Secondary a Primary Reason For Pack Gains

'07 Football NCS Football77

New season, new secondary.

After going 1-5, N.C. State coach Tom O’Brien encouraged his team to think of the second half of the season as a fresh start. Then he went out and put some fresh bodies in the Wolfpack’s defensive backfield.

“The whole secondary got changed,” O’Brien said.

DeJuan Morgan moved from strong safety to free safety, opening a spot for redshirt freshman Javon Walker in the starting lineup. Jeremy Gray moved up to the No. 1 spot at one cornerback, ahead of two-year starter Jimmy Sutton. The only starter who remained the same was cornerback DeAndre Morgan, and the redshirt freshman only moved into the lineup four games ago.

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'07 Football NCS Football

77 Responses to Secondary a Primary Reason For Pack Gains

  1. McPete 10/30/2007 at 3:59 PM #

    BoKnows:
    While I was never in the military, my father was (82nd Airborne); i grew up around the military and graduated from a DOD HS. I have some good friends from HS who went in, and i’m sure they’d be insulted if you tried to relate their experiences to a football game. And my main point was that TOB himself said he learned about building football teams from other football coaches, not the marine corps.

    As for the team’s improvement, i’m glad the players have begun to apply the principles the coaching staff have been teaching and are playing as the coaches dictate. Some guys didn’t need to be ‘broken down’, just properly evaluated so that the best players are on the field and the others on the bench.

  2. McPete 10/30/2007 at 4:02 PM #

    yes, Rabidwolf, but thankfully Meares Green’s life wasn’t on the line if he missed an assignment.

  3. RabidWolf 10/30/2007 at 4:03 PM #

    I actually think we can and will beat miami in their house. These men have grown an incredible amount in a very short time, and like I said in my previous comment, these men can handle anything that UM or anybody else can throw their way.

    As for Wake, that is definitely a different story….the ‘Pack has never played particularly well in Winston.

  4. noah 10/30/2007 at 4:09 PM #

    “Quick question: what the heck does football have to do with the military, other than some organizational similarities?”

    Group dynamics. How people come together as a unit, how people learn to repress their individual ego for the good of the team, etc.

    I’d say there were some similarities also in the way individuals learn to push themselves to achieve extraoridinary results, but they are not unique to the military or to football (or athletics, in general). But the group dynamic stuff seems to be the big thing.

    There’ve been some ex-football players/ex-soldiers who have said that the camaraderie between the members of the unit were similar and that’s the thing they miss the most after their careers are over.

  5. RabidWolf 10/30/2007 at 4:11 PM #

    McPete, I wasn’t saying that the two are in any way equal. What I meant was simply that TOB could take what he learned in the Marine Corps, and combine it with what he learned from Welsh et al., and build the Wolfpack football team into one of the best in the nation.

    Hell, look at BC, that ain’t Jagodzinski’s team, it’s TOB’s!

  6. noah 10/30/2007 at 4:15 PM #

    “Was that the same team that lost to Campbell in Reynolds? I was at the UNCW game and they looked like an NBA team compared to us. Of course, I watched UNCC (or Charlotte, whatever) do the same thing to us at the RBC.”

    No, Campbell was Dec. of 1993, so it was the following year.

    UNC Charlotte at least had a future NBA player in Rodney White who played with the Pistons. I saw Rice kills us back in 1980 or 81 when they had Ricky Pierce. And UC-Santa Barbara killed us in 1988 when they had Brian Shaw.

    UNCW….did not. Neither did Campbell.

  7. noah 10/30/2007 at 4:16 PM #

    “Personally, even with the improved play, I think we lose to both Wake and Miami and sweep the Twerps and Heels to finish 5-7.”

    I could live with that.

  8. RabidWolf 10/30/2007 at 4:19 PM #

    Beat miami, go 6-6, play in the tire bowl….some backyard football!

  9. RabidWolf 10/30/2007 at 4:20 PM #

    You all know they’d pick State, just because Wolfpack Nation would sell out the stadium. $ $ $ $ $ $ $

  10. PamlicoPack 10/30/2007 at 4:24 PM #

    We are actually 1-1 in the last two games we’ve played at the Orange Bowl…which span the last 36 seasons…

    41-3 loss in 1982 (and that was the 7-4 team the year before the Nebraska Orange Bowl fumblerooskie season); win in 1971 when our 3-8 team beat their 4-7 team 13-7.
    Other visits in 1969 (L), 1957 (0-0 tie), 1945 (L), ’44 (W), ’42 (W), ’39 (L). Yes, the Orange Bowl is that old. All time record in Orange Bowl: 3-4-1

  11. PamlicoPack 10/30/2007 at 4:30 PM #

    If they do finish 5-7, we’ll all be kicking ourselves wondering where we’d be bowling if someone manages to lay a hand on that UCF running back on the first play from scrimmage of the season…

  12. noah 10/30/2007 at 4:37 PM #

    I remember that 1982 game. That was the year that really tanked Kiffin.

    Kiffin had taken over that 1979 ACC title team that came oh-so-close to beating Penn State and going to a nice bowl (we turned down a bowl in New Jersey). He had stumbled a little in 1980, stumbled a lot in 1981 and then we were just terrible in 1982.

    UNC beat us 41-9 in Chapel Hill. That was my first game at Kenan. I remember Ethan Horton running up…and down…up…and down. All. Day. Long.

    Penn State beat us 54-0 in State College. And then we got destroyed by Miami.

