Florida State week

General61

It’s a big week in Raleigh!  NC State fans are still a little emotionally shell-shocked after the egg the Wolfpack laid in Greenville last week..but, the good news remains – the ECU game has very little, if any, impact on the Wolfpack’s potential bowl appearance.

NC State and Florida State have a little bit of a different/special feel to our games.  I don’t want to call it a ‘rivalry’ because I recognize that isn’t fair to FSU’s heritage and big games with Miami and Florida…but, I do think that the Wolfpack’s history of playing well against the Seminoles for such an extended period of time has bred a little respect for the Wolfpack program and annual match-up against the Noles.

This will be the third consecutive time that NC State will host Florida State for a Thursday night game to be played on ESPN in October.  We will have a lot of coverage heading into Thursday night to follow on the FSU-centric discussions our fans have already begun.

Coach O’Brien has kept it very close against the Noles in each of his three losses vs FSU as NC State’s Head Coach.  For a little pump-up…the following are a couple of videos from NC State’s last win over Florida State from October 5th, 2006 (also a Thursday night in Raleigh).  There are SO MANY interesting things that can be discussed from watching those videos; I will just leave it open ended and see what people choose to discuss.

 

Evans leads Pack over Noles #1

 

Evans leads Pack over Noles #2

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General

61 Responses to Florida State week

  1. baxter 10/25/2010 at 11:51 AM #

    Its more a case of tempered expectations. 7-5 could easily happen. However, FSU is the best remaining team on the schedule, and it appears they are a bit inconsistent and also have made it to 6-1 with only one significant win over UM – the remaining teams as I pointed out in the forums, have a collective Win total of 13 if you exclude UM. While we haven’t faced the OU/UM historically popular teams to the media, we have beat 5 teams with a collective Win total of 17 (UCF and a bad GT both have 5 wins). I think when you look at the competition played so far, FSU doesn’t stand out to me a significantly better, in fact, they have beaten the cesspools of the leagues. And they barely escaped BC. Point being, is they, just like State, have the offensive capability to be very good, but also inconsistent.

    The remaining games of Clemson, UNC, WF, and MD are all VERY winnable games. Yes, death valley is a tough environment, but you are talking about a Clemson team that you never know what you will get till the game is over. I watched them at UNC in person, they were awful in the first half, made poor adjustments in the second half and were not disciplined. They managed to only put 10 points on the board in the second half of GT this weekend. My point, Dabo doesn’t really seem to adjust well to the competition after half time and has an inconsistent product on the field. UNC, is going to get waxed through the remaining schedule of FSU, VT before they get to us – the UM game was a great example of how their depth and injuries are now going to be the undoing of their season. WF doesnt even need to be discussed other than in the past they had our number and we need to be prepared and disciplined for trickery. MD is absolutely benefiting from an easy schedule, and I see us walking out of college park with a win (they do have talent, but they should be a high probability win).

  2. baxter 10/25/2010 at 11:53 AM #

    I will also add that regardless of beating FSU, we need to win the Clemson and UNC game to make a statement to our recruiting battle going on between the schools for the NC/SC talent. Playing competitively on national tv w/ FSU will help possibly seal the deal on a Florida prospect or two, but beating the Carolina teams is what absolutely needs to happen.

  3. IMFletcherWolf 10/25/2010 at 12:11 PM #

    FYI: ESPN Classic is showing the 2001 State-FSU game at 3:00 Thursday.

  4. VaWolf82 10/25/2010 at 12:20 PM #

    I don’t get what the reason is to be negative about the future

    I’m not negative, I simply evaluate the teams and then reach a conclusion. Based on that, I would say that expecting 9 or 10 wins this year is the next thing to delusional. I would be ecstatic if that happened, I just don’t think it’s realistic.

  5. haze 10/25/2010 at 12:51 PM #

    VA

    I agree that expecting 9 or 10 wins coming into the year was optimistic (!!!). However, there’s a lot more data at hand once you’ve made it to 5-1 with a remaining schedule of ECU, FSU, CU, UNC, Wake & MD. By that point the chance (i.e. conditional probability) of getting to 9 wins is actually pretty high (i.e. realistic) and 8 wins was probably the most likely outcome.

