How NC State football handles high expectations will define the Wolfpack’s 2022 season
N.C. State is trying to avoid a Carolina summer.
That has nothing to do with the weather North Carolina will experience over the next few months. It has everything to do with the compliments, pats on the back and praise that will rain on the Wolfpack this offseason.
Coming off a nine-win season, with 10 starters back on defense and record-setting quarterback Devin Leary at the helm, N.C. State football will be a popular talking point.
The Wolfpack has already made the top 15 in several way-too-early polls, and has been pegged by others to win the Atlantic Division and advance to the ACC championship game. The hype machine is real.
“We don’t pay any attention to that,” safety Tanner Ingle said after N.C. State’s spring game on Saturday. “In this building we just focus on what we focus on. We’re just worried about getting better, one percent at a time. We don’t really worry about the expectations that the media has for us.”
Last summer, the media darling of the ACC was another Tobacco Road school.
UNC was returning Sam Howell, a Heisman Trophy contender, and a lot of people thought the Tar Heels were the team to beat in the Coastal Division. They entered the season ranked as high as No. 15 in some polls. Add a top-15 recruiting class to that equation and all signs pointed to the year the sleeping giant would finally awaken.
Then, the season opener happened. Carolina went on the road and got beat by unranked Virginia Tech, 17-10. The Tar Heels finished the season a disappointing 6-7.
UNC went 2-2 in the month of October and Brown pointed at the media, saying expectations of the Heels being a top-10 team were wrong.
“So I guess we should all be critical of the media for picking us that high,” Brown said at the time.
Now N.C. State coach Dave Doeren will be in those same shoes.
When members of the ACC media meet in July to vote for a predicted order of finish, it’s hard to see the Pack dropping any lower than third in the Atlantic. It wouldn’t be shocking if N.C. State got some first-place votes.
Between now and then, the team has to avoid reading too many press clippings and feeling too good about itself. Doeren wants to make sure that doesn’t happen. He’s seen it up close.
“We got to watch that happen across the road at that other school,” Doeren said after the spring game on Saturday. “We understand if you don’t take care of business it doesn’t matter what people say about you. Our guys have a chip on their shoulder, they are very motivated.”
As well as things went in 2021, N.C. State still didn’t make it to the ACC title game. The Wolfpack didn’t get to play in its bowl game. Doeren’s group is motivated and has been since the first time they got together as a team for winter workouts.
After Saturday’s spring game, in which the Red team, made up of mostly veterans and starters, defeated the White team 50-7, the players will get some time off before returning in May for their first summer session.
Between now and then they’ll finish classes, go home for a while, then get back to offseason workouts. N.C. State opens the season on Sept. 3 at East Carolina. The Wolfpack will try to avoid the same fate that doomed their rivals.
“Something that we’ve been preaching is, at the end of the day, it’s going to be N.C. State versus N.C. State,” Leary said. “As long as we don’t beat ourselves and get better each and every day, that’s all that matters.”
