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grey: I love that the posting rates are spiking. It’s the very end of the “dead period” between the end of the CWS and the first football game. I think we’re all “ready to go.”
Yogi: Amato lucked into Rivers, but the man could also spot talent. We had more talent during Amato than any time in my lifetime. He had other failings as a manager that caused him to run his course, but we were never lacking for horses and we were always in games. TOB lost more blow out games in 2 years than the entire Amato tenure and while I haven’t checked it, I’d suspect DD have already lost more blow outs as well.
You are right that Sheridan inherited far worse. He took the biggest turd of any State coach in my lifetime, and he improved almost immediately. DD supporters probably want to forget about Sheridan because the comparison just doesn’t look good. Sheridan is an example of what a GREAT coach running the program the right way can realistically achieve at State. He may not even be able to do that now given the lay of the land and the strength in the conference.
I’m pulling for DD. I personally like him. I want him to do well. I want him to do so well and for us to reward him for doing so well that he stays and builds a Beamer like program. That’d be fantastic. I don’t see that trajectory, and I don’t see those inputs, but maybe I’m wrong.
Grey: Some valid points there. There’s room for some “other side” views as well:
– Walking into a worse situation: Amato walked into a much tougher situation than DD — much tougher. MOC had tanked. We had awful facilities. FSU was at the tail end of a juggernaut. VT just up the road had come off a title game appearance. Phil Fulmer had Tennessee rolling to our west. VT and UT were pulling kids heavily out of NC. Amato lucked out with Rivers, but that kid was recruited by big schools to play safety. He feasibly had nothing when he walked in the door other than a love for NC State and a belief he could get it done.
– QB: We had Sherrifs in year one. He may not have been all world, but he’s done okay at UConn. The staff wouldn’t even let him throw the ball. There was more QB talent there than we showed, and that’s back to how we played the cards we were dealt.
– Installing a scheme to fit Pete Thomas: I’ve never bought the “Pete was brought in to sit in the shotgun” argument. Pete wasn’t that good of a player and nothing about his time at Colorado State suggested he was ready for major minutes at the P5 level. That was on TOB. Pete did seemingly have good leadership abilities, put the team first and tried his hardest (exactly what you want out of back up). People seem to forget that this staff brought in Mitchell who was the starter game 1 despite really having played QB for several years. Yes, they installed what they wanted to install despite personnel issues and took some lumps for it. There’s nothing that I’ve seen that suggested that a tailor made offense for Pete Thomas wins significantly more games. Maybe the argument is that if Mitchell hadn’t have gotten hurt, we’d have won more. The offense definitely derailed quickly in game one after he got hurt.
– Pressure of losing: Yep it sucks. It’s this business though, and it is at every level. D3 coaches right now are getting fired for not winning enough games, which is just ridiculous. I’m sure it did snowball though and it probably caused the staff to take some risks that they otherwise wouldn’t have.
– Bad game management though hasn’t just been in year one. It’s been there all three years. It’s the use of time outs, situations, down and distance, sense of urgency in the play calling (both offensively and defensively), the absolutely lost look that happens when we build any kind of lead, the lack of being up to play in big games and the maddening predictability on down/distance/motion/formation in the offensive play calling. I’m fine with putting the past in the past, but when you see the same things year in and year out, then it’s foolish to ignore them.
– Like you, I’m a focus on the positive guy in life, and really feel that way with NC State football. I personally don’t understand why people have the expectations they do when looking at the inputs. What I see with the inputs and this year’s schedule is 6-6. If we go 7-5, he’s over achieved. If we go 8-4, he legitimately needs some coach of the year talk.
– If we have a losing record, lose to UNC and lose to ECU, I personally think he is gone. I don’t think it matters what Yow told him before year one. Fair or unfair, I just think that’s what is going to happen. I think (and hope) we beat ECU so it’s taken off the table early.
– If we go 5-7, but beat either ECU or UNC, then DD is back for year 5. There will be some grumbling though and I suspect that recruiting will be fairly weak.
Yogi: I completely agreed with that last post right up until the defense of the year one record. TOB had seemingly stopped recruiting, had no real answers at QB, and was paper thin on the OL. The situation wasn’t great talent wise and it was poorest at the most impotant positions.
The decision to be “pro-active” with TOB was a good one to hide how bad we really were and to get a “better” coach hired. In reality, maybe it was a red flag that the coach didn’t quite look at things closely enough. It also placed more scrutiny on the rebuild because it wasn’t as obvious to the rank and file fan how bad we were about to be. It cut both ways.
