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Offense: not surprising that the output has dropped over the last four weeks, given the competition. Hopefully that will reverse for the remainder of the season.
One this sticks out to me: the glaring difference between 3rd and 4th down efficiencies. The 4th down efficiency looks out of place. Is it because we go for it more often than other teams? Maybe because we’ve been getting behind early?
Defense: Overall numbers are frighteningly bad. The red zone defense % seems good, given the other numbers. Not sure I can explain/rationalize that either…
And yes, thanks to the author cannot be expressed enough.
I expect an extremely well-choreographed show. There will be minor revelations made (nothing that isn’t already known, just maybe not known nationally) and many, many pats on the back for openness, transparency, and “moving ahead”. BTW that’s the phrase you don’t want to do a drinking game with…
You can bet Mr. Wainstein has done his job, based on the information he was given. The report will only reveal what UNC wants to reveal, and the discussion will center around the “reforms” already made, the “final-ness” of this investigation, and the need to “move ahead”. I wouldn’t be entirely surprised to see a new “admission” of some minor wrong-doing. BUT, anything of the sort will be associated ONLY with football. The golden goose will remain flawless, from their perspective.
There will be questions, but they will have been cleared in advance and will be the softball variety.
I sincerely hope I’m wrong.
VaWolf82 said:
There are a lot of different ways to get fired, but only one way to keep a head coaching job…win. That measuring stick won’t be brought out this year or next. But it will be brought out eventually and it’s doubtful that DD will get as long a leash as Duke gave Cutcliff.
This is the absolute truth. Given the recent (say, the last two decades) of NC State history, DD will NOT get the same leash. He will need to show significant improvement, on a faster schedule. Not saying I like it, or agree with the philosophy, but I absolutely agree that it’s true.
Are they better than we thought preseason? Sure. Were we surprised? We shouldn’t have been at all.
Absolutely, 100% agree. I guess the difference is, I don’t think the staff took BC lightly, I don’t think the players took BC lightly, and I don’t think either was surprised. I think they took their best shot, but weren’t able to do anything about it. BC’s strength (experienced, program-knowledgeable run-oriented offense) against State’s weakness (defense in general, run defense in particular).
My pre-season guess was 6-6, and yes, I had BC as a win. But based on what I’ve observed so far this year, BC is significantly better than advertised. They had the Clemson game in hand and let it get away – should have won it. So from my perspective, my failure to anticipate BC’s strengths means that it was MY mistake. I can’t be disappointed that the team fails to deliver on my entertainment schedule just because I underestimated an opponent 8 weeks ago.
BC’s coach inherited a much worse program than this staff did
Before I disagree with this, I’ll go back and review the recruiting analysis on this site and TOS. But I’m skeptical. As I’ve said, recruiting matters, but experience on the depth chart matters as well. I suspect that BC’s recruiting may have been slightly worse than ours, but I also suspect that they have a huge advantage in the number of experienced, participants on the depth chart than we do. When the recruiting numbers are close enough to be a wash, that’s a monstrous advantage.
The Jimmy’s, Johnny’s, and Joe’s make the defense, and Grey’s sow’s ear/silk purse analogy is perfect.
If you have good defensive talent, you’ll have a good defense.
The DC (and sometimes the HC, by way of hand-cuffing the DC) will have an impact, but that impact has limited magnitude, IMO. A talented DC will sometimes help the defense elevate to the next level, but that’s as far as it goes. Say you have great defensive talent on the field and a good DC. He can potentially elevate the great defense into an elite defense. But I don’t care who it is, he can’t take questionable talent and forge them into an elite defense (and we’re back to Grey’s perfect analogy).
Fair warning for the next paragraph: I shave every morning with Occam’s razor. Maybe this view is too simplified, but DC’s make more difference in the pros. The talent differentials aren’t that vast, and the DC’s schemes, quirks, and innovations can make a difference. In college ball, the talent differential is often just too big. It’s one of the remaining beauties of the game to me – although the talent differential can be large, the game sometimes hinges on the ability of the staffs to harness the emotional and psychological energies of these boys to get them to collectively exceed their individual abilities. Tremendous upsets happen, and when they do, they’re magical.
When you’re on the deficit side of the talent differential, you enjoy those moments while you work to recruit better talent. In college ball, talent trumps everything.
Wufpacker said:
I was on campus the whole time Washburn was. Our paths crossed. He was no boy scout compared to Winston regardless of what his rap sheet does (or does not) say.
Second this. Washburn had more raw, untapped talent than any basketball player I’ve ever seen, and did less with it than I ever imagined. His leaving was the best thing that happened to NC State basketball during that time. No telling what would have happened had he stayed.
For that reason, I absolutely believe the rumors that JW will NOT be at FSU next year.
^Amazing to watch.
