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That’s really good news. Bryce in particular was important because the guy had played under Keats and clearly was someone he wanted at State.
I may be in the minority, but I feel the best about our basketball program in a long, long time.
Hate it for Henderson. The NCAA is nothing if not inconsistent.
Best of luck to TH in all that he does moving forward.
92owen: I think Grey’s just excited, and I hope he is right. While I don’t necessarily agree with some of what he posts, it is a lot tougher to go out on that limb than it is to look at DD’s body of work at NC State as well as NC State’s historical results in football and predict 5-7 to 7-5.
Playing devil’s advocate, it’s very possible the education they get living in a foreign country while earning a living doing something they love can be more valuable than a bachelor’s degree in whatever from NCSU. Bottom line is you have to do whatever makes you happiest.
I tend to agree with this. People have many paths in life. I think far too many 18 year olds are going to college, which waters down the value of the degree.
Keatts interviewed all the players from last year. The ones who want to or are willing to play his style are staying and those who don’t are leaving. Is it a surprise that some players have no interest in doing what it takes to get in shape and stay in shape?
TK was anything but out of shape. That kid has a man’s body and a high motor. He’s also perfectly suited to this style of play. I thought he’d be an absolute terror in Keatts’ system.
NC State had to do a lot to get TK on the court. There were clearly issues with qualifying coming in as well as other issues. I suspect the promises that Gott made to get TK and Omer on the court are some of the many things that led to Yow actually making a move this past year.
There was also a period early in the second semester that it felt like TK might be being withheld from games for other reasons (which could have been grades). I think this has more to do with the bigger path than anything about Keatts or his system.
I’m enthusiastic about men’s basketball for the same reasons as 44rules. Outside of a few weekends here and there in the ACC and NCAA tournaments and a few upsets against UNC and Duke, NC State basketball has been largely unwatchable since V was run off. Regardless of the results this year, I think we’ll actually put an entertaining product on the floor. That has me excited.
With football, I’m enthusiastic in the way that I always am about NC State sports. I expect 7-5/8-4, with a couple of close “what might have been” type losses.
Grey: Thanks for carrying conversation during a quiet time of the year.
I agree with you in that clickbait coaching ranking article. It is a handful of writers’ opinions, nothing less and nothing more. They don’t really share their methodology and I’d question any one that ranks a mid-major type coach moving into a high major job, but when has yet to ever coach a game rates above a high major coach that had a similar resume at a similar level mid-major.
I wonder if the bloom is still on that Fedora rose given what they did being led by the #2 player in the draft? It is odd.
I personally like Hux and don’t want him replaced. We need a grizzled guy on that side of the ball who has a lot of experience. I suspect that any issues with scheme aren’t on Hux as much as they are on DD. While I don’t pretend to have any insider information, it would be very hard to believe that Hux is doing anything other than what DD wants. I personally wish we’d blitz a bit more, but so be it. I also wish we had more depth at LB and played tighter in the secondary.
On the season, I fully expect 7-5 has DD back another year. Any better and he likely gets an extension. Going 6-6 will make it interesting. I think we’ll be 8-4 or 7-5 this year.
I tend to agree with McCallum’s views on this. His positional breakdown was very solid. The proof of overall is in the wins and losses. We’ve had spot talent for a long, long, time, but have never been able to put it together.
I have a couple of addditional thoughts:
– I think some of our positional coaches are quite good — Ledford and Kitchings in particular. I also like Hux far more than most and think his experience is needed and valuable given all the young coaches.
– I wasn’t sold on the Drink hire, and last year did nothing to make me feel any better about it. Signing the QB though is very promising. While the cynic in me says that we’ve had nothing at QB since Glennon, that there’s no one we’ve put out that a good QB couldn’t beat out, and that with Rivers, Wilson and Glennon, NC State has shown QBs that you can make the NFL from here, I also know we really had nothing in the pipeline from Canada. Drink gave us something this past year and has signed a good recruit. That is a clear step in the right direction.
– Grey and I are going to have to agree to disagree regarding special teams. I see nothing special about our kicking game. Our coverage on kicks is the high point, and that is definitely good. I still like the Beamer plan.Raider Al was a complex man. He did some good thing like what you cite. He also tried to hold tax payers over as barrel for personal gain and definitely fostered an environment where his franchise was linked to violence. I think that “just win baby” actually fits him fairly well. He wasn’t making a move (even like wthose you reference) without some sort of end game.
I like DD and think he is doing many things right from a program management perspective. He is a coach I would send my child to play for (unlike Fedora, Petrino, Jimbo Fisher, etc.).
