2008 NC State Football Review

 

Much like our previous breakdown of the entire Atlantic Coast Conference, today we’ll take a look at the 2008 Wolfpack with a focus on trends and issues that are likely to carry over to the 2009 version. I actually starting planning this article during the 2007 season, when I was rudely awakened to just how badly State’s talent had dropped off towards the end of Amato’s tenure. At that time I documented State’s roster by class and the Scout.com ranking from high school. Any rational review of those tables would come to the conclusion that TOB and staff had walked into a nearly total rebuild job.

Luckily, Russell Wilson almost single-handedly turned what could have been a truly disastrous season into a bowl appearance. While it’s unlikely that 2008 will be one of those seasons that people like to wax philosophical about during their rocking chair years, at least it wasn’t the complete disaster that I was prepared for.

For those that don’t like my tables, here’s an executive summary of the 2008 football season:

1) Russell Wilson emerged from no where to lead the Pack to the Pizza Bowl with wins over UNC and ECU along the way. A lightly recruited, two-sport QB quickly showed that those people that hand out “stars” on recruiting sites don’t always find all of the players that you really want on your team. Even though Russell missed several games due to injuries, he was selected as the first-team All-ACC QB….a first for a freshman QB. Anyone that doubts what Russell meant to the Pack only needs to re-watch the second-half of the Pizza Bowl to see what State’s season would have been like without him.

2) Injuries riddled the Pack starting with a spring injury to Donald Bowens and running throughout the season. As one would expect after looking over the 2007 roster, State lacked quality depth to adequately cover for injured starters. At one time during the season, State had seven walk-ons (or former walk-ons) on the two-deep roster.

3) Outside a few disgruntled BC fans, Tom O’Brien and his staff are widely regarded for getting the most out of his players. Their first two years in Raleigh has done nothing but reinforce that image for me. TOB and staff probably won’t get the recognition they deserve from the national media….but I can’t imagine that there are any State fans that aren’t excited about what the future holds for NC State football.

Now for some tables…….

OFFENSE (or the GOOD NEWS)

In looking around the internets this summer, I found a link to a new (to me) site that I want to point everyone’s attention to:

College Football Statistics

While I really like the NCAA’s web site for stats, cfbstats.com offers the option to look at the records considering only the conference games (and many other selections). This option is really useful for two important reasons:

– Looking at only conference games will tend to give a better view of the conference since the quality of OOC games vary so widely.

– As seen during the Pizza Bowl, State was a completely different team when Russell Wilson was hurt…..which coincidentally occurred during the OOC games. Thus the conference standings will show how State matched up when Russell was playing.

Side note: I frequently ridicule people who draw conclusions based on ignoring games where key players were injured. However, our purpose here is not strictly a look at 2008….we are laying the groundwork for looking ahead to the upcoming season. The backup QBs from 2008 are gone so the games that they played in provides us no useful information when we are “evaluating” next season.

Here is a look at the 2008 ACC season looking at only the conference games (and the ACC CG):

acc-fb-offenses1

Random Observations

– Remember the 24 point ceiling from past seasons?

– After rushing for a measly 67 yards against William and Mary (freaking W&M !!!!!), who would have thought that State would do so well rushing against ACC teams.

– When we flip back to the national rankings, we see that State’s offense still has a long way to go to approach national significance, but I like seeing an offense with relatively balanced results. I consider continuing this type of production one of the keys for the upcoming season (more on this later).

As I went back and reviewed the entire article, I was struck with the feeling that I am not giving Wilson (and the offensive coaches) enough credit for last year’s results. However, most of what needs to be said, has already been documented by anyone with a pulse that watched the Pack last year. Let me just say again that the offense, and especially Wilson, turned what would have been an absolutely horrible year into a bowl appearance. While there is still much room for improvement, I am confident that the offense is headed in the right direction.

DEFENSE (or the BAD NEWS)

I pointed out the troubling trend of defensive decline before the season started last year. Unfortunately, the defensive slide continued in 2008:

declining-defense

Going back to cfbstats.com, we can pull out the numbers generated during conference games. But unfortunately, the picture doesn’t improve much:

acc-fb-defenses

In various pre-season summaries, I have read the statement that State’s defense improved “down the stretch”. In general, I hate this type of comparison because there is no effort made to separate “improvement” by State’s defense from scheduling quirks that might (and did) put weaker teams at the end of the year.

