nicely.

Tight end Cody Hardy posted his highest run blocking grade of the season, alongside tackle Teague Andersen and Keenan Jackson, who appears to seriously pride himself on moving dudes against their will.

I am no longer freaking out when I see State run gap-scheme runs. They are actually generating successful plays, and State is building off of the pulling guard action these plays employ to mess with defenders eyes.

Repeating myself from other Prowls: State doesn't need to be an elite run blocking unit for this run offense to be excellent. Just getting Hollywood out of the first level successfully will win State lots of games.

Make it the Second Half All the Time

I'm not sure what got put into the water at halftime, but yet again the defense looked completely different after the break.

The first half / second half stat split is eye popping:

The big change I saw was State making things simpler in the second half, moving away from some of the more mentally taxing match zone rules in favor of man and spot drop zone. (Spot drop is what you think of traditionally when you think of zone, whereas match zone is rules based and pattern-matching focused.)

There's pros and cons to playing both types of zone, but State's defense is 1) new to D.J. Eliot's principles, and 2) is now playing two redshirt safeties full time. I'm not sure Brody Barnhardt or Ronnie Royal are ready for these roles, but it doesn't matter because they have to be with Rente Hinton off the depth chart, and J.J. Johnson leaving this game with an upper body injury.

That's the second week in a row the defense has played lights out in the second half on simpler principles. Will they move away from some of the match-zone usage, or is that necessary in Eliot's eyes?

State still has Darian Mensah, Haynes King, Tommy Castellanos, and Carson Beck on the schedule. The time available to figure out the right blend of defensive coverages is limited.

Thicc Six!

There's no way I can review this game without highlighting Isaiah Shirley's pick six. It's so awesome to see large human beings recognize a once in a lifetime opportunity and forget how to run correctly. Enjoy your day at number one on SportCenter my man.

He finished Thursday with his highest career PFF grading, and the highest grade on the team to date - an elite 94.4.

If Shirley can take a big step forward this year, that helps stabilize the Tackle spot in a big way. It's early, but State is 104th out of 136 teams in Havoc Rate nationally. More TFLs and Sacks are going to be needed, and hopefully Isaiah can be a part of making that happen.

No Confidence in Officiating

The live looks into the booth gave me even less confidence in how officiating is handled by the ACC.

On social media, the advent of the command center look in has received a ton of positive praise, and I agree that the idea is neat and provides healthy transparency for the process.

It does piss you off to the highest dimension, though, when you get this look in and hear some dude in Khakis completely miss that Keenan Jackson got a foot down inbounds before his knee went out of bounds on his catch.

Or to hear their rationale behind giving Sebastian Harsh a targeting penalty in the second half that suspends him for the first half of next week. According to them there's a launch into the crown of Ashford's helmet, but Harsh can't know when he makes his move that Ashford is going to lower his helmet to the path of the defender. We can't ask defenders to do mental calculus before making hits. There wasn't intent there.

The second ruling mentioned above has more to do with the rules and how they're interpreted, but my larger point still stands: if you're going to put a camera in the command center, employ people intelligent enough to not botch obvious calls.

Dook Next

Duke has taken one of the largest steps back in predictive models this year so far. They struggled against Elon, fell apart late against Illinois, and got down early big time against Tulane before scratching their way back.

\As I mentioned earlier, C.J. really struggled against Duke last year. This will be State's biggest test by far. Win this one and you're 4-0, with a "quit watch" Virginia Tech and Campbell coming up before a bye. This is a massive opportunity.

After 3 games, you've seen glimpses of what State could be, and plenty to clean up. You've got some of the top performing offensive backs in the country, and a defense that can come up with stops when needed.

State has yet to play a complete game, and while it's been close at times, their postgame win expectancies have been in the 80 or 90 percent range all three weeks. They will need their best performance yet to beat this team.

In a sport where anything can happen on any given Saturday, this is a fun place to be.