    Given that we took a dump in Greenville, it’s definitely looking like 7-5 or 8-4… but that’ll change again after FSU.

  6. VaWolf82 10/25/2010 at 12:59 PM #

    State was always going to be the underdog to FSU at home as well as UNC and Clemson on the road. Thus the odds of 9 wins was never “high”; except in the minds of a few State fans.

  7. choppack1 10/25/2010 at 1:14 PM #

    VaWolf – I agree w/ half of your post, but disagree w/ a some of it too.

    Regarding our 4-0 start – we beat 3 teams who were definitely capable of beating us. I’d dare say that in the first 2 years of our program, we don’t 4-0 in those games.

    I don’t think anyone predicted us going 4-0 during that stretch. I also think that we were 3-0 vs the spread in that game.

    However, I do think a 7-5 finish for this team is likely at this point. We’ve got 5 games left – and 4 of those will likely be toss-ups (at best).

    The FSU and Clemson games are likely losers for us. If we all 3 of those other games, we’ll have tied our best ACC record for the last 15 years…and truthfully, I’ll be plenty darn happy.

    The one thing I didn’t forsee this year – and hopefully will no longer be the case – has been the subpar decision making at the QB spot. I’m not terribly shocked that we are 5-2 right now. I figured our D would improve enough to make that possible. I’m definitely surprised at how 16 has struggled this year. I wasn’t expecting a Heisman trophy-type performance this year, but I didn’t think that he’d play so bad in half our games vs. D1 competition.

    The good news is that RW has shown he can put together great performances – and can even put together great consecutive performances.

  8. ruffles31 10/25/2010 at 1:21 PM #

    Tidbit of the day. Thursday will mark the first game since FSU entered the league that FSU vs. NCSU won’t have Chuck Amato prowling the sidelines.

  9. baxter 10/25/2010 at 1:30 PM #

    The key with the RW issue is whether we will continue to put RW in a position to have to make those passes. We’ve been in the range of 45-60 pass plays (some of RW’s scrambles were broken pass plays leading to the 60 attempts #) in the last three games, is it really surprising that given that number, RW’s INT numbers are dramatically up? Yes, several of them have been WTF passes, but the BC game in particular, both INTs seemed to be route issue / tip catch balls. I think Dana really needs to balance the attack more, not necessarily 50 50, but it needs to be better than 62 – 29 in the ECU game (box score has 39, but 10 scrambles by RW), and less obvious run calls. That ECU game shouldn’t have even been an issue given all the turnovers the defense produced. That was the most disappointing part of that game to me. Everyone blasted the defense for that first quarter, but they damn well made the impact on turnovers from there on.

    After the first quarter, the defense went: Punt, field goal, fumble, fumble, fumble, punt, punt, punt, punt, field goal, OT TD. The offense: TD, TD, fumble, TD, punt, punt, punt, FG, punt, INT, FG, INT, INT.

  10. section2chuck 10/25/2010 at 1:39 PM #

    FYI: also on ESPN Classic Nov. 1st 3pm (2003 Clemson @ NC State game)

  11. VaWolf82 10/25/2010 at 1:50 PM #

    RW has had some unexpected issues, but the defense has been better than anyone had a right to expect. On balance, the team is better than I feared, but not nearly as good as some here had made them out to be.

    State hasn’t had a good rushing attack in forever (and wasted half of Andre Brown’s break out year trying to throw the ball). I certainly didn’t expect that to change this year.

  12. choppack1 10/25/2010 at 1:51 PM #

    baxter – good post.

    I agree w/ a lot of what you’re saying. If there’s a problem I have w/ Bible – it’s that sometimes he becomes too pass happy. I didn’t think I’d be saying that considering that I recalled (perhaps incorrectly) – BC being a very-balanced attack.

    However, I don’t consider RW’s BC game a bad one. Good qb’s will throw bad passes on occassion. I consider RW’s subpar games to be UCF, VaTech (after the 1st quarter) and ECU. He threw a couple of bad passes vs. GaTech and BC – but overall, had effective “field general” games. Against Cincy – he was awesome.

