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Column: A (rough) blip on an otherwise positive year

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Texas A&M running back Trayveon Williams ran for 236 yards and three scores.
Texas A&M running back Trayveon Williams ran for 236 yards and three scores. (USA Today Sports Images)
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Analyze and break it down all you want.

What Monday evening proved was simple: NC State is not as good as Texas A&M (see scoreboard: Texas A&M 52, NC State 13), just like it was not at Clemson’s level earlier in the year. Both teams are talented top 25 squads that played each other to a two-point game in week two, with the Tigers preserving the victory on a failed two-point conversion attempt by the Aggies.

NC State showed it was a better than average football team — it proved that with solid wins over Virginia and Boston College and thumping lesser teams like Louisville and FSU — but not a great squad. That was evident against Clemson and Texas A&M.

You could bemoan NC State not having two of its best players in receiver Kelvin Harmon and linebacker Germaine Pratt, and having to plan for a game missing two of its offensive assistant coaches, but just like Boston College missing star running back AJ Dillon against State did not probably matter in that game, those factors likely did not make the difference in Jacksonville.

NC State won nine games and spent a chunk of the year ranked in the polls when some national forecasters didn’t even think the Wolfpack would go bowling after suffering heavy losses to the NFL from last year’s nine-win team.

That’s a tribute to the program that Dave Doeren has built at NC State. This is just the second time in school history NC State has gone to at least five straight bowls, and it marks the first back-to-back nine-win campaigns since 1991-92.

NC State pulled that off that thanks to one of the most efficient quarterbacks in school history in sixth-year senior quarterback Ryan Finley, arguably its best receiving corps ever and an offensive line that included three stellar seniors. Throw in a late-developing 1,000-yard season from senior running back Reggie Gallaspy Jr., and the offense led the way.

Unfortunately that unit went out on a sour note against Texas A&M. Finley’s backbreaking pick six to start the second half opened the floodgates to the ensuing bludgeoning.

NC State fans should view the trajectory of the program in a positive fashion. Losing another marquee game to an SEC opponent on a neutral setting stings and adds a layer of frustration. The Pack lost high profile openers to Tennessee (2012) and South Carolina (2017) and bowl games to Mississippi State (2015) and Texas A&M. All four, to varying degrees, represented opportunities the Pack did not meet.

However, year six of Doeren’s tenure built successfully off year five. Over the past two years, NC State has graduated from an average team to a fringe top-25 program. It’s a vast improvement from being a downright poor team in 2013.

The returns on the underclassmen are promising, too.

Freshman running back Ricky Person Jr., sophomore receivers Emeka Emezie and C.J. Riley, freshman wideout Thayer Thomas and sophomore tight end Cary Angeline look like weapons on offense. Sophomores Joshua Fedd-Jackson, Joe Sculthorpe and Justin Witt look able to continue the string of good recent offensive lines.

Freshman defensive tackle Alim McNeill looks like a future star, and the Pack signed one of the best defensive line classes in the country for the class of 2019. The linebacker corps of sophomores Louis Acceus and Brock Miller and freshman Isaiah Moore looks very promising. The youthful secondary members such as safety Tyler Baker-Williams, nickel Tanner Ingle and corner Teshaun Smith all received valuable reps (and in the cases of Ingle and Smith starts) this season while flashing potential.

Finding a quarterback will be the key, but Doeren should have four dynamic options to choose from: athletic redshirt freshman Matt McKay, Florida State transfer Bailey Hockman (who will be in the same class as McKay) and a pair of rookies in Devin Leary, who redshirted this fall, and Ty Evans, who will arrive in the spring.

Both Leary and Evans are two-time state champions who were among the most prolific passers in their state's history (Leary was the all-time leading passer in New Jersey and Evans one of just three quarterbacks in Colorado to have over 10,000 total yards). Both Evans and Leary were Gatorade Players of the Year in their respective states and Elite 11 quarterbacks.

If one of the four can step up, then the upward trend for Wolfpack football could continue — and in the big picture NC State fans should look past the bowl game and reflect more on that fact. Not since Dick Sheridan, who stepped down after back-to-back nine-wins campaign to cap his seventh season, has NC State been heading in the right direction this far into a coach’s tenure.

Both Mike O’Cain and Chuck Amato had fallen off their best years and were let go after year seven, and Tom O’Brien was stagnating and headed towards a likely fall when he was let go following his sixth year.

This season showed NC State still has a gap to make up with the elite talents, but at least it’s nice to think about how to continue closing that margin, especially considering where the process started with Doeren, rather than dreaming of potentially even winning nine games, as fifth-year senior center Garrett Bradbury best put it.

“I think it's night and day from what this program looks like now versus what it did five years ago when I first stepped on campus,” he said after the loss. “We would have been ecstatic five years ago to finish with nine wins. We would have been celebrating in the locker room. It would have been amazing.

“And now we're all disappointed because we feel like we underachieved.”

That’s the sign of a maturing program.

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