1-2 Post Game NC State Thoughts

Before many of our fans hurt their knees jumping off the bandwagon I'd like to share a couple thoughts of mine on this season so far and what to expect going forward. Are we going to start the season 1-3 and lose to OU, yes. Is it the end of the world, no. Hard to believe I'm saying that isn't it???

For those fans who have only been around long enough to see us win you probably don't remember Dantonio's first year. We got pounded like there was no tomorrow, lost almost every game and looked lost doing it. We started something like 6-7 freshmen on D and I'll never forget the defensive coordinator's comment after we looked slow, poor and outclassed, "It's easy to look slow when you don't know where you're running to." Fast forward 4-5 years and those same kids won back to back BE championships under BK. Note that. BK won with Dantonio's recruits. That's really important when you realize 25% of our recruits under BK never played a game for us or enrolled. We're so thin in upperclassmen that 65 players on this team are redshirt sophs or below (you only get 85 scholarships in football). Our two deep on D doesn't have a single senior. Remember Celek, Barwin, Goody, Byrd, Manalac, Pike, Nakamura, I could go on and on? Now name off our starters and ask how many are 20-40% better than those kids? And they were recruited a year BEFORE we joined the BE. After back to back BE championships shouldn't our recruiting have gotten much better? I'll never not appreciate what BK did here, but building a program and recruiting wasn't what he did well. It's almost criminal how weak the foundation of our program is after he left. Don't kid yourself, he had a 3 year plan coming in and it shows. If we could have had Dantonio recruiting and BK coaching for all those years combined we'd be top 5, and I'm hopeful Butch can get us there.

Secondly, you don't break in a new coach with a new team by playing across the country in a hostile environment, racing home for a game, then a quick turnaround on the road again for a Thursday night game. BK even said this year in an interview he planned on buying out of the Fresno game. There's no excuse why we didn't. You have to at least help put your staff in a position to shine and that didn't happen.

My post-game thoughts are below, but in the end this is a rebuilding year. This transition is gonna hurt more than we like, but it's also going to get better. I hope our fans realize this up front and support the program either way. Better programs have suffered thru some bad seasons (Michigan, Alabama and FSU come to mind) but recovered. Anyone who thought winning football at UC was a given had some pretty unrealistic expectations, but I'm looking forward to next year and year 3 under BJ with what I know now.

I suppose this is as good a thread as any to post post-game comments as well. There's plenty of crap to go around, but I'm glad I had a night to sleep on it too.

As far as defense is concerned, we're not bad. Not good, but not bad either. Our main problem is no sustained pass rush which comes from running 4 tackles and no ends. We don't have a player who can consistently beat their man one on one in a passing situation. I still like our run stoppers, backers are playing pretty well considering we lost one to injury before the season, and our secondary needs a bit of work but it's hard to tell when the QB has 8 seconds to throw. The two best corners in the world can't cover that long. I'm still hopeful we'll be a good D..... Next year. Add in a pass rusher and a little more experience with the entire two deep coming back and we could be pretty good there.

On O it's easy to pick on Zach b/c he has the ball so much and you focus on him, but let's be honest here, even BK needed some time to break in his QB's, and he was a master at that position. Zach is being forced to make more decisions than Pike was (checkdowns, run, zone read runs, etc) instead of timing throws and on top of that he's getting drilled. I'm more worried about him getting hurt than anything else. He can succeed in this, but it's gonna take some more experience and some help at:

WR. We lost the ability to stretch the field with Vidal's knee. We simply don't have it. The opponent's D is playing so close to the line they can smell the RB's breath. This is a major problem that can't be addressed this year. It limits your playcalling, makes the D only have to play a short field, and exposes even things you do well when that's all you can call.

OL. Probably the biggest problem BK left us with. Recruiting is the only answer. Don't kid yourself, they wouldn't look much if any better had BK stayed. Believe me right now BK knew what was coming and had a three year plan. Not the first person I've seen pad their resume but leave someplace in trouble.

On O we need speed at WR, a back like Gobel who can also burn it (hopefully we have that in our incoming class) and linemen, linemen, linemen. Add on to that the new staff, a new offense, new playcalling, etc and we're struggling.

My major area of concern is discipline. I'm surprised by the amount of mental mistakes and penalties, but that starts to happen when you're frustrated and overwhelmed as well, or trying to make up for not being as good and hedging a bit (oline holding comes to mind). If we can improve that and win a few more games I'm hopeful for next year. Progress is rarely linear or without speedbumps.