Having said that, it is very tough to defend that year one performance. It takes a special kind of awful to go 0-8 in league play. To my untrained eye, year one was filled with coaching gaffes. The staff was dealt a bad hand, but they collectively misplayed it.
Unfortunately for the staff, that year one egg can’t be ignored or washed from memory. When one sees similar coaching mistakes in year two and three, then it erodes confidence. The mulligan and any real rope with the fan base is used up. Recruiting had to have been tough. It’s a tough uphill battle from that point out.
Had the staff just managed 3-5 in year one, the view of the situation would be drastically different. Fair or unfair, there’d be some grumbling about “no better than TOB” but last year would have been viewed through a different lense, as would expectations for this season and a belief about the general trendline.
Admittedly it is a razor thin margin for error. It’s not fair. It’s reality though.
I personally think DD is here as long as Yow is, barring that perfect storm I described earlier in the post. If that happens, I think a change gets made. I don’t think it happens though and clearly hope it doesn’t. I want DD to succeed and NC State to do well.
Grey: I agree with you regarding the fact that DD is the DC and have said it many times. If DD has to fire Hux, then he’s effectively admitting to firing himself. Having said that, if we’re 5-7 (or worse) this year, then Hux is the sacrificial lamb and DD comes back for year 5 on a red hot seat. Hopefully it is a non-issue.
I’d agree with McCallum about the LB and WR play. The LB play has been pretty awful ever since Nate Irving graduated. That was our last real game changer at LB. We also either don’t have good speed, good route design or good route running at the WR spot. It’s hard to tell from the TV coverage which it really is. Hopefully these areas have improved.
I agree with what someone posted about Ledford. I think that will prove to be our best offseason move. I feel the best about our OL coaching that I have since year one of TOB (where I had hopes of those BC lines that were sure to come). Unlike TOB’s (and Amato’s) tenure we actually seem to be recruiting, retaining and developing enough talent to have a real OL. I’m convinced that the OL and the QB are the two most important position units in college football.
Some quick thoughts, not necessarily laid out in any sort of argument:
– McCallum and others raise some good points regarding talent. On some level, we’re not going to be better until we recruit better players. Seems simple enough, but I’m not sure that we’re fully committed at an institutional level to do that (nor do I think we should be). Hugh Freeze made big noise with recruiting at Ole Miss (how does little old Ole Miss suddenly recruit so well?), but now we’re seeing why. It’s hard to have top 25 expectations without top 25 level recruiting and I just don’t see what is coming to change that (with DD at the helm or otherwise). We weren’t willing to cut those corners a few years back for Calipari and that was only a handful of players. Are we really going to do it for football at a level needed to get us over the top? I don’t really think so.– It’s not just the talent level, but the depth and age of the players (physical maturity) hasn’t been good. WF showed that using the redshirting and player development model they could catch lightning in a bottle and win the league. I hate to say it, but that’s the goal for our football program — trying to incrementally improve and get things lined up for one great season. I do think DD gets this aspect and has been redshirting heavily. I think he said he’s only playing 4 freshman this year. Our last coach ran so many kids off (or just had recruiting misses), that we were constantly playing young kids.
– Cutcliffe is a good and veteran coach. People want to compare DD to Cut and I just don’t see it that way. It’s like every coaching defender in basketball wanting to compare a coach to K in order to “give them time” and previously everyone wanted to compare all the football coaches to Beamer. I see DD as much more like Clawson at WF. Objectively, do you give Clawson unlimited time? Should Duke have given Roof, Franks or any of those other coaches unlimited time? Had they done that, would they have Cutcliffe? Nope. At a certain point, you give the guy enough time to see what they’ve got, and if they don’t have it you move them on. The clock’s ticking from the second the hire is made, but that’s also true of ANY highly visible and highly paid job.
– We need to understand our spot in the pecking order of major college football. NC State is a middling Power 5 position in a basketball league that is going to pay near the bottom of the league. We’re historically a .500 program. Does the history dictate the future? Nope. It does suggest though that there are significant challenges to this job, and a long history of people that could do no better than mediocre. If we expect top 25 results, we need to have the “inputs” to generate a top 25 program — budgets, recruiting, facilities, a willingness to color between the lines, a willingness to go heavily JUCO, a massive PR campaign, etc.. If one goes to Tennessee, Texas, Michigan, Penn State, Florida, etc., you can see the differences in culture, budgets, etc. needed to play at the big level. NC State just isn’t it in football.