Eventually though, the results have to be shown on the field. Hopefully it starts this year and NC State is rewarded with its version of Frank Beamer. Our fans have certainly hoped for this while being plenty patient with coach after coach, hoping they are seeing “seeds of greatness.” We’re long overdue for one of those to actually take root and blossom.
Grey: I hope and sincerely want your bullish position to be rewarded. That is the best possible outcome for NC State and our collective enjoyment of the entertainment business that is NC State football.
As Raider Al said, “just win baby.” This season will tell us a lot. Many of the pieces are in place and seemingly the most of the DD era.
Grey, some quick thoughts:
– You brought up the past, so I answered why it is pertinent. I’ve said on this thread DD is probably here as long as Yow is. If so, then so be it. Any coach we hire is going to be a gamble. But with a coach that really hasn’t proven anything, there’s one eye on what has been done and one on what might happen better. Seems reasonable, no?
– I’m one of the more positive ones on Keatts and was so fairly quickly after getting past the initial sting of anyone not named Archie Miller. I’ve argued his longer track record of success made him much less risky than Will Wade (and I thought if it wasn’t Archie, we were getting one of these two).
– If Keatts goes winless in the ACC next year and then 4 years later has yet to do better than .500 in conference or get out of the first round of the NCAA tournament, you’d better believe there are going to be people grumbling. While I disliked Gott from the second that hire was announced (much like I felt about TOB), if those are Keatts’ results at that time, you’d better believe we’ll be hearing about Gott’s “two Sweet 16s.” The media will mak them out like they were two National Titles.
– Yow has done a good job at NC State and the Director’s Cup results, APR and lack of major scandal all reflect that. She’s human though, and thus not perfect. She has not handled press conferences well. She may judge on one criteria, but she says she judges on another.
– Tigers don’t change their stripes. Eventually there’s enough body of work for one to just see that that is all someone is really going to accomplish in that role. They’re just not the right fit for the job. How many years is that? What consitutes the success metrics? What’s really the potential given the inputs? I’m not the AD or the money people, but evidently many had seen enough part of the way through last year. I cautioned during that period last year that much was right and if we were going to do something, maybe it was to see whether we had in Kitchings out own version of Dabo. I also argued that the real travesty was men’s basketball and that the pitchforks should be put down and saved for that, where we were clearly doing a lot less with a lot more.
– I think it is fair to say that DD is a good coach 6 days a week, but is a pretty mediocre (to bad one) on game day. He reminds me an awful lot of HWSNBN in basketball. Giving HWSNBN another 10 years wasn’t going to change the complete lack of killer instinct, baffling in game tactical decisions, momentum killing time outs and substitutions, or general Charlie Brown trying to kick the football level of meltdowns when on the verge of anything significant.grey: Given history repeats itself and those who ignore it seem damned to repeat it, I think we probably should be mindful of what happened in the past. As you say it doesn’t define the future, but the best predictor of future performance is past performance.
Yow set this one up with her initial expectations of what TOB’s successor would do. DD’s done some of them (run a clean program and graduate players we are proud of), but he’s missed on some other ones (results, Alabama styled recruits). Yow’s kept him around despite missing those expectations and what I personally think is poor handling of the media. That’s fine, but one can’t really ignore that DD isn’t getting the results that the previous guy that got fired did (note, I was no TOB fan, so it’s not like I’ve got some retrospective rose colored glasses). If she’d have said that she fired TOB for “general program management” with a wink, wink, nod, nod to the RW situation, then I think it might be a little different. Maybe that’s not fair to DD, but it doesn’t change it.
DD also laid the biggest egg in year one in 25+ years of the program. It’s almost as if one had to try to go winless in the ACC that year. That was as bad as it gets and he paired it with calling out the fans. In life there really aren’t mulligans, particularly at that salary and job profile. He put himself in a very tough position right out of the gate with his paying customers. This is an entertainment business, and sometimes coaches forget that.
I want DD to do well because if he does well, NC State does well. As a fan, I’d kind of like to taste any sort of success in a revenue sport because it has been a long time since 1979. Yes, DD wasn’t coach that entire time, and it’s only fair to judge him on his tenure, but one has to be mindful of the bigger picture and also understand why the natives could be quite restless.
pack1997: I think development falls into a couple of buckets. The first is physical, and I think our guys finally look like football players. This is the most obvious improvement from the TOB era at least to me. The guys seem to get bigger, stronger and faster while they play here. So if that’s some percentage of player development (say 30-50%), then we seem to get a check across the board for whatever that percent is.
