NC State’s special teams unit was not good in 2025, in a variety of different ways, which is extra unhelpful. SP+ ranked the unit at No. 103 overall last season, but there’s really no need for an exacting assessment here. That group was not good enough.
It was a strange year in that NC State tried only nine field goals all season, like Dave Doeren watched Nick Konieczynski struggle in Week 1 and decided, You know what? Maybe I don’t actually like field goals. What is fun about a field goal, anyway?
Nobody’s buying a ticket to watch the field goal unit. Kanoah Vinesett took over after that debacle, and even though he’d been leaned on for 24 field goal tries in 2024, Dave only let him try six of them last season. There was only one FBS team that attempted fewer field goals than NC State.
I think it’s interesting that Dave went from utilizing his field goal kicking game in a traditional way to practically abandoning it even despite putting Vinesett back into the placekicking spot—it’s not like he’d be terrible in 2024; he made 75% of his attempts. There was not a lack of experience in his case, and, camp aside, you could simply float an argument in your head that he’s due for improvement and carry on as normal.
Most college coaches would find their way through these mental cartwheels. I would have expected Dave to find his way through these mental cartwheels. Reinserting a kicker with experience who’d showed you average-or-better results would, you’d imagine, lead someone who has generally been disinclined toward an aggressive approach to be fine leaning on said kicker a second time around. But that was not the case.
This might well prove meaningless, but it’s interesting. If there’s a silver lining to having a questionable kicking game, it’s that it can lead your coach to be more aggressive—and thus more efficient—in his decisions on the plus-side of the field. Maybe Dave is finally internalizing these lessons, and if that’s the case, there’s no time like the present. I would take the over on 10 field goal attempts this fall, though.
The most significant problems lie elsewhere, anyway. NC State’s kick coverage was awful last year: 122nd in average yards allowed per punt return, 117th in average yards allowed per kickoff return. The kickers deserve a significant amount of blame for allowing returns in the first place, so that’s an important framing here.
State allowed 27 kickoff returns last season, at least one in every game against an FBS opponent. This is placing too much weight in the arms of chaos, particularly in State’s case. Not only was the rate of returned kicks allowed bad, so was the average yardage allowed.
Does Thunder Dan help guys kick the ball farther? We’ll have to hope on that one. Kickoff specialist Charlie Birtwistle left for Charlotte in the offseason (where he will be the placekicker), which leaves the job to Nick Konieczynski, who was not very good at this last season.
There is a substantial amount of cleanup work that is needed for the special teams but a lot just depends on the disposition of the kicks—it’s a lot like life. When life kicks a grab bag of potentiality over your head, you’ve got to tackle it.