So I decided to take a look at how State’s defense did chronologically through the conference schedule. I compared each opponents “average” offensive production versus ACC teams against how that particular opponent did against State. Even though that last sentence has been reworded several teams, it still reads like mumbo-jumbo…so let’s try and illustrate what I am talking about.

Going back to the first table let’s compare the average Clemson offense (taken only from games against ACC teams) to what Clemson’s offense did against State:

vs-clemson

So from this table we can see that State’s defense would be “below average” when compared to the other ACC teams that Clemson played. So here is the same analysis applied to State’s conference schedule:

state-defense-vs-ave-offense

For me, the bottom line seems pretty obvious. State’s run defense did “settle down” and play pretty well, but the pass defense pretty much sucked all year….almost as much as the 2003 version.

If you watched any of the games last year, there were many times where the DBs lined up way off the line of scrimmage on obvious passing plays….even those of relatively short yardage. This observation was discussed in several game-day threads here and there are only two logical explanations that I can think of:

1) The State coaching staff has decided to institute an absolutely horrible defensive scheme versus the pass. OR

2) State’s coaches based their defensive schemes on the abilities (or lack thereof) of the secondary AND the ability to get pressure on the QB.

Regardless of the exact reason(s), there is clearly a ton of improvement required in the State defense.

WHY NOT US?

As we transition from a review of the 2008 season into a preview of the 2009 season, let me take a few minutes and shoot this particular “fish in a barrel”. I would not call it an “internet consensus”, but I have seen this statement posted several times in discussing the race for this year’s divisional title. Skipping over the stupidity of arguing from an admitted state of ignorance; let me summarize my reasons for not picking State to win the Atlantic this year:

1) DEFENSE…..see discussion above

2) DEPTH. A team that had seven walk-ons (or former walk-ons) on the two-deep roster during the 2008 season simply does not have the required depth to get through the “normal” injuries that usually show up over the course of a season.

3) NATE IRVING. If Nate is indeed lost for the 2009 season; it is difficult to describe just how devastating his loss is to the Pack. Nate led the Pack in interceptions and was second on the team in tackles for loss. From the first quarter of the SC game, it was obvious that he was one of those rare players that can be counted on to make spectacular plays each and every week.

Having Nate Irving playing gives State the same sort of odds that a puncher has in a boxing match. They might not win on points….but they might land the knock-out punch that ends the match. State definitely needs as many “punchers” as it can find on defense.

Frankly, State does not have many people playing on defense that have any chance of playing on Sunday when their college careers are over. Nate is one of those players and State simply doesn’t have anyone that can make up for him (if he is lost for the year). Even if the replacement plays well enough to make up for Nate, then it is likely that he would have ended up starting along side Nate if Nate were healthy…not backing him up.

ROSTER TRENDING

As I was reading one of the media previews (linked below), I noticed something strange about the classes on their version of State’s two-deep. So I parsed the roster by class and found this:

two-deep

22 players on the two-deep depth chart from one recruiting class seemed note-worthy to me (Note that this is TOB’s first real class). It looks like TOB shares my opinion of the over-all talent level that Amato left on the team.

BEST CASE SCENARIO

I don’t care too much for predictions, but I think it is worth listing those things that need to happen for State to have as good a year as possible:

1) Toney Baker and Jamelle Eugene need to stay healthy and continue the improvement in State’s running game. Both players need to hang onto the ball and help Russell Wilson once again lead State to a really good turnover margin. (Odds of this happening – turnovers: pretty good; injuries: unknown).

2) State’s OL will not be good enough to generate holes against an eight-man front….but they don’t need to. They need to play solid…open holes for the RBs and buy Wilson time to make a play. (Odds of this happening – pretty good).

3) Russell Wilson needs to play as well as he did last year and hopefully even improve. Quicker decision making should keep him from taking as many hits…which will hopefully reduce the chance for injury . (Odds – pretty good.)

4) State’s offense needs to control the clock and put a lot of points up on the board. State’s best defense in 2009 will likely be its offense. (Odds – hopefully pretty good)

5) State’s DL needs to improve against the run….but most definitely needs to generate more pressure on opposing QBs. The goal would be to consistently generate enough pressure to take the heat off of the DBs. (Odds – run defense…OK; more pressure on QB – unknown).

6) State needs to find some DBs that can provide improved pass coverage. (Odds – not so good).

CLOSING THOUGHTS

Two years ago, UVA walked the tight rope and strung together a nine-win season out of a bunch of lucky breaks. A number of people have described WF’s conference title season the same way. So if you have enough pieces, then a lot of good things COULD happen if you get some breaks along the way.

