It’s occurred to me lately that college football games are simply too long. A whole hour? Feels excessive. What if we trimmed the games down by, oh, let’s say 30 minutes—wouldn’t we all be a lot happier with a tidy sports outing such as that? I have to think we would.
Anyway, if you missed it, you didn’t really, because you’ve seen it a lot before: NC State got outplayed in the second half. The Pack watched a halftime lead quickly evaporate and the margin went zooming in the other direction from there.
Neither the offense nor the defense showed for the last two quarters, as State was held scoreless while Wake Forest scored four touchdowns and only punted the ball once.
State didn’t score in the second quarter, either, perhaps reaching for bold new frontiers in underwhelming efforts moving forward. Let’s hope not. But the Pack’s ground game was basically useless from the start—not a terrible shock under the circumstances—and when every down is a passing down, that’s generally going to be a problem. Unless you have an elite passing game, which NC State obviously does not.
Wake created a lot more havoc plays than it is accustomed to, stuffing nearly half of State’s rushing attempts. CJ Bailey didn’t throw an interception but Wake did a good job containing the pass game and forcing State to sustain drives, which it could not. Bailey threw for 243 yards but averaged just 6.2 yards per attempt. When the other team doesn’t have to give you rushing attack even an ounce of respect, it’s going to create problems.
Wake’s rushing game wasn’t a whole lot better, but it was far more effective than State throwing the ball. Gio Lopez was playing easy pitch-and-catch out there, completing almost 79% of his attempts for an average of 9.2 yards per attempt. NC State’s pass defense has allowed 8+ yards per attempt and 2+ passing touchdowns in four straight games, and that is quite bad. Big capital-p Problem right there.
State’s got some extra time to think about all of this and maybe get slightly healthier before going to Stanford. There are a lot of things that no amount of extra film study is going to fix, and anyway I’m getting to a point where I’m not sure I care much one way or the other.