    In the last 3 years, our QBs have really improved during the bye week. (Perhaps that’s another way of saying our coaching and OL play has improved.)

    We could play the game of our year Thursday night and lose. FSU is that good. But one thing is certain – if we’re going to have a shot, we need RW’s “A” game.

  13. bradleyb123 10/25/2010 at 1:52 PM #

    Sorry for being off-topic, and I appreciate the State-FSU blog, but it seems the UNX stuff is slowing. Not as many blogs about them.

    Go to the forums when you don’t see anything on the main blog

  14. NCSUPackfan 10/25/2010 at 2:21 PM #

    Just wanted to share this piece of information with the Pack Nation. I am a grad from NCSU but am taking classes at FSU (long story). I have a class with two football players. I was just talking about the game as if I was a FSU fan when I was told that they are prepared to beat the S*** out of us on Thursday. I was told the crowd at State SUCKS, along with Wilson who should have stayed with baseball and Irving who should have taken another year to heal.

    They went on to talk some more trash, but I just laughed.

    I hope the crowd, Wilson, & Irving show up on Thursday!

  15. bradleyb123 10/25/2010 at 2:49 PM #

    NCSUPackfan, we need to get this posted on NC State’s locker room bulletin board asap!

    A little extra motivation never hurt anyone. If those words came from the fans, that would be one thing. But they came from a couple of the players. Right from the horses’ mouths!

    Our offense moved the ball well on them last year. I hope we can do the same this year. Otherwise, they may be right.

  16. bradleyb123 10/25/2010 at 2:59 PM #

    And if we put a lick on Ponder the way we hit Tyrod and BC’s QB, that bursa sac is going to be the least of his worries!

  17. baxter 10/25/2010 at 3:15 PM #

    ^ Maybe people didnt notice, but last year we put a LOT of big hits on Ponder, and in fact were what led to his being knocked out for the year, IIRC, the next game against Clemson he was out after taking a hit due to an injury caused by our pressure.

    If that is how FSU players feel about the game, they are in for a world of hurt. He only went 20/30, 349 yds, 5TDs and 2 picks last year on their turf.

  18. NCSUPackfan 10/25/2010 at 3:26 PM #

    I’ve heard it from the students, fans etc since I live in Tally, but this came from guys who will suit up on Thursday night.

    I wanted to defend the Pack but I just played dumb. If we can get the info to the team all the better.

  19. old13 10/25/2010 at 3:37 PM #

    OK Ponder’s not 100%. 35-17 FSU.

  20. choppack1 10/25/2010 at 3:37 PM #

    New defense for FSU this year. I don’t think they are playing that very simple exclusive man to man that they have in the past.

  21. coach13 10/25/2010 at 4:01 PM #

    Still hard to beleive we can bounce back from the ECU debacle. I know it’ll have less impact our bowl birth, but I was listening on the way home today at everything ECu lost from last year to this(29 Sra, 1 Jr), how their defense was patchwork, a freshman QB, it just doesn’t make sense. I have no idea which Wilson shows up, if our defense has been completely figured out now. I have zero confidence and no expectations of a win.

    I hope I am proven wrong. What’s the latest line?

  22. 61Packer 10/25/2010 at 4:03 PM #

    Losing the next two games would be a major disappointment, but losing the last two games would be a major disaster.

  23. coach13 10/25/2010 at 4:11 PM #

    Losing the next two games would be a major disappointment, but losing the last two games would be a major disaster

    Agree!!!

  24. NCStatePride 10/25/2010 at 4:24 PM #

    If we lose the next two games, while they wouldn’t be loses to shameful teams, it will prove to me that the flashes of brilliance we saw earlier in the season were just temporary. Same ole’ NC State under the same ole’ coaching staff. Disenchanted doesn’t say it.

  25. choppack1 10/25/2010 at 4:34 PM #

    “a freshman QB” – Uhh, ECU didn’t have a freshmen qb. Dominique Davis graduated high school in 2006.

    What does concern me is how bad our offense was on 10/16 for 3 of the 4 and the OT.

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