If State could add small improvements in a number of different areas (while continuing to have one of the best offenses in the conference) then State COULD do the same sort of thing this year. So an 8-9 win season wouldn’t surprise me, but a 6-7 win season wouldn’t surprise me either. I’m just happy to have a FB season that I am looking forward to, rather than dreading like the last several years.

OTHER NCSU PREVIEWS

College Football News (scout.com)

Rivals.com

Phil Steele

About VaWolf82

Engineer living in Central Va. and senior curmudgeon amongst SFN authors One wife, two kids, one dog, four vehicles on insurance, and four phones on cell plan...looking forward to empty nest status. Graduated 1982

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61 Responses to 2008 NC State Football Review

  1. VaWolf82 07/14/2009 at 4:44 PM #

    My only point is that our defense was not quite as bad as the stats would have us believe.

    Wrong…the defense was exactly as bad as the stats suggest. But at least you’re consistent. Once again, you ignore or attempt to discredit any evidence that conflicts with your particular world view.

  2. bradleyb123 07/14/2009 at 5:11 PM #

    (I deleted my original reply — It’s not worth it.)

    You’re absolutely right, VaWolf.

  3. choppack1 07/14/2009 at 5:15 PM #

    bradley b – I think our offense did what it needed to do in 6 of the 8 conference games that were considered in VaWolf’s analysis.

    Looking at it another, State offense exceed the opponents offensive average in 6 of the 8 games.

    In other words, I wouldn’t try to say that 2008 is a good example of a time when an offense made the D look worse than they really were. (You could definitely say that in 2004, 2005 and 2006 though.)

  4. Wufpacker 07/14/2009 at 5:18 PM #

    Wow, I’ve apparently missed something, somewhere. There seems to be some hostility here that I wasn’t aware of and , frankly don’t understand. Sorry if I offended anyone by inserting my opinion where it wasn’t solicited and apparently didn’t belong.

  5. bradleyb123 07/14/2009 at 5:34 PM #

    Essentially, I stated the obvious, that a really bad offense can make a defense (good or bad) look worse than it really is. Period. That’s really the only point I was making.

    SFN: That part if obvious. It was when you tried to force-fit comparisons and correlations that don’t exist that created the interesting conversation.

    I didn’t say our defense was great, or even good.

    But I suppose 2008 was a bad year to make an example out of this. This is just not worth arguing over.

    Wufpacker, I’m glad you noticed the hostility. I noticed it, too, but didn’t mention it.

  6. McPete 07/14/2009 at 5:47 PM #

    The defense couldn’t stop Rutgers when it mattered the most. It would have been a storybook ending to Daniel Evan’s career; engineering the go-ahead touchdown drive in the fourth quarter after all hope seemed lost. but the D coudn’t stop ’em one more time. i know it was just the pizza bowl, but it still sucks.

    I hope things are better this year. I hope Javon Walker and Nate Irving will be able to play some of the season.

  7. Wufpacker 07/14/2009 at 6:07 PM #

    ^^^Just to be clear, I wasn’t trying to place any blame to any party, nor was I making a statement, expressed or implied, about the source from which the hostility was seeming to originate.

    I certainly don’t know enough about whatever the underlying situation is (and frankly don’t want to) to make any kind of judgement like that.

    Once again, apologies to anyone that might have been offended by anything I said, or by my unsolicited opinion(s). I certainly meant no offense to anyone.

    (heh heh, how’s that for legal fine print disclaimer type language?) 🙂

  8. Wufpacker 07/14/2009 at 6:18 PM #

    ^^”McPete Says:
    July 14th, 2009 at 5:47 pm
    The defense couldn’t stop Rutgers when it mattered the most. It would have been a storybook ending to Daniel Evan’s career; engineering the go-ahead touchdown drive in the fourth quarter after all hope seemed lost. but the D coudn’t stop ‘em one more time. i know it was just the pizza bowl, but it still sucks.”

    Pizza bowl or not, I agree, it still sucks. I thought for sure we had that game at that point. And to be sure, 7-6 sounds a whole lot better than 6-7.

    Sure, we ended the season playing in a bowl game, something I certainly didn’t expect and I was overjoyed about the accomplishment, not to mention the extra practice time it afforded the team and coaching staff…that can’t be stressed enough.

    But, when reading the 2009 pre-season articles and looking at the inevitable “2008 season results” section, looking at that 6-7 record, a losing record, just seems to take some of the luster off what was in actuality a pretty successful campaign, taking all circumstances into account (pre-season expectations, injuries, lack of depth/experience, lack of serviceable backup QB)

    I suppose its better to look at 41-10 instead of 6-7. 😉 Oh, the joy of selective memory recall.

