Kurt Roper
3 things to watch
Use of tempo changes and one-word plays
Passing concepts with fewer reads
More use of 12 personnel (potentially)
Roper talked about getting the most explosive players on the field in good situations during his introductory presser, and it's a good and obvious talk track given how much State worked against itself in that area last season. I expect he’ll be simpler than Anae and more focused on maximizing touches for individual players. Smothers touching the ball five times against Duke and zero times in the third quarter against ECU is the kind of thing I’m hoping this remedies.
His job truthfully shouldn’t be that hard. There are some pretty good dudes on this offense, so just playing to their strengths and to the strengths of the offense in general should go a long way. All Anae needed to do last year was turn into a base outside zone team and build a passing game out from a strong run game using play action to generate explosives. He did the opposite of this, instead pretending that CJ Bailey was Tom Brady and running horizontal safety stretchers like four verts, HOSS, and 989 while the offense floundered and Smother caught checkdowns in four verticals.
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If Roper can just be fine, State should have a good offense. I don’t know if it will be as obvious as it was for Anae with the Pack having to replace Belton and Correll, both of whom were great run blockers. I don’t think State is upgrading at either of these positions, but it still has Peak and Carter on the left side and a good back. My hope is that Roper’s process involves identifying the strengths of the offense, using them, and building explosives out of the opportunities that those create. You know, basic football theory.
Roper also talked about tempo in his press conference, which is a buzzword for a team that paces at the bottom of the country. Pace is not really indicative of offensive success. I bet most people don’t know that the wildly explosive Ohio State was in the bottom 20 nationally in pace. Teams that play at a gazillion miles per hour every game are rarely great, but tempo also shouldn’t be ignored as a wieldable concept to create advantages.
Roper talked about one-word plays, which I love. The idea of hitting an explosive and then hurrying to the line and running outside zone is how I imagine State will try to use change of pace as a weapon. That’s the one-word play. Roper says “mango” or “catapult” or “cheesesteak” (I’m making these up) and the offense lines up and runs a base play as fast as it can. It's a way to stack explosives and catch a defense not ready to react after giving up a big play.
DJ Eliot
3 things to watch
Use of linebackers in stand-up edge roles in occasional 4-down fronts
More coverage disguises and a wider variety of coverages
Continued heavy usage of the tite front
The tite front has been a defining characteristic of NC State’s defense since Tony Gibson arrived in 2019, and I don’t expect that to change in 2025. When Eliot was at Temple, he used the stand up 5-technique a lot more, and you may see sprinkles of this in Raleigh, but the bones are likely staying the same. State has an identity on the defensive side that it’s been building from for a half-decade. The personnel is also not really there to see a major shift in how the defensive front is organized.
I expect it will structure like Gibson’s defense but with a bit more variety to its looks up front and in coverage. Eliot at Temple was a big believer in disguise, shifts, and simulated pressures. Gibson’s defense played a ton of drop eight, a ton of cover 1, lived on the zero blitz, and wrinkled with coverages like invert 2. It was a barbell approach that lived on the extremes of coverage and pressure. I expect Eliot to move stuff around more, as that’s more his modus operandi.
This could include a deeper well of pressures, more safety rotation the back end into coverages like cover 3 buzz and sky, and more shifting of the defensive line into different fronts using linebackers as edge players.
State would play some cover 3 variants under GIbson, but its base cover 3 was two safeties and a nickel at the top and the corners in the flat. This limited free access throws because State was very rarely in what you would call access coverages, which is defined by the corners bailing to the top of the defense à la basic cover 3. It played some sky and some invert 2, but it put its corners in the flat as a base in zone. As I mentioned, I think the fundamental change with Eliot will just be more variety to post-snap redistribution of routes and zones.
An example of some DJ Eliot wrinkles

Temple plays cover 3 buzz with the free safety rolling down into the underneath hook zone, the stand up end dropping into the flat, and the original hook defender at linebacker blitzing.
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