This was painfully familiar to North Carolina State fans. They have lived through this broken record, this old and sad movie, this Groundhog Day nightmare, far too many times. It isn’t getting old. It got old a long time ago.
In a season of promise — a season when North Carolina State hoped to make a New Year’s Six bowl (something which has never happened in its history) — THIS kind of game always seems to crop up: the inexplicable face-plant against a team it ought to beat.
It’s true that the N.C. State offensive line was poor, and that a quarterback won’t look good if the O-line stumbles. That has to be said. Yet, the Wolfpack could have taken charge of this game in the early stages. Instead, they screwed up multiple red-zone possessions. They took the ball out of Devin Leary’s hands with a beyond-stupid jump pass which is better reserved for late in the third quarter when the defense knows the quarterback is a real threat.
We have seen a number of coaching staffs refuse to trust their starting quarterbacks in the early stages of a season. Why hand the keys to a specific player if he can’t fully be trusted with an aggressive, open playbook in a national TV road game against an SEC opponent?
The winning edge — the right competitive mindset — N.C. State possessed last season was nowhere to be found here. What does this say about the program? If the Wolfpack rebound and are able to produce a successful season, this loss to Mississippi State can be seen as an aberration, but is it likely that NCSU will be able to write that narrative?
No one who follows the program closely would say YES to that question. The reach of history is long and dark in Raleigh on the matter of football excellence. It has been consistently elusive for a very long time.
Iowa State FINALLY played in its first New Year’s Six bowl last season after more than 110 years of steady futility, briefly interrupted by a few good pockets of eight-win seasons. North Carolina State wants to be where the Cyclones went a year ago… but this won’t get them there.
What’s the problem?
The specific problem is that Dave Doeren doesn’t have his team ready to face these big moments. It’s a pattern.
There’s an art to being able to get a team to play well consistently, which includes moments when expectations are high and the stakes are considerable. The thing with State under Doeren is that when expectations are low and the Wolfpack are off or below the radar, they often play well. They play freely. As soon as the national or local microscope focuses on them, however, they shrivel and fail to produce.
If programs and the players within them want to be great, they have to learn how to go about their business the same — win or lose — and produce the next week. If inconsistency (specifically a sharp division between low-pressure and high-pressure outcomes) persists, that indicates the coaching staff isn’t instilling habits and concepts well enough for them to become second nature. If players are receptive to concepts only some of the time, that’s not a culture which will produce excellence. It will produce occasional quality, but this isn’t a light switch which can be flipped on and off. The great ones — Saban, Dabo, Chris Petersen, Urban Meyer — generate steady performances such that the floor is high every week.
N.C. State hasn’t figured out how to do that under Dave Doeren. He’s not on the hot seat in 2021, but if this season is a failure, he will be on the hot seat at the start of 2022.