  9. phillypacker 07/14/2009 at 8:02 PM #

    VaWolf,

    First thanks for this piece and the tables. You bring so much to this site. I really appreciate it. I did think Bradleyb was making a point about the effect an offense can have on a defense not saying anything critical about your work. You both add a lot. I look forward to seeing more of your analysis. You really open things up by looking at trends.

  10. howlie 07/14/2009 at 8:46 PM #

    The ‘Roster Trending’ chart almost says it all. I’m not sure if it is adjusted for Nate Irving falling back a class, but it tells me to keep my vacation time ready and calendar clear for January 2011 & 2012.

  11. CStanley 07/14/2009 at 9:08 PM #

    Great work!

    Thank God Nate is simply alive and still with us, but God, I can’t help but kick the dog when I think about what could have been with him healthy on this team this year. Nate’s health was the key to what I believed could have been a very special year for us. I also have that “why not us” mentality, but am well aware that a lot of things have to go right. So far (of course), they have not. Not good signs when you’re hoping for the best, but such is life as an NC State fan.

    Still a lot to look forward to. A better bowl than Pizza & another win over Carolina (both, in fact) will suit me just fine. I trust this staff more than any other in a long time, that much is certain.

  12. VaWolf82 07/14/2009 at 11:26 PM #

    not saying anything critical about your work.

    First of all, don’t mistake “blunt” for “hostile”. Secondly, I couldn’t possibly care less what bradley thinks.

    I did think Bradleyb was making a point about the effect an offense can have on a defense

    If this is a good point, then wouldn’t it also be true that when State’s offense was doing well, that it made State’s defense look better than it really was?

    Bottom line….State’s defense was exactly as bad as the stats suggest.

  13. MatSci94 07/14/2009 at 11:28 PM #

    “There seems to be some hostility here that I wasn’t aware of and , frankly don’t understand.”

    The chippyness from the BBall thread seems to have carried over to this one. It might do everyone good to ratchet down the ‘obvious’ and ‘opposing world view’ comments.

    As far as the defense goes, It seemed to me like we looked very lost and unsure in the first part of the year. Not having Nate and others made that worse. Later in the year, people started to make plays, especially in the secondary.

    The pass defense and the 3rd down defense were connected (at least to me). It seemed like we usually did fairly well, and got decent 3rd and longs often enough. Then we would give up 15-20 yards on 3rd and 8-12 and teams would march down the field. Maybe 3rd down % should be added to the table 😉

  14. ChiefJoJo 07/15/2009 at 12:00 AM #

    Excellent summary and I agree. Especially without Nate, chance of a division title is next to slim, and slim has left the building. And don’t under estimate the loss of Ellis at CB. That along with the lack of depth at DT makes me think we’ll definitely have to outscore some people this year.

  15. StateFans 07/15/2009 at 6:25 AM #

    PizzaBowl would be the correct example of bradley’s conclusion that he incorrectly tried to apply to the regular season where it didn’t exeist –
    Our bad offense in the second half did play a huge role in negatively impacting the defense.

  16. GAWolf 07/15/2009 at 6:57 AM #

    And that’s the point, I think, that VAWolf and I (and Buddy Green and Dick Sheridan) are making about scoring defense as opposed to passing or rushing defense. If the offense steadily turns the ball over on our half of the field, the opposing team doesn’t have to move the ball far to put it in the endzone. Conversely, if our offense can move the ball readily into the opposing team’s side of the field before scoring or turning the ball over (even by punt) then the other team can put significantly more yards on the stat sheet and potentially not score nearly as many points.

    Another Defensive stat that is so key is take-aways and from that the question arises how that reflects into the team stat (both offensive and defensive stat) of turnover margin.

    I think Bradley’s point is not too far off from ours from that perspective anyway. I think it’s pretty clear that a piss poor and inept offense can in fact hurt defensive stats (or at least you can make the argument that some defensive stats are actually team stats).

  17. choppack1 07/15/2009 at 8:18 AM #

    bradley b definitely has a point – but it’s not the reason why we finished where we did in our defensive statistics.

    Aside from the second half of the Rutgers game, I think the USC game was a good example of this – and I think Clemson – to a much lesser extent – was another example of where our D just wilted on a very hot day in September…they kept us close for 3 quarters of the game.