– In basketball, we have top 25 inputs. That’s where we should focus our resources and scrutiny before we squander away those top 25 inputs. This football thing (for NC State) should merely be a fall tailgating distraction until the round ball comes out. When we whine about football, it just drowns the legitimate complaints out in a sea of noise from “the lunatic fringe.”
– NC State fans are our own worst enemies. We sell out football every year regardless of the product put on the field. If we’re NOT willing at an institutional level to do the things needed to make a winner (and I’m not saying we should), then the W/L record isn’t all that important. Selling the stadium out and turning a profit is, which our fans allow us to blindly do every year. What’s the incentive to really change things? What’s the incentive to pay more $$$ for a big name coach (particularly if that coach might ask for some institutional advantages)? The answer is none. The only thing that would change that is an impact to the bottom line, and I don’t see that coming given we just sold out yet again for a team that has a high water mark for preseason predictions at 7-5.
– The best plan for NC State football is a “system” coach. We need some mad scientist approach running a wacky system with different formations, look, tempo, etc., or some weird defense. There has to be some things that we do really uniquely and well that would make us hard to prepare for in a short week. It probably wouldn’t work well in bowl games, but it at least might get us up to the point where we could pick up some transcendent talents (like PR or RW) that could allow us to catch lightning in the bottle for a year. Here’s to hoping Drinkwitz is that because what I’ve seen thus far out of DD is a plodding, midwest approach that is much better suited to Alabama, Georgia, Ohio State, Michigan, etc.. I just don’t think that’s how one is going to win here.
Good review and I like looking at each of the games as a series of individual chances based on the week. That’s really the way the season plays out.
Having said that, I’m doing the same analysis and going with 6-6. I think we’re at about 35%-40% of a chance to win against UNC. I just don’t like how we match up on the road.
I also think we’re at about a 25% on ND. The talent gap there is too big. ND is used to taking the other teams’ best shots out of programs looking for signature wins. We’re looking for any sort of signature win under DD. This team and DD don’t magically inherit the big win mojo that we’ve had over the past 30 years.
Must win is about consequences, not preparation.
Exactly. Going back to my original point, coaches at NC State do not make it if they have a losing season while losing to ECU and UNC. They can survive it very early in their tenure, but they don’t survive it if done twice. DD has used up his mulligan.
Given the difficulty of the schedule, we’re on a razor thin line on having a winning season. Most predicting a winning season are predicting a win against ECU. In contrast though, lose to ECU and it’s going to be tough to have a winning season. If we can’t beat ECU, we’re probably not winning many swing games.
I personally think UNC is a big unknown. They could regress to the norm, or they could have another year where they build some momentum and come down to our game feeling highly confident. Either way though, I think we don’t need any more pressure involved in our game with UNC than we already put on ourselves when we play them. Typically UNC is fairly loose when they play us and are playing fast.
Imagine the scenario where we’ve lost to ECU, and are staring a losing season in the face going into Chapel Hill. The wolves will be howling. There will be blood in the water. The local media will have the heat turned up. Think the players are going to be loose in that scenario? I don’t. I think that’s a recipe for whipping.
End the season with a whipping against UNC, having lost to ECU and with a losing record and I personally think DD is done. I don’t think even Yow and the administration’s aversion to being proactive can save him. Maybe he’d get one more year, but his seat would be so hot that he’d not really have a reasonable expectation of success.
I think the staff needs to view ECU as a must win game. I looked back at our history over the past 40 years and a head football coach at NC State rarely makes it past a season where they:
– Lose to ECU
– Lose to UNC
– Have a losing record
They can survive two of the three. They won’t survive doing all three. Losing to ECU would almost virtually ensure that a losing record will happen. That means the season would hinge on going into UNC and needing a win and I just don’t like the odds in that scenario.Fortunately, I think we will beat ECU so it will not be an issue. At least that’s what I’m hoping happens. 🙂 In my 6-6 prediction, I’ve got ECU down as a W.
I drive a mid-sized pick up and space typically isn’t an issue in a round about.
What is an issue is if:
1) There’s any intentional stoppage within the round about (stop lights, cross walks, etc.)
2) There any intentional stoppage near the egress of the round about (e.g. a stop light that backs up traffic to within the round about)The issue isn’t the round abouts in either case. The issue is the stoplights. It baffles me how embedded they are in our road design. Stop lights are expensive to install, require ongoing power, need to be maintained and artificially delay users. No thanks.