One of my favorites diversions: http://www.livescience.com/26680-greatest-mathematical-equations.html
The pendulum swings are amazing. Serious questions: there’s a new coach at Arkansas, name of Bielema, in his second year, is 0-fer the SEC. Granted that his competition is on a completely different level, but so (likely) is his talent. Are the razorback faithful calling for his head? His OC/DC?
Other than the missing body (Thuney) what has changed with the OL? Anybody know? And has Thuney’s condition been updated recently?
^Apparently that’s true of posters sometimes, too.
Thanks to GoWolves for pointing out my own stupidity…doh
^ryebread (back a page): thanks for the detailed response!
As I mentioned, I don’t know enough to know if you’re right, but it sounds logical. Turn the question around and speculate with me: let’s stipulate that we’re playing man in the secondary (looks that way to me, too). Given that the current approach clearly isn’t working, and switching from man to zone seems like a logical choice (again, I have to agree that it seems logical), what are possible reasons that the staff might not do it? What would they know, what would they have seen, that we don’t/haven’t?
Blitzing: love this idea. I’m a defensive-minded fan, love hard-hitting, low scoring games, where a single mistake can be the difference between winning and losing. Adding in blitz packages to confuse the offense seems like a no-brainer to me as well. So again, I turn it on its head: Huxtable might not be the world’s greatest DC, but he’s a pro, and I’m sure he has some blitzes in his bag of tricks. Why would he be holding off on this, when it seems so obvious to us? Can you speculate?
As I think more and more about last weekend’s game, especially in light of the excellent work by jrcox4 on the recruiting analysis, I agree with you that we let a great opportunity slip away last weekend. I also agree that the team appears to be playing very tight. Everybody was worried that we’d let FSU beat us more than once. While that may have happened at Clemson, I don’t think that was in play last Saturday. I think you’re right – the 0-fer/ACC monkey is starting to pile on the pressure.
Thanks for your observations.
VaWolf82 said:
Nice Work.
Agreed. Also agree on the underperformance of FSU toward the end of Bowden’s tenure. Interesting to see the dynamics at play there: clearly someone in the administration or the big boosters (or both) saw what was happening and did whatever was necessary to remove a Hall-of-Fame coach from his seat. Although it took a couple of years, that show some serious influence. Recent headlines suggest that the FSU football machine has LOTS of influence.
I’m very disappointed in the last two games. I had hoped we would compete better, especially on Saturday. But from a long term perspective, I need some help from you guys.
By the language of a lot of the posts, most of you know WAY more than I do about the intricacies of the game. I feel like I know a little, but in no way am I qualified to say the DC is misusing his talent and needs to change. So, those of you screaming for blood, please help an old man out here:
What, specifically, would you change about the defense? Before you pull a random defensive scheme out of your couch-coach tool bag, take a few minutes and carefully evaluate your personnel. Note the size and speed of your DB’s. Same for your LB’s. Honestly appraise the fundamental skill level of the entire squad, but especially the DL’s. Then take a look at your depth and do the same thing. Now what, specifically, would you change?
I get that the current scheme isn’t working, at least in the sense that it isn’t winning games. What evidence do you have that yours wouldn’t be worse?
Switching topics: let’s look at the Mack Brown/UNC situation. There was a suggestion a while back that pulling Mack’s stats is cherry-picking, to a degree. While there’s some truth to that, let me turn that on its head. Mack was 1-10 his first two seasons. If you’re making the “cherry-picking” argument, it’s because you think Mack is a really good coach and Dave is not. (I honestly don’t know, b/c I don’t think I have enough data.) But the fact remains that Mack went 1-10,1-10 at UNC. If you don’t think that Dave is as good as Mack, then why are you expecting him to do better in his first two years? What am I missing here, guys?
I’m not so sure that Gurley really cares. Why would he?
Do people really think this is ok? Sure, if he is suspended for the rest of the season, it clears the path to his pro career, and yes, it certainly minimizes the chance of injury. But it’s not ok. By returning for this season, he made a commitment to his teammates, the coaching staff and the fans. The fans I’ll waive, and the staff, well they’re adults and professionals. But IMHO he betrayed his teammates, and that just sucks. What the hell has happened to personal accountability, keeping your word? If his pro career trumps everything, why not go pro at the end of last year?
Can we stop with the press releases for uniform changes?
We worry with the marketing when the product is not so good.Disagree. If uniforms didn’t matter to recruits, nobody would be spending money on it. And some schools spend a LOT more than we do. Although I’m too old to understand, it’s well established that uniforms matter to today’s recruits, so I let it go.
It’s also not that hard for me to see that the fastest route to improving the product is to get better recruits. If changing uniforms can help with that, then so be it.
In the end, we all control which stories we click.
^”average”
I think it depends on what is meant by “average”. If you mean we have an offense that is better on average than NC State teams the past 5 years, I may agree with you in a game or two. If you mean we have a better than average offense than the average among all schools this year, not sure I see data to support that.