    After that though – the roles pretty much reversed. We moved the ball pretty well, but as has been mentioned here, our D couldn’t get itself off the field when looking at 3rd and long.

  18. choppack1 07/15/2009 at 8:29 AM #

    What these stats don’t tell – and by the nature of the data – they can’t – is that our D really had 2 seasons…

    In the first 4 conference game – we gave up an average of 29.5, against opponents who averaged scoring only 22.2 ppg.

    In the last 4 conference games – we gave up an average of 18 ppg, against opponents who averaged scoring 21.1. (This would have tied us for 4th in the league.)

    I’d say in the second half of the season we became a solid D…so long as Russell Wilson, Nate Irving, AMC and Clem Johnson were on the field.

    ——-
    Then where was that “solid D” in the second-half of the Pizza Bowl?

    The UNC game really skews the second-half stats. Also the first-half conference schedule was noticeably harder than the second-half schedule. Both of these facts make trending problematic.

    The other three games in the second-half of the conference schedule, State’s scoring defense matched the ACC “average” defense. The passing and total defense numbers were still “below average.” State’s defense (most noticeably the run defense) did improve in the second-half of the season. But with the performance in the bowl game, it is hard to claim that the defense was ever “solid”.

    The only reason any of this matters is to determine what we should expect from this year’s defense. My conclusion is that State’s best defense will be a highly-productive offense.
    VaWolf82

  19. ChuckAllYall 07/15/2009 at 9:13 AM #

    Someone mentioned Javon Walker in an earlier post. Do we have any updates on his status?

  20. Noah 07/15/2009 at 9:26 AM #

    Walker should be okay for the fall.

  21. Sw0rdf1sh 07/16/2009 at 9:34 AM #

    I would like to point out the number of passes that were for long yardage directly over the middle, typically by a TE throughout the season.

    Games like BC definately come to mind, but this occurred all year long. If I remember correctly, it was really a problem with Nate out.

    With all that said, if I noticed it, you can be damn sure the coaches are on it. Our LB’s are going to be just as important as the DB’s are this year in the passing game….and someone besides Nate WILL step up.

    Good article.

  22. bradleyb123 07/16/2009 at 10:59 AM #

    ^ “PizzaBowl would be the correct example of bradley’s conclusion that he incorrectly tried to apply to the regular season where it didn’t exeist –
    Our bad offense in the second half did play a huge role in negatively impacting the defense.”

    So our defensive stats were worse because of the lack of offense. Our scoring defense was worse. Our RECORD was arguably worse. If the offense was there in the Bowl game, we very likely finish 7-6 and not 6-7. And I don’t think I said “regular season”, as in not including the bowl game. I was talking about the defensive stats for the year. I believe FULLY that the defensive stats are worse because of our lack of an offense in more than one game. In the SC game, we gave up a lot more points than we should have. SC had more possessions (meaning, more opportunities to score), and the defense was worn out. We gave up a lot more points in that game than we should have, and that is DIRECTLY because of our lack of offense. Don’t mistake that statement as me saying the lack of offense is the reason we lost that game. I’m not. But that is the reason we lost as badly as we did, and it affected our season stats.

    Keep your opinions about the reasons people post to yourself. Keep your comments on topic and we can carry on a discussion even when you are horribly wrong.
    VaWolf82

  23. bradleyb123 07/16/2009 at 11:01 AM #

    And I never said the only problem for our defense was a bad offense. Our defense was bad. Just not quite as bad as the season stats would have us believe.

    btw, I tried to let this topic end. But people continued discussing this after I left. That’s the only reason I responded again.

  24. bradleyb123 07/16/2009 at 11:08 AM #

    ^ “Then where was that “solid D” in the second-half of the Pizza Bowl?”

    Beck threw an INT, didn’t he? That gave SC another possession in which they scored? Hmm, the offense had NOTHING to do with that score, did they?

    Of course, the defense could have been heroes and gotten stops when the offense mucked up. But the defense wasn’t great, and no one ever said they were. But they sure weren’t helped by the offense in the second half of the bowl game.

  25. VaWolf82 07/16/2009 at 1:17 PM #

    For the last time, quit talking about the SC game. The only place that game or the stats show up is in your posts. The large majority of the stats discussed in this thread come only from the ACC games….which Wilson played in every one.

    You are only looking at one side of the coin when you say that the offense made the defense look worse than they actually were. When the offense was clicking…then they made the defense look BETTER than they really were. You can’t make one claim without acknowledging the other.

    So where does that leave us? Back to where I started…the defense was exactly as bad as the stats show.

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