Then there is skill development, football instincts, etc.. I think that varies position by position, coach and experience.I seem to see good positional coaching at DL (hope the new one is as good as the last one), OL (think Ledford is a good one) and RBs (our best positional combination of talent and depth on the roster). Two of those three units are the most important in college football (with the QB being the third).
I think people question the back 7 on defense, but I’m not as sure if that is coaching, the scheme, the recruits or lack of depth. To be honest, I’d have never guessed Jones was a second rounder. I thought the LBs looked better last year, but there’s only 2 of them and they’ve played a lot of downs in their careers (so some of that is likely just experience). I’m not sure that the personnel sets up that well for using the 4-2-5. Maybe those with more trained eyes can weigh in on this.
I think that people rightly question the development in QBs, our kicking and our WRs (earlier in this thread). Heck, I question those as well. If one wants to point to these three areas and say there’s a lack of player development, then I could understand drawing that conclusion as well.
We’ve made a change at WR coach. We’ve made a change at DB coach. We’ve made a change at OC/QBs coach. Maybe those things will improve things?
chop: That’s kind of my point. I think we can compete, but we’re not there yet. We’re going to have to get some better talent. I think we’re doing a solid job of developing them once they get here, but we need some guys with a bit higher ceilings.
chop: That’s a good summary of where many are. I think we’re doing a whole lot of things right. I think if we had a kicker, a QB and took the headset off of DD during games, we’d be much happier.
I also think we may overly estimate the talent level we’ve had. This past season we looked more like a functioning football team that is “so close” but one also has to remember draft day. We had 3 guys drafted, and 2 of those were in the 7th round. The NFL finds the guys that can play, and have arguably the most rigorous pre-draft selection process in American sports. They’ve basically told us that we didn’t exactly have a stocked senior class.
DD and staff can do all the process stuff right, but eventually they’re going to have to up the recruiting level. That’s also been an issue that many have flagged. We get the same “coach ’em up” retorts out of some that we heard with TOB, but at least with TOB there was a clear track record of the NFL taking some of our less athletically skilled players. I’ve not really seen an NFL impact player come out of DD’s classes yet.
I’m patient despite the record. He was a gamble, but anyone we hire in football is going to be (and seemingly we’re at that spot now in men’s basketball as well). I’m find letting this one ride until the next AD.
The record can’t be glossed over and excused away though. It is what it is, and ultimately at the end of the day coaches are judged by that record. It’s not where it needs to be (as you mention with the comparison to the season that got TOB fired). It doesn’t matter if we’re the best 6-6 team around year in and year out. Eventually we need to get to 8-4 or 9-3 if DD is to be considered a success.
Grey: I appreciate the healthy discourse. I must say that there are obvious WTF plays every single game:
– Fake punts when leading yet deep in one’s own territory
– Time outs before kickoffs
– Down and distance issues consistently, particularly around the goal lineNow one could point to kicking and I would agree with them. The kicking game under this staff is the worst it has been since I started watching NC State football in the early 80s. Some of the kicking issues may be confused/crossed/causal for some of the WTF coaching decisions. Heck, if I were DD, I’d call up Frank Beamer and see if he’d be interested in 2nd in command and in charge of special teams.
The other issue is momentum. Get a lead and DD sits on it. He doesn’t try to put teams away. Heck, we tried to give the bowl game away this past season and it could have gotten really tight if it for a couple of outstanding individual plays.
On offense, I’m not sure we improved with our OC hire. Great pedigree and all, but the fact was that Boise had their worst season in years with him calling the plays. This season they were right back to their winning ways. I never sensed an identity game in and game out and we clearly were pass happy in several of out losses, seemingly ignoring our stable of backs and what I thought was solid OL play that improved all year. I think this year will tell us a lot.
On receivers, we’ve got the horses and the speed. It’s either scheme, QB play or poor route running. Given I’m not seeing the games in person, it is kind of hard for me to tell (TV only follows the ball).
QB play needs to improve this year. Like the kicking it has been consistently bad under DD. Yeah we probably got spoiled by Rivers, Wilson and even Glennon, but MOC got a lot more out of his QBs than DD has. A team like State is going to need good QB play in order to really do anything.
I think DD would be better if he just took the headset off during the game. He seems worth 5-7 points to the other team per game based on a lot of the in game, situational and time management decisions. His record would be a whole lot better with that 5-7 points a game back.
I think we’re building the talent the right way. We’re strong in the lines and then build out from there. Chuck and TOB seemed to get good skill position players but never really had great lines (outside of a season here or there).
I think that our friend Canada is a gift that keeps on giving with Moss. Who is the OC now at LSU? It seems Canada also tried to get Moss to come to Pitt with him. It might just be as simple as that….
