Offense No. 1 priority for Pack

Chuck Amato's primary shortcoming, and eventual undoing, as N.C. State's head football coach was his failure to respond to the importance of offensive production.

That's the lesson the school must learn from Amato's exit on Sunday.

The Wolfpack's next coach, first and foremost, needs to have an extensive offensive background and a thorough understanding of how to generate points and score touchdowns at the Division I-A level.

The great misunderstanding in college football is, and has been for a many years, that defense wins games. That may be the case in the NFL. But at the college level, the team with the better offensive execution and the better quarterback usually prevails.

Defense is important. It can't be overlooked. There even was a time, a few years ago, when defense was the biggest concern. But the final score of the national championship game last season was Texas 41, Southern California 38. A year earlier, it was Southern California 55, Oklahoma 19.

Three yards and a cloud of dust may have worked fine for Woody Hayes. These days, about all that three yards can get a coach is a cloud of confusion about what to call next.

Blessed with Philip Rivers at quarterback for four seasons and Norm Chow as State's offensive coordinator for one season, Amato's early teams were able to score enough points to give him a jump start on the competition.

With Rivers playing quarterback, State never averaged less than 358 yards and 27 points per game. During that period, Amato's teams did not finish a season with a losing record in ACC play and went 34-17 overall.

But as soon as Rivers graduated, the program's fortunes went south even though the team's defensive production improved substantially. The Wolfpack, without Rivers, could do no better than 3-5 in the conference and 7-5 overall in any given season. The scoring average per game dropped from 37.6 in 2003 to 24.0 in '04 to 20.8 in '05 to 17.5 in '06.

Amato, a defensive player in college for the Wolfpack and a longtime defensive assistant at Florida State, was actively involved in unit planning and game strategies.

The Pack's offense, however, drifted in another direction.

Quarterback Jay Davis, who followed Rivers, was eventually replaced by Marcus Stone. A few games into the 2006 season, Stone gave way to Daniel Evans. The 2006 team, which finished 2-6 in the ACC and 3-9 overall, failed to score more than 24 points in a game.

Defensively, State was good enough to hold its own in each of the past three seasons. But offensively, the unit struggled to the extent that 20 points and 200 yards per game became a challenge.

Had Amato been able to correct that basic problem, he could have avoided the dismissal that came down Sunday night.

Obviously, there were other issues that hurt the coach.

For much of his seven-season stay, Amato put more emphasis on recruiting in Florida than in North Carolina. His most important players came from Alabama and North Carolina, not Florida. But it took him a long time -- too long -- to figure out the geography of recruiting priorities.

Then, there was his inability to make good hires and keep those assistants. Few head coaches in ACC history had more staff turnover than Amato. In private, many of those assistants called him a likeable, but stubborn, boss.

Amato's personality was a third factor. He carried a chip on his shoulder and was proud of it. That sort of posture may work at the playground. But at the ball yard, opposing coaches saw right through it. Rather than being intimidated, those coaches quickly used Amato's macho posturing as ammunition against him.

But none of that would have made a great deal of difference had Amato simply accented the one aspect of the game that made him a success for his first four years -- offense.