I will say the offense is significantly better than last year, and I’m not sure the defense is any worse than last year. Taken alone (which is always dangerous) these observations suggest that we’ll perform better than last year, which was my goal for the season (represented by 2-3 conference wins)
The team is considerably ahead of schedule on offense, and roughly on schedule on defense, based on what I’d hoped to see from the players and staff. Gotta work on that “awe” aspect of traveling to play with the big boys. At FSU last year and at CU this year, just looked like deer in the headlights. Disappointing, but not entirely unexpected.
Looking forward to a good showing at home against BC. Hoping for a win, think we’re capable, but still not expecting it.
^Fair enough, really hadn’t thought about the “embarrassment” factor. Getting blanked is embarrassing any time I guess, regardless of expectations. Thanks for the response.
This is interesting work. The correlation between strong recruiting and results on the field is definitely there, but not nearly as strong as I would have expected.
In this type of analysis, I would have expected NCSU to be firmly on the line – IMO our results have pretty much matched or exceeded our recruiting. I was surprised to see us on the “Better at Recruiting” side of the line. The methodology used 5 years of data, so our 0-fer the ACC last year weighs heavily, along with TOB’s tail off in terms of performance. I suspect if the experiment is repeated with a broader data set, we move closer to the line…
Based on this conclusion, though, Duke becomes a little surprising. Duke was 10-4 last year, with 2 of the losses coming in the ACC Championship game and the bowl game with TAMU. If last year’s results are more heavily weighted (as appears to be the case with NCSU), seems like Duke’s nascent success would have moved them to the “on the field” side of the line.
Another interesting note: if you look at underperformance vs. outperformance, regardless of where you are along the continuum, the ACC has one team clearly over performing (Syracuse), three teams I judge too close to call (GaTech, Louisville, VT). Everybody else is shown as under performing.
Greywolf is dead on, any reply to the contrary should be immediately deleted. I wish I could be optimistic about our recruiting efforts. Time to move on, it was embarrassing but eventually everyone will forget about us sharting in our pants Saturday.
I have a serious question about the highlighted phrase (and all its colorful/explicit variations). And this is not just for the quoted author, but in general those who use the phrase. What does it mean? Maybe that’s why I don’t like/use it – I just don’t understand the proper usage…?
From a metaphoric standpoint, the phrase connotes disaster, of an unexpected nature. Is that close to the intent? The reason I ask is that many people use “sh*tting the bed” or “dumpster fire” or “tire fire” to describe virtually any loss, no matter the circumstances. To “sh*t the bed”, don’t you have to seriously, seriously under-deliver to expectations? So here’s the kicker: if I’m right, what exactly were the expectations going into Saturday’s game?.
I will say that I hoped for a better game. I hoped we would score a couple of touchdowns, but I thought 14-17 points would be our limit, and that things would have to go very, very right to get there. I hoped the game would be closer based on limiting some of Clemson’s scoring opportunities. I hoped many things, but I didn’t expect any of them.
And, for the record, Greywolf IS dead on. My only real complaint from the entire game is the inexcusable (at least to my understanding) clock management at the end of the half.
Outstanding preview. Unfortunately, I agree with your conclusions. If we come out closer than 14, we’ll have had a good day. True goal is to test the S&C again and try to emerge without significant injuries.
If we make a good showing tomorrow, I’ll be very excited about the rest of the season.
Serious question: how does sports media choose which schools they cherry pick for this type of reporting? Ok, I get it that there were extenuating circumstances (coach speaking out, game attention, etc) but we’ve been singled out for “conspiracy” coverage before. Yes, we have conspiracy theorists in the fan base (I’ll occasionally hold that banner high, myself)…BUT so does every other fan base.
Another example: consider last night’s late college game where Arizona upset Oregon. When Clemson loses a game they’re not supposed to, it’s called “Clemsoning” and it’s splashed across the media landscape in an UGLY way. But seriously, has Clemson’s history in this regard been significantly worse than Oregon’s? Why does Oregon get a pass? Why aren’t we all talking about “Oregon’ing” this morning?
Or maybe it’s just me? Maybe other conspiracy minorities at other schools get called out as well and I just don’t see it? Maybe somebody, somewhere is actually talking about “Oregon’ing”?
*EDIT*: LOL Nothing like doing the research after the post. Apparently there IS an urban definition for ‘oregoning’ that I was unaware of. But it doesn’t mean what I think it should mean….
Hey CowDog, if you see this: is it just me, or do you see similarities between Bo Hines and your boy Abbrederis, formerly with Wisconsin? something about the way Bo runs his routes made me think that direction…?
Trying to follow the good advice above, thinking good thoughts. I just have an uncharacteristically bad feeling about today’s game. Got two hours to get myself out of this funk.
