2003-2004 Wolfpack Defense

Alums General NCS Football36

DE Mario Williams – Texans (Pick 1, Round 1)

DE Manny Lawson – 49ers (Pick 22, Round 1)

DT John McCargo – Bills (Pick 26, Round 1)

DT Tank Tyler – Chiefs (Pick 82, Round 3)

LB Stephen Tulloch – Titans (Pick 116, Round 4)

LB Pat Thomas – Jaguars (Pick 194, Round 6)

LB Oliver Hoyte – Cowboys (undrafted)

CB Dovonte Edwards – Vikings (undrafted)

CB Lamont Reid – Broncos (undrafted)

CB AJ Davis – NFL Pending (Pick 105, Round 4)

CB/FS Marcus Hudson – 49ers (Pick 192, Round 6)

S Andre Maddox – formerly Jets (pick 161, Round 5)

About StateFans

'StateFansNation' is the shared profile used by any/all of the dozen or so authors that contribute to the blog. You may not always agree with us, but you will have little doubt about where we stand on most issues. Please follow us on Twitter and FaceBook

Alums General NCS Football

36 Responses to 2003-2004 Wolfpack Defense

  1. Dr. BadgerPack 04/30/2007 at 8:15 AM #

    That’s pretty damn impressive on paper. It should probably be noted that Hoyte’s sticking power in the NFL is at FB. For perspective, a good exercise might be to compare the number of NFL players on some of the dominant FSU defenses, or some of the dominant Alabama defenses of the early 90s. Those are the only two teams off the top of my head that might have some defenses that are comparable.

    Since this is from the era when I was relegated to Big 10 country, I also have to ask was this the starting defense? Or is this simply reflective of what was on the roster at the time. (I think I got to watch about 10 State games in 5 years in Wisconsin, 2 of those being OSU games).

  2. PamlicoPack 04/30/2007 at 8:26 AM #

    In retrospect, the level of underachievement of those teams was mind-boggling. Most disappointing season of the last five, IMO, in light of subsequent developments of the players has to be Rivers senior year…no way that team should have lost 5 games…

  3. packbackr04 04/30/2007 at 8:36 AM #

    agreed pamlico pack- they should have contended for the ACC that year, but it was not to be. whe

    btw- where are you in pamlico? i am in craven county, New Bern.

  4. noah 04/30/2007 at 8:36 AM #

    It also goes to show how important your OL is. The years that we’ve had a solid–>–>great line, we’ve been fine.

    Turnovers are critical too.

  5. VaWolf82 04/30/2007 at 8:55 AM #

    It should probably be noted that Hoyte’s sticking power in the NFL is at FB.

    This is true, but the change was made mid-way through the season. Hoyte made the Cowboys 53-man roster based on special teams and LB play. It’s interesting to note that Kai Parham (from UVA) played in a 3-4 his entire college career, was always higher ranked than Hoyte, but didn’t make the final roster cuts.

  6. Dr. BadgerPack 04/30/2007 at 9:09 AM #

    This also illustrates what I think is an interesting difference between pro and college football. In college, if you are going to be good on one side of the ball it better be offense if you want to win a lot of football games. The margin for error on defense is just too slim to consistently (season to season) win games with that being your only strength.

    With a dominant offense, you take pressure of your defense in two ways. First, you keep them off the field. Or, in the quick strike case, you force the opposition into a one dimensional (passing) offense, which increases their turnover chances.

    In the NFL, you see defense-loaded teams w/ crappy offenses win all of the time. This is probably indicitive of the talent being essentially even amongst the teams; even the crappiest offense can put 15-20 points on the board in a most instances. In college you have a much wider talent distribution, and you usually see that when a good/great team plays a weak/poor team, the teams with the great defenses/minimal offense play much closer games by the nature of their team, and you can see more upsets in these instances. Several past NC State teams illustrate this quite well.

  7. redfred2 04/30/2007 at 9:29 AM #

    Very gifted athletes playing in certain positions, but it never came together and there was never any overall balance. There was never enough raw talent to make up for the coaching deficiencies or to parlay into consistent winning on the collegiate level. That HAS BEEN the trademark of ALL NC State athletics in general. Football especially, but also basketball, maybe to a lesser extent in the talent departments. But I would gladly debate the talent issue regarding basketball though, we got even less from what we actually had, on the basketball court.

  8. legacyman 04/30/2007 at 9:40 AM #

    In football, we never matched a great D with a great O and that is sad for we had really good D several times and really good O sometimes.