If you want to see a rant, watch my wife at a series of “properly” (or improperly) timed stoplights.
I’ve traveled (driven) all over Europe and love traffic circles. If you’ve ever driven through a city with a series of properly designed and implemented circles, you’d potentially re-think the wisdom of the stop light.
True story — I was stuck in a massive traffic jam on the only coastal highway in Portugal. We sat for an hour with traffic backed up going into this small town. It was the highway, so there was no place to go. What was the cause? A stop light, at a lightly loaded intersection within the town. Once past that, things immediately opened up. Why was that stoplight there? Apparently only to stop traffic to make people turn into a couple of restaurants / businesses. It was seemingly clearly there for non-needed reasons.
When traffic circles seem to fail is when they’re paired with stop lights. One of the worst implementations I’ve seen are the stoplight filled ones in Washington DC.
The issues with Hillsborough St. to me have nothing to do with the traffic circle. As Packfanistan states, it’s been that way for a long time (at least since the 1990s). The issues are with the businesses there, the rents, the student housing (or lack thereof) around it, and the general growth and push of students towards Centennial Campus. NC State is just as much a part of the problem.
I think we’re 6-6 plus or minus one win. A good year is plus one. A bad year is minus one.
There’s a razor thin margin for error. To me it will be determined by the QB play, play of the back 7 and the coaches and schemes.
My thoughts:
1) No one is leaving any time soon. It’s not worth it unless the move is from one ESPN conference to another (i.e. ACC to SEC).
2) ND isn’t joining for football any time soon. If this couldn’t bring them in the fold fully, then they won’t be doing it voluntarily. They’ll continue to have their cake and eat it too.
3) ESPN would be very wise to break the app out separately from bundled service tied to legacy cords. Maybe they’ve already done so. This is about the only content that I’d pay to see on TV, but I wouldn’t pay much. I imagine there are many cord cutters like me out there.
4) We’ll see Raycom phased out, which we’ll miss when there’s no “free” OTA content.I was really hoping the ACC would renegotiate with NBC or Fox. I think we’ll always play second fiddle to the SEC on ESPN.
I think we’ll be 6-6. I think our team will likely be better in many ways than last year, but the record may not reflect it due to a tougher schedule.
Of course, if we don’t get competent QB play, all bets are off…….
44rules: I’m in agreement that leaving scholarships on the table has been a questionable / baffling strategy. We’ve routinely left more on the table than teams on probation have taken away. It’s made no sense and it clearly caught us last year (though I’d argue it has hurt us in other years as well).
As you say, hopefully the staff is seeing the error in their ways. Hopefully this signals that we’re going to start using them all. I think we still have some available.
I’m still in my zen state, have been for months and will be this year. I hope the staff changes help the coaching as much as they help the recruiting. I’ve heard that the last two signings were more linked to Early than the new assistants, so maybe this is how things would have played out roster wise anyways.
That’s a strong finish to the recruiting season. I’m glad we have a few players. Hopefully everyone we hope will be available will actually be there on day 1.
I’m holding out hope for improved defense. One assistant was known for his teams winning with defense and the other was known as a motivator expecting high levels of effort. Both tend to be vital to improved defense.
People harp on the defense, but I hope to a return of a semblance of a real structured offense. The last two years we’ve basically played isolation while running a wing off some swings to shoot a three.
Our pace of play has also dropped off. What I’m saying, is that we need work in all three facets (defense, offense and transition). The bodies are here. Let’s see if the coaching improves.
CD: That’s kind of my point. Our program doesn’t seemingly have big cash behind it, yet we’re doing pretty well. If the budget is as it seems, then I’m happy with the results.
Thanks for the info on the scholarships. Equal footing there it seems.
Rick: No worries. The post was there, but then I went back to add in linked pictures so people could see with their own eyes and draw their own conclusions. When the links got added it disappeared, so I was sure it was just a SPAM filter. 🙂
If many like me don’t follow baseball closely, they may not really understand the current state of our “peers” relative to the Doak. Doing that quick search exercise was eye opening. Yeah, the Doak’s improved from when I was a student, but it’s still behind from what I can tell. Some of those stadiums seem better than the Durham Bulls Athletics park (e.g. LSU).
I don’t know the answer to this, but are baseball scholarships even full rides? For the longest time they were partials. If they’re still partials at State are they full rides elsewhere? I think it’d be very difficult to recruit if one school offered full scholarships and another only offered partials.
