Ten takeaways from the Wolfpack's 2021 football schedule

The ACC released its 2021 football schedule Thursday in what is hoped to be a return to normalcy for collegiate sports.

The Wolfpacker breaks down the Pack's unique 2020 schedule below with its top 10 takeaways:

For the second straight season, NC State's original schedule begins on a Thursday and ends on a Friday.

Last year's opener was originally going to be Louisville on the road on a Thursday night. The game was then moved to a Wednesday before it was scrapped all together when the conference re-did the schedule due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The last time the Pack opened a season on a Thursday was 2016 when it beat William & Mary 48-14.

NC State will end the regular season playing UNC on the Friday after Thanksgiving. It upset the Tar Heels 28-21 in 2016 in a similarly scheduled Friday game that head coach Dave Doeren has credited with helping to save his job in Raleigh. Last year's contest in Chapel Hill was also supposed to end the regular season on a Friday.

The schedule marks the return of divisional play, and also welcomes back three Atlantic Division rivals that NC State did not face in 2020 when the slates were remade without a divisional alignment due to the coronavirus.

NC State did not play Boston College, Clemson or Louisville as a result, and ironically those are the first three divisional games for NC State in 2021.

The Pack opens ACC play home against Clemson, who will once again be the prohibitive favorite in the league after six straight conference titles. The last time the Wolfpack began ACC action against the Tigers was in Doeren's first season in Raleigh.

The third-ranked Clemson team traveled to Carter-Finley Stadium on a Thursday night in 2013 in a game that featured some controversy. The Tigers prevailed, 26-14, but the Wolfpack had a potential long touchdown run by receiver Bryan Underwood on a reverse called back when a ref ruled he stepped out of bounds.

Replays suggest, at best, it was inconclusive if he did, but the call could not be reviewed. It would have been reviewable if the official had not ruled he stepped out. The play would have given NC State a 14-13 lead midway through the third quarter. Instead, a few plays later the Wolfpack turned it over on a fumble and Clemson quickly capitalized with a touchdown.

NC State was set to host Mississippi State last season, but obviously COVID-19 changed all that. It was the second straight time the Wolfpack lost a scheduled Power Five opponent. In 2018, a highly anticipated showdown with a ranked West Virginia squad in Raleigh would be canceled due to Hurricane Florence.

That means that the last time NC State played a home non-conference game against a team considered a Power Five opponent was when Notre Dame came to Carter-Finley in 2016, and many fans skipped that game because Hurricane Matthew was rolling through Raleigh exactly at the time of kickoff.

The last time the Wolfpack hosted a team from an actual Power Five league was in 2009 when NC State had both South Carolina and Pittsburgh (then in the Big East in what was considered a BCS conference). The Pack lost to the Gamecocks in the opener but then had a dramatic rally to win over Pitt.

The next chance NC State fans have to see a Power Five conference opponent at home will be Texas Tech in 2022.

The Wolfpack-Mississippi State series has been one mainly played out in bowl games. In 2015, NFL star quarterback Dak Prescott led the Bulldogs to a comfortable 51-28 win over the Wolfpack in the Belk Bowl.

Wolfpack contributor Tim Peeler wrote about the two previous games in a column prior to that Belk Bowl:

“The two previous bowl games were both down-to-the-wire affairs in vastly different atmospheres. The 1963 Liberty Bowl was played at 102,000-seat Municipal Stadium with just 8,309 fans in attendance on a blustery day that featured 19-degree temperatures and a 17 mile-per-hour wind. It was the last time the Liberty Bowl was played in the City of Brotherly Love, moving to Memphis, Tenn., after a one-year layover in Atlantic City, N.J.

“The 1995 Peach Bowl was played in the climate-controlled comfort of the Georgia Dome, in front of the second-largest crowd (at that time) to ever see a game there.”

Mississippi State won the Liberty Bowl 16-12, while the Pack prevailed in Atlanta 28-24.

The only other three meetings were all regular-season contests that predated World War II, with NC State winning in 1930 and 1931, the latter on the road, in a pair of shut outs before Mississippi State beat the Pack in 1940, 26-10.

The first time that NC State faced a Skip Holtz-coached team was 2006, when East Carolina knocked off the Wolfpack, 21-16, in Raleigh during what was Chuck Amato’s final game as NC State’s head coach.

