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FIRST, A DEBRIEF FROM LAST SATURDAY
NC State played a concerning game against Liberty last Saturday, as most everyone is aware. Here at SFN, we provided some post game analysis on Sunday, but here are a few highlights:
-> The Wolfpack “forced” seven turnovers, but “forced” should be taken lightly. Liberty did have a couple bad snaps that caused fumbles, though 4 of the turnovers were well-earned interceptions. Seven turnovers ties a 1983 school record for turnovers per game.
-> Glennon was sacked four times, once resulting in a fumble that lead to a Liberty touchdown. O’Brien and staff stated in the post-game that this wasn’t necessarily a bad thing as it helps toughen Glennon up. Recall that Russell Wilson also suffered severe sacks in his 2008 season opener against South Carolina resulting in serving one game on the DL.
-> Two touchdowns were the result of special teams (82 yard punt return by TJ Graham) and the defense (Brian Slay 52 yard fumble return). TJ Graham’s return for a touchdown was his career fourth.
-> Aside from rushing by quarterback Mike Brown, Liberty was held to just under 35 yards rushing on the night. Mike Brown rushed a total of 77 yards.
-> NC State’s defense allowed Liberty just under 300 yards passing. This continues Liberty’s streak from last season (they played only FCS opponents in 2010) of earning over 200 yards per game passing.
-> Observation: The secondary appears to still be “playing the receiver” and not playing the ball, at least not consistently. The secondary did, however, manage to grab four interceptions. It looks like the secondary is definitely better than in season past, but they are still a point of concern. Look for Tenuta’s defensive line pressuring the offense and forcing the pass to remain the key to NC State’s defense.
HOW IS WAKE FOREST LOOKING?
If nothing else, many people respect O’Brien’s frank mannerisms and evaluations of players and teams, so his warning about Wake Forest should be heeded: this is “Grobe’s kind of team”… it’s experienced.
OFFENSE
We hear O’Brien’s warning, but we have to consider what Wake Forest is and what they have or haven’t accomplished. Last season, Wake Forest finished the season with three wins and fielded a true-freshmen quarterback, Tanner Price. This season, Price is said to be reasonably better and is expected to play against NC State this Saturday despite limping off the field in the fourth quarter against ‘Cuse. In last Saturday’s overtime loss to Syracuse, Tanner scored 3 touchdowns amounting up to 289 yards, averaging just over 9 yards per completion. He also managed to complete 18/31 passes over a better team than Liberty. The moral of the story: the Wolfpack secondary needs to man-up and stop the pass. The one saving grace for NC State is the fact that Wake lost two of their three top receivers, one to graduation and the other as a transfer to West Virginia.
Wake managed to pull down 80 yards of total rushing, profitting mostly on the short-game (3-4 yards per rush). The Deacons suffer from the same problem as NC State regarding offensive lines which greatly reduces their ability to lead a ground game. Fortunately for the Deacs, they return four starters to the line. Despite the experience, they will need to improve on last season’s performance tremendously if they will withstand Tenuta’s blitzing schema. Last season the Deacons’ offensive line allowed 2.2 sacks per game on average.
DEFENSE
Wake’s secondary is also returning from last season, adding experience to their defense, but the experience they add is from one of the worst D1-A secondaries in the division (allowing just under 240 yards in the air per game). Against Syracuse, they allowed 178 yards and 3 touchdown passes (one 20 yarder and two short passes). It’s hard to tell from the Syracuse game how efficiently the secondary is working, even on a “Wake Forest” type of level since last season Syracuse relied on close to a 55-45 split of passing to rushing yards. Last Saturday, ‘Cuse won the game with a 60-40 split of passing to rushing yards, so the outcome is pretty consistent with how they like to play (in other words, Wake didn’t exactly “throw ‘Cuse off their gameplan”).
On the ground, they allowed 121 yards, though 114 of those were from one Syracuse player who racked up 53 yards in one play. It’s worth noting that if you omit the ‘Cuse runningback’s one break-away play, he only averaged 2.5 yards per carry which is almost half of what he was averaging last season. This might signal that Wake’s defensive line, lead by Kyle Wilber, is stiffening up against the run game and might explain the 5% change in the passing to rushing yards split described earlier. Then again, 5% could just be the difference in the coach deciding he feels like running a slightly different offense. Either way, I don’t predict Wake’s ground defense to be a huge problem.
SPECIAL TEAMS
I don’t have a lot to tell you other than Wake Forest attempted four field goals, making three of them including one 40 yarder. On the other hand, their kicker, Newman, did miss one of his three extra points, so we all have that in common. Wake’s ability to return kicks is less than stellar, averaging around 21 yards per return and an almost unnoticable return during punting. The threat presented by Wake is in it’s scoring ability, not it’s returning (which is good news for NC State’s kicking team who pretty consistently let Liberty get up to the 40 yard line on kick-off returns).
THIS GAME MAY DEFINE THE SEASON
It’s not that Wake Forest is an intimidating opponent or would be some sort of marquee win, but it could be a watershed moment where NC State defines whether last Saturday’s performance was just a growing pain or if the improvement seen in the later minutes against Liberty were signs of things to come.
All eyes will be on Glennon as people attempt to “figure him out”. We’ve already written an article explaining what we know now on Glennon compared to previous quarterbacks, but the fans want to see proof of what he can become. If you look at the contest against Liberty, Glennon completed barely 50% of his passes for the first three quarters. In the fourth quarter, Glennon completed 5/6 passes averaging almost 8 yards per attempt versus less than 5 yards per attempt for the first three quarters. Glennon also scored his one touchdown pass of the night in the fourth. I think we can all agree that if Glennon is completing 88% of his passes, we’ll all be pretty pleased with his results.
The secondary will also have a more respectable opponent in Wake Forest who attempted to lead an overtime victory over Syracuse in the air. Fortunately, and as previously mentioned, Wake is without two of their best receivers which may help our ‘weak’ secondary and give them a ‘soft opponent’ to fine tune their skills.
This should prove a good game for our defensive line. During the game against Liberty, the first quarter saw only one sack which is definitely not what I expected given the efficiency of the defense last year. The loss of emotional leader Nate Irving is definitely a factor, but Tenuta’s strategy of overloading the pocket should have provided more aggressive results. Brian Slay chalked up 2 sacks total in the game against Liberty and Teal, who is now on the DL from injuries sustained last Saturday, earned one sack. Audie Cole earned the fourth sack of the day. During the contest against Wake, look for more penetration through the weak Wake Forest center, Russell Nenon.
Should we win? Of course we should. Then again, that hasn’t stopped us from messing up things in the past. I’m looking forward to seeing how Archer has worked with the secondary this week and how Bible has reworked his schema to play into the strengths of the new quarterback of the Wolfpack.