    It’s not fair to make a blanket statement re basketball for Sidney certainly has done a lot in one year with less talent than his predecessor.

  9. lush 04/30/2007 at 10:01 AM #

    packbaker04 you dont happen to work for State Farm do you?

  10. Mr O 04/30/2007 at 10:02 AM #

    Hoyte was a bad ass linebacker for us.

    That was a very young defense.

    Freshman:
    Manny
    Mario
    Tank
    Tulloch
    AJ

    Sophmores
    Hoyte
    Hudson

    We were very close that year to having a great season. We lost heartbreakers at Ohio St in triple overtime, FSU in double over-time, and then gave up something like 16 points in the final 10 minutes against Maryland.

  11. redfred2 04/30/2007 at 10:23 AM #

    legacyman

    Surely you know I’m speaking of before the coaching changes. Sidney Lowe and Wolfpack basketball were nothing but fun and a breath of fresh air this season.

  12. noah 04/30/2007 at 10:43 AM #

    We absolutely should have beaten Maryland and FSU that year. We had both of those games WON. We could have beaten OSU, but…FSU and Maryland were IN THE BAG and we threw it away.

    Win those two games and even with everything else that happened (OSU, Wake), we go to the Orange Bowl, I believe.

  13. westwolf 04/30/2007 at 11:10 AM #

    How many different coaches did some of those players have over four years? To me, that is also one of those mind-boggling statistics.

  14. scpackman 04/30/2007 at 12:17 PM #

    sad, sad, story of Chuck’s tenure…oh what might have been. I hope TOB can get us that close, but not banking on it. What would I give for a conference championship in either football or hoops???

  15. BoKnowsNCS71 04/30/2007 at 1:37 PM #

    Football — Ceder — We’s talkin football.

  16. waxhaw 04/30/2007 at 3:44 PM #

    One of my favorite times at a football games was watching the “total yards” counter count backwards to negative yards during the third quarter of the VT game in Blacksburg. Our defensive ends were everywhere in that game.

    Also on a side note, I’ve been told by numerous VT fans that we were the rowdiest/loudsest fans that they ever remember visiting Blacksburg. The endzone was ridiculously loud. Imo?? turned around and shook his head at our crowd after bobbling the ball one time.

  17. noah 04/30/2007 at 3:46 PM #

    Cameron Bennerman was a terrific linebacker for us.

    Huh? Oh…

  18. bTHEredterror 04/30/2007 at 3:54 PM #

    Just heard on 790 the Ball that Deraney signed FA with the Lions.

  19. redfred2 04/30/2007 at 5:08 PM #

    noah, I think maybe Bennerman was on the football team too. But Amato got together with HWSNBN, and they both just decided it was best not to play him in football either.

    13.9 points, woo hoo. But admittedly, in that offense, that was absolutely carrying the load.

  20. McPete 04/30/2007 at 8:17 PM #

    I remember that time when Bennerman caught that touchdown pass and dunked the ball over the goalpost, filled in that day by Sheldon Williams.

  21. redfred2 05/01/2007 at 7:31 AM #

    How about Brackman, someone said he was giving up on football altogether?

  22. Dr. BadgerPack 05/01/2007 at 8:09 AM #

    Perhaps some team could give Bennerman a look at tight end in the NFL. Strong, tall, can catch… very athletic. Why not try it– can’t hurt. Besides, he’s already demonstrated an ability to run to a spot over and over and catch a ball.

  23. noah 05/01/2007 at 8:11 AM #

    Back when the NFL draft was about 17 rounds long, you would see stuff like that. In the later rounds, anyone and everyone would get drafted.

    Same thing from when the NBA had 12 rounds. Guys at the end of the bench who never played would get drafted.

  24. StateFans 05/01/2007 at 10:09 AM #

    Cedar, that is the LAST time I am editing out a bunch of Herb nonsense on a thread that has nothing to do with him.

    The next time, instead of going through and deleting multiple posts by you and each response by others — including the many who were saying why the hell we were arguing about basketball on a football thread — I’m going to make just one deletion: your access.

    If you feel that strongly about Herb Sendek that you feel compelled to defend anything and everything tangentially covering him — set up your own blog and make your defenses there. Stop doing it on this site. This is the last time I’m telling you that.

    — SFN

1 2

Trackbacks/Pingbacks

  1. The Defense that was « The Struttin’ Wolf - 04/30/2007

    eEEXMG I appreciate you sharing this article post.Really looking forward to read more. Really Great.

Leave a Reply