As it turns out, NC State on Saturday added to a streak that I did not realize was in progress. This is the fifth year in a row in which NC State’s offense has been limited to 4.0 yards per play or fewer in a game. How unfortunate. It’s happened nine times since 2020, and NC State did actually manage to win once, which is impressive.
What do these results tell us? Not much, except that NC State can still put together bowl seasons in spite of them. So there’s that!
Circumstances vary, of course: Notre
Dame, Miami, and Tennessee each were on a different level in terms of talent and State was a heavy underdog in two of those games. In other cases, State was playing with a backup quarterback, or working through CJ Bailey’s freshman growing pains.
None of that applies to the UVA game we just endured, and it could be we’ll look back a half dozen games from now and see that performance as indicative of a team that simply isn’t very good at all. The immediate future is going to tell us a lot. But that UVA game also isn’t by itself a sign of imminent collapse. NC State has regularly been able to bounce back from performances that were pure unfiltered assball, and I believe the 2026 team can do the same. Lot of de-assification needed in this next week, though, no question about that.
