After disappointing 2019, NC State will ‘look at it all’ this offseason
Coach Dave Doeren was asked during the final month of the season about what had been going right for N.C. State this season.
“We’re punting and kicking the ball well,” Doeren said.
That answer sums up what kind of season it was for the Wolfpack, which lost its final six games and fell to 4-8 after back-to-back 9-4 seasons under Doeren.
The punter, sophomore Trenton Gill (with an ACC-best 47.5 average), was very good in his first season as the starter.
The kicker, sophomore Chris Dunn, made 87.5 percent of his field goals (21 of 24) and has turned what was once the program’s biggest weakness into a strength.
But the rest of it? The hallmarks of Doeren’s best teams (the passing game and the run defense) got worse, and the consistent weak point (the pass defense) didn’t get any better.
That’s why after Saturday’s 41-10 home loss to North Carolina, Doeren said his program needs to have a “tremendous offseason.”
“We need to get these younger guys better, and we need to get our other guys back,” Doeren said. “We need to look at it all.”
Injuries were a part of the problem. Seven expected starters missed most, or in the case of left tackle Tyrone Riley, all of the season. The absence of both starting tackles, by the second ACC game, hampered the development of the offense. So did the loss of blocking tight end Dylan Autenrieth after the third game of the season.
“It’s really hard to have success when you have inconsistent lineups and different guys out there every week,” sophomore receiver Thayer Thomas, who finished with 31 catches for 334 yards, said recently.
But N.C. State tried three quarterbacks, never had a go-to receiver emerge and dropped from No. 8 in the country in passing offense (313.2 yards per game) in 2018 to No. 67 (229.1).
There was a stretch during the opening month of the season when Thomas, who threw for two touchdowns on gadget plays, was the most effective passer on the team.
Pass defense woes
The drop-off wasn’t totally unexpected. N.C. State had 13 players off of the successful 2017 and ‘18 teams in the NFL this season.
Due to program attrition, the fourth-year class wasn’t very big to begin the season (10 players) and then the injuries hit that group (five were out for the season) the hardest.
That created a leadership void for team that ended up playing the second-most freshman in the country and used 45 different starters, the most among “Power 5” teams.
“We’ve got a lot of young guys who have to step into leadership roles,” said freshman linebacker Payton Wilson, who was one of the bright spots on the defense.
Doeren, who has a 47-42 overall record and 21-35 ACC mark in seven seasons at N.C. State, knew there would be a transition this season. He got a new contract after the 2017 season, when he was courted by Tennessee, and then another one last year, when former athletic director Debbie Yow was set to retire. Doeren’s current deal runs through the 2023 season.
The injuries made the rebuilding job worse, especially in the secondary. N.C. State was down to its fifth and sixth cornerbacks by the final stretch of the season. Freshman quarterbacks James Graham (Georgia Tech) and Sam Howell (UNC) shredded N.C. State’s secondary in the final two weeks of the season.
Doeren had hoped the defense, which had the bulk of its starters back from last year’s team, would make a jump this season.
“I don’t know how you can predict consistency when you are inconsistent with your lineup every week,” Doeren said before a 34-20 loss to Louisville on Nov. 16.
Quarterback concerns
Injuries tell part of the story but not all of it.
Turnovers and penalties were a controllable scourge. N.C. State was minus-16 in turnover margin in eight ACC games. Duke was the next closest ACC team at minus-9. N.C. State’s defense went the first six ACC games without creating a turnover.
After being one of the least penalized teams in 2018 (4.6 per game), N.C. State was flagged an average of 5.9 times per game.
“We made a lot of mistakes throughout the whole year,” Wilson said. “There’s stuff we’ve got to get fixed. We can’t really blame it on the injuries or how young we were.”
The first major question for Doeren will be what to do at quarterback. N.C. State has had an amazing run of NFL quarterbacks this century. There was an expected drop-off after Ryan Finley, a six-year college player and three-year starter, was taken in the NFL Draft.
But there was hope that Matt McKay, in his third year in the program, could bring back some of the running elements of Jacoby Brissett and add some of Finley’s passing style.
McKay excelled in the opener, a 34-6 win over East Carolina, but couldn’t quite produce at the level N.C. State needed. He was benched after five games and he announced on Sunday he has decided to transfer.
Sophomore Bailey Hockman was given to what amounted to a two-game audition before he was lifted for freshman Devin Leary early in the Boston College loss.
Leary, a highly-touted recruit out of New Jersey in 2018, had some bright spots but struggled when N.C. State got down early in so many games and had to do too much.
In his first college season, Leary completed 101 of 210 passes (48.1 percent) for 1,219 yards with eight touchdowns and five interceptions. He also had some ball-security issues with fumbles, which is why McKay had won the job in the preseason.
Twice while UNC was turning the game into a rout in the third quarter on Saturday, Leary threw two interceptions.
After the UNC loss, Doeren said he had “a lot to fix” before next season. Asked if that included the quarterback position, Doeren wasn’t ready to give a definitive answer.
“Right now, I can’t answer something like that,” Doeren said on Saturday night. “Obviously, I’d love to say we don’t have anything going on there, but we didn’t play good (against UNC). I’m not going to sum up an entire season in two bad quarters.
“I’m not going to do that. (Devin) was doing a lot of good things. There’s a million things I need to look at.”
Staff turnover
In addition to the personnel turnover before the season and then all of the injury issues during the season, Doeren also had four new assistant coaches this season.
Assistants Des Kitchings and George McDonald were elevated to co-offensive coordinators after Eli Drinkwitz was hired to be Appalachian State’s head coach. N.C. State ranked No. 86 in total offense and No. 106 in scoring in the first year of the new arrangement.
Longtime West Virginia assistant Tony Gibson was hired to coordinate the defense with longtime Doeren assistant Dave Huxtable. A new scheme was adopted, to better defend the spread-passing offenses, but N.C. State dropped from No. 29 in run defense to No. 50. Boston College, in a game that was pivotal for N.C. State’s bowl hopes on Oct. 19, ran for 429 yards in a 45-24 blowout.
Doeren was asked about potential staff changes after the UNC loss but said he needed time to evaluate the entirety of the season.
“It has been a long year for all of us,” Doeren said. “I need to come in and watch a lot of film. I need to look at our players. I need to look at how we coached. I need to look at our offseason. I need to look at our summer program. We’ve got to look at it all.”
This story was originally published December 1, 2019 at 6:10 PM.