    We finished 6-5, but I am reasonably certain that we didn’t beat a single team with a winning record. In fact, I looked it up once and I don’t think Kiffin ever beat anyone who finished with a winning record. He certainly never had what you would consider a “quality” victory. Even Tom Reed had two of those (Georgia Tech in 1984 when they were in the top-20 and UVa when they had Dan Majikowski. That was the General’s next-to-last game).

    Kiffin ended up getting fired in this weird coup d’état that was allegedly orchestrated by the WPC and somehow managed to circumnavigate the AD office.

    There were some rather nasty editorials about it in the News and Observer if anyone cares to go look it up at the library.

  13. noah 10/30/2007 at 4:38 PM #

    Actually, if we finish 5-7, I’m going to be saying, “Holy sh*t! We won five games!”

    That’s about five more than I thought we’d win after the first week.

  14. PamlicoPack 10/30/2007 at 4:42 PM #

    That 1982 team was the worst team in Pack history that finished with a winning record. I was in 10th grade that year…I’d never witnessed a blowout like the 54-0 loss to Penn State…though our record had been poor in several of the previous seasons, we had never lost in a blowout like that in my lifetime up until then. It was awful, particularly only 3 years removed from the 9-7 heartbreaker up there…

  15. PamlicoPack 10/30/2007 at 4:49 PM #

    Noah said “We finished 6-5, but I am reasonably certain that we didn’t beat a single team with a winning record.”

    Close…actually we beat Duke, who finished 6-5 (remember the “Red means Go” campaign with Red Wilson?) and an ECU team that finished 7-4. That team was 4-1 going into the UNC game that Noah described. Boy, talk about a deceptive 4-1: wins over Furman, ECU, a Wake team that finished 3-8, and a Virginia team that finished 2-9 (first season at UVa for Welsh and his assistant TOB). I remember being mortified that we almost lost at Virginia, a team we had beaten 8 straight times.

  16. Pack92 10/30/2007 at 4:53 PM #

    ^Sam92, Tony was a great guy. I had Calculus (yes, with a basketball player who was not Todd Fuller) with him and he was VERY smart. He made a very entertaining class actually. I was so shocked at his death it is still difficult to describe. I am very happy to hear he is remembered for the great young man that he was.

    noah, thank you for the correlation to the military. I’ve had both and you said it well.

  17. BJD95 10/30/2007 at 4:57 PM #

    I don’t think making a bowl this year is particularly important. It was important to avoid double digit losses, and not go winless in ACC play. Thankfully, none of that awful shit will happen, so I look at everything the rest of the way as playing with house money.

    I don’t want expectations to run too wild – we’re still a flawed, dangerously thin football team. Wake is playing really well, and Miami has a HUGE athleticism advantage. I don’t see winning either game, and would be happy if either is close. I think we do beat UNC, and that Maryland is a coin flip.

    Even with all the ups and downs of this season, the outcome has only been different in one game (UCF) than in my SFN pre-season picks. Even then, I called UCF a huge trap game, and picked a win mostly on good mojo for TOB’s opener. My brain was always worried about that one.

  18. PackMan97 10/30/2007 at 5:00 PM #

    Ah, the early ’90s what fun for state basketball

    Mark Davis breaks his wrists
    Feggins rips up his knee one season and gets shot the next
    Marshall almost slices his hand off
    Robinson commits suicide
    Seal, Knox, Korneagay all suspended for academics
    Bakalli breaks foot
    Wilson tears achilles
    CC and Ish suspended for a fall semester.

    I tell ya, Les Robinson was snake bit.

    Those that think we had it bad under Herb have no idea what the early and mid ’90’s were like with Les.

    That said, I agree 100% with the boot camp comment. Gotta tear ’em down to build them up. This team hadn’t hit rock bottom until the FSU game, I think the bye week really got things turned around.

  19. BJD95 10/30/2007 at 5:00 PM #

    The worst basketball game in NC State history was the Florida Atlantic game. They were like 1-23 (including 22 losses in a row), and I think DEAD LAST in Sagarin. We blew an early 17-point lead and went on to lose by 10 at home.

    I sat behind our bench that game, and have no idea how security didn’t throw me out. Nobody gave me the stink eye for chanting “Les Must Go!” that night, I assure you.

  20. PackMan97 10/30/2007 at 5:00 PM #

    ^ my bad, Ish wasn’t suspended, only CC. I think it was his So. year.

  21. BJD95 10/30/2007 at 5:05 PM #

    The lowest moment of the Les era for me was when he “defended” Kornegay by saying that his grades were even worse when he was at State. Better to keep silent and appear stupid than to open it and remove all doubt, Coach.

  22. PamlicoPack 10/30/2007 at 5:11 PM #

    You guys complaining about Fowler: Les was CLUELESS, and we rewarded him for stepping down voluntarily as coach by kicking him upstairs to AD…I’m guessing that Charlie Cobb essentially ran the Athletics Department in those years, while Les napped in his office.

  23. BJD95 10/30/2007 at 5:13 PM #

    ^ True – but being “better than Les” is not the appropriate measuring stick, IMHO. That’s like being less repulsive than Rosie O’Donnell, or less incompetent than President….never mind!

  24. SuperStuff 10/30/2007 at 5:25 PM #

    My favorite Les memory was a game in which Feggins was back from injury. He scored, stole the ball on the next play, and scored again. I look up and he’s riding the pine for the next 6 minutes. Who takes out someone who is hot. Totally unreal! Les was the worst for managing a game with adjustments.

  25. Mr O 10/30/2007 at 5:29 PM #

    5-7 would be almost miraculous considering how bad things were…It is good enough to create some momentum in TOB’s first year, good enough to prove to the kids in the program and the kids we are recruiting that he knows what we he is doing, and good enough that the media won’t blow Butch Davis all off-season.

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