The following two seasons, NC State upset a pair of ECU squads, winning 34-20 in Greenville and then knocking off an undefeated and ranked Pirates team, 30-24 in overtime, in what is most remembered for being rookie quarterback Russell Wilson’s breakout game.

Holtz, the son of College Football Hall of Famer and former NC State coach Lou Holtz, left ECU for three years at South Florida until he was fired in 2012. He quickly landed on his feet at Louisiana Tech, and in his first game there he faced NC State in Doeren's first game with the Wolfpack. NC State prevailed in the 2013 season opener, 40-14.

That season would be Holtz’s only losing campaign at Louisiana Tech thus far, although they went .500 at 5-5 in 2020. Prior to last season, Holtz had guided his team to six straight winning seasons, including four years of at least nine wins, and six consecutive bowl victories.

In one piece of irony in the schedule, Louisiana Tech will actually open its season at Mississippi State a week before NC State travels to Starkville.

Although NC State never played South Florida in Holtz’s three seasons there, it has played them three times. Amato led the Pack to a 14-0 win in the Meineke Car Care Bowl in Charlotte in 2005. That was the Bulls’ first-ever bowl appearance.

A ranked USF team destroyed NC State, minus Wilson one week after that dramatic victory over ECU, 41-10 in Raleigh. Then in 2014, NC State returned the favor with a 49-17 win in Tampa.

There was a time where USF, especially between 2005-10, was considered one of the premier mid-major football teams in the country. Former Bulls head coach Willie Taggart restored some of that luster between 2013-16 before leaving to take the job at Oregon and then Florida State.

Charlie Strong, fresh off being let go at Texas, replaced Taggart and led USF to a 10-2 mark and final top-25 ranking in 2017, but they fell to 7-6 and then 4-8 the next two seasons, and then Strong was fired.

Former Clemson co-offensive coordinator Tim Scott was hired to replace Strong and went 1-8 in 2020.

NC State is 3-3 all-time against Mississippi State, 2-1 vs. South Florida and 1-0 against Louisiana Tech. The one team on the non-conference schedule that has a winning record against NC State is, believe it or not, Furman from the Football Championship Subdivision (FCS).

The Wolfpack is just 5-8-4 all-time against Furman, and not all of that is predating modern football alliances. In 1984, and then again 1985, Furman head coach Dick Sheridan made back-to-back trips to Raleigh and returned home with wins, the latter a 42-20 triumph. Those victories played a large role in Sheridan being hired at NC State and becoming one of the Pack’s most successful coaches of all time.

NC State did beat Furman, 49-16, in 2017, the last time the two teams met.

Furman has not yet played its “2020” season. The FCS elected to hold its season in the spring, so the program will kick off the campaign on Feb. 20 and is playing eight games over a nine-week span.

In 2019, Furman went 8-5 and lost in the first round of the FCS playoff to Austin Peay, 42-6.

Here is a breakdown of how the other Wolfpack opponents did in 2020, broken down in chronological order of the schedule.

One side story to every schedule is who does the opponent play the week before they face NC State? Here’s the rundown:

Mississippi State — hosting Louisiana Tech

Furman — TBD

Clemson — hosting Georgia Tech

Louisiana Tech — hosting North Texas

Boston College — Bye week

Miami — at North Carolina

Louisville — hosting Boston College

Florida State — at Clemson

Wake Forest — hosting North Carolina

Syracuse — at Louisville

North Carolina — hosting Wofford

Arguably the toughest stretch of the season is when NC State plays four out of five games on the road after its bye week on Oct. 9.

It begins with games at Boston College (Oct. 16) and Miami (Oct. 23) before hosting Louisville. Then the Pack plays at Florida State (Nov. 6) and at Wake Forest (Nov. 13).

This is also a challenging year for those fans who want to hit the road and watch the Wolfpack play. Only one game — at Wake Forest — is a manageable drive from Raleigh.

Here is a breakdown of the driving distances for NC State's road games overall this season:

• Miami (Miami Gardens, Fla.) — 794 miles

• Boston College (Chestnut Hill, Mass.) — 706 miles

• Mississippi State (Starkville, Miss.) — 687 miles

• Florida State (Tallahassee, Fla.) — 624 miles

• Wake Forest (Winston-Salem, N.C.) — 101 miles

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