We have a need and significant PT available. This will be good for immediate help and scholarship spacing. Freeman was a solid performer at the top levels and honestly has tasted more success than about anyone on our current roster (outside of his “brother Freeman”).
Chop: I agree with you. My metrics of success for an OC are wins (their plan has to mesh with the DC’s and special teams), points, red zone scoring, turnover margin and the ability to control the clock and grind out a drive if needed. Nothing else matters to me. I only mention balance and running because I think those things facilitate the above. In the end though the most balanced offense in America doesn’t matter if the other things aren’t there.
I’m not yet sold on Drink but realize that a lot of things were new for him as well as the players last year. Landing a decent QB was a good sign. If the OP play continues the trend from last year and the QB play is improved, then we are okay.
CowDog: 🙂 😉 He’d worn himself out at Wisconsin prior to us ever getting him. He was at the center of a tiff that got the OL coach fired four games into the season and got his play calling duties revoked. People focused on a couple of good games at the end of the season that year, but I really questioned that hire from the start.
I never sensed it was about X’s and O’s with Canada. The offenses were balanced and I personally loved the commitment to the run (these are two major red flags I have with Drink). Yeah, we were predictable with down, distance, motion and formation (i.e. I think you could have schemed against us fairly easily and blown up our playbook like Mississippi State did), but the overall things that most OCs are measured by with respect to X’s and O’s were generally fine.
It was the off the field stuff, interviewing for other jobs, the NC High schools, the lack of QB development, and the baffling usage (or lack thereof) of some serious playmakers in that last year that I think did him in. There’s also an incident that I seemingly don’t know much about (and don’t need to). Put it all together and he deservedly got the hook.
It will be interesting to see his career trajectory. I knew he’d kill it at Pitt last year because they had all the pieces (senior QB, great RB, great OL). I could have coached that team with an offense out of Playstation. It would have been interesting to have seen what he’d have done this year working with much less. Much like Pitt last year though, he’s going to have a wealth of talent and look very good given what he has to work with at LSU.
I do question Ogeron’s belief that he’s got a “staff full of guys he can trust.” Can one really trust Canada? I’m kind of glad it’s no longer our problem.
I’m more interested to see what we do this year on offense. Ours last year never really had an identity. It felt like we were almost too game planned to the opponent as opposed to finding 5 things we did really well and worked on executing them. I will say that I thought our OL play improved considerably through the course of the year, and if that trend continues this season we’ll be in pretty good shape.
Good read. I think he’ll do well at LSU because no team has done less with more offensive talent than they have. It will be a situation where the only way is up.
At the same time for all the praise in this article, he’s not without issue either. I thought we were pretty predictable based on formation and motion and field position, particularly with the use of the jet sweep. I also think he was fired for other reasons beyond just on the field performance. I tend to think he is divisive.
Duck: That’s great news if true. We’ve not really had that since HWSNBN.
Tractor: My wife was a real student athlete. She played D1 sports (quite well as she holds virtually every record for her school), worked on campus and graduated summa from one of the nation’s elite universities while being an Academic All american. Real student athletes exist and my hat is off to them. She gave it all for every waking moment for 4 years (which is a good thing for me given I met her after her college was over). The amazing thing is that she still owed money after all of that…..
tractor: I don’t blame them at all. I honestly think when the coaches leave or get fired the kids should be free agents as well. They agree to a certain “package” and the university or the coach changes that equation. There’s no reason they should be held hostage (i.e. stay, go pro or sit out a year). There’d probably be fewer premature “pro” entries if they could be free agents.
As a parent with kids closer to college than I am to my time in college, I see this increasingly as a business transaction. It’s one where the schools have a lot more leverage than the kids. In the revenue sports the schools get a lot more out of it than the kids. It only seems natural to let them go when it is time to move on.
I also don’t blame a new coach for not keeping together an old roster when it is a situation where the last coach got fired. It’s a little more concerning if that coach had a great run and then moved up the ladder.
I expected Rowan to transfer. His physical gifts didn’t match our new system. He’s also an older player chronologically than his graduating class. I wish him nothing but the best in his next endeavor. Some turnover with a new coach (whomever it is) was to be expected.
In football, I can’t blame Moss for leaving. We’ve hardly used TEs the last couple of seasons at least in receiving. We had a preseason all ACC TE with soft hands and hardly threw him the ball.
McKeaver’s loss is the one that kind of surprises me. He wasn’t on the field much, but sure seemed to be involved in a lot of big plays for the time he was there. He also has a killer name. 😉