A post of mine from yesterday disappeared when I added in some links to show the Doak against other stadiums. From what I can see, we’re on par with UNC Charlotte and ECU, but trail UVA, UNC, FSU, Miami, Louisville, Florida, LSU, etc.. Maybe a mod can recover that post because a picture is worth 1000 words.
I am not making excuses, nor am I saying that one has to have facilities to win. What I think is that facilities are a proxy for budget/money, and budget/money does win in college sports.
I say this because if our stadium is a proxy for our baseball budget (and I don’t really know), it would suggest we’re punching above our weight. I don’t think Avent is perfect but I’m fine with the results given what we are seemingly paying.
Now, if someone came back and told me our baseball budget was higher than FSU, Miami, Louisville, UVA and UNC’s, then you might change my opinion. Not that my opinion really matters……..
woflanatic: I hear you. When I was at State, Doak wasn’t really different than our High School’s field. In all honesty, our High School’s field may have been better.
Unfortunately I think the arms race that most seem to recognize in college football stadiums is pretty much everywhere in college athletics. I see some of these baseball facilities on TV and they seemingly rival the Durham Bulls Athletics park. There’s been a massive influx of $$$ into the power conference schools for athletics and they have to spend it somewhere given they are “non-profits.”
They say a picture is worth 1000 words, and here are some to think about:
and then there’s the Doak:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/60/Doak_Field.jpgAs much as the Doak has clearly improved, it’s still behind that of our peers, at least to my untrained eye. You can look at the renovations we did and tell some were done on the cheap. I think half the ACC has done some sort of facilities expansion in baseball in the past 10 years. We improved, but I think are still behind, and in the round of improvements probably fell further behind those that upgraded within the same cycle.
Again, I don’t think that facilities equate to success. I do think the facilities represent the budgets though. Success does seemingly align to budget in college sports. Are we getting more results than we’re paying for in baseball? Quite possibly so.
Interesting comments. Yow seems to like her coaches a bit cocky. Maybe this plays well with his boss?
I felt like when we missed the NCAAs despite having Rodon and Turner that Avent’s time was short. Of course there’s the flip side that I think that we pay near the bottom and have facilities near the bottom. Maybe we are getting better than what we’re paying for?
I don’t follow baseball closely, so I don’t really know and have any valid opinion. I wasn’t following closely enough to realize he was ejected for some of the regional games. I find the comments re. Palmero pretty telling though. He’s forgotten more than I’d ever know about baseball.
Another NC State meltdown to end a season. Oh well, I guess you have to end them some way. Short of winning a title, every other team goes home disappointed.
It never really felt like we had “it” this season. I know we started highly ranked, but we didn’t come into the tournament with a lot of momentum. I had us going to the Supers, but that was before Williamson got hurt.
I didn’t really think the ACC was that strong in baseball this year. Yeah, a lot of teams got in, but it feels like we have 1-3 legit Omaha threats with Louisville being our best team. We’ll get one in (Miami) and I think Louisville will get there, but who knows about FSU against Florida?
My question is how this sits with Yow. I’ve heard rumblings that she’s been after Avent. I personally think Avent’s teams have outperformed their resources, but I don’t follow baseball closely.
Maybe this should potentially be retitled “NC State fans our our own worst enemy.” We fill the stadiums regardless of performance…………
BJD: Agreed. I’m currently in my zen state with respect to Gott. My hope for this year is that we get Yurt cleared, Abu and Anya back (looking good there), Nard red shirts (long term health is way more important than basketball), DSJ and Henderson come back healthy, we see a heavy dose of Amoeba zone and the return to a semblance of a structured offense.
Do these things and we should see a Top 25 team, a secured ACC Tournmanet double bye (which is essential for finally winning something), a good NCAA seed (4-5), and an Elite 8. If all those good things happen, that should be the reasonable expectation given the current “new” state of college basketball.
Lets embrace those expectations. No more excuse mongering, lowering expectations, etc..
83: Don’t get me wrong. My opinion of the head man has not changed one bit. I’ve said in other threads that I’ve reached s zen place on what is and will be as long as Yow is here. As long as Arch is at Dayton and not a high major, then what will be will be with is and we will wait this out.
I see a one year window. We’ve effectively pushed all in but we’re holding a pair of Kings (2 potential lottery picks). Get Abu and Anya back and that’s enough talent to go to the Elite 8 in the current state of college basketball. It’s up to the staff to make it happen.
I’m a little worried about the “no defensive coach” comments. Heath came with a rep for defense and his teams at UT Martin seemed to win with defense.
