NC State is a healthy favorite when it hosts South Florida Thursday for a 7:30 p.m. kickoff at Carter-Finley Stadium in Raleigh. The game will be televised on the ACC Network.

Under head coach Dave Doeren, the Pack has never lost a home opener and is 7-1 overall in season openers under Doeren. The visiting Bulls are coming off a 1-8 campaign in 2020, and that one victory was over a Football Championship Subdivision (FCS) squad.

Can NC State avoid an upset? The Wolfpacker staff makes their guesses.

You are not likely to find a much more paranoid profession than the college football coaching community.

Few open their practices to the media anymore. (Hat tip to Wake Forest, which still does.) Over the past decade the injury report became the next casualty. Apparently revealing about 48 hours before the game who may or may not play when most teams are done practicing for the week was akin to handing over the playbook to the opposing coaches during the summer and allowing them months of preparations.

Then came the oddity of some schools not updating their rosters until the last minute, something UNC did recently when head coach Mack Brown was first hired. Michigan's Jim Harbaugh is another who is a bit notorious for his roster secrecy.

It appears that depth charts could start being the next casualty. Georgia Tech’s third-year head coach Geoff Collins rather strangely would release a list of players expected to play each week, but not in any order. It's apparently called an "above the line" chart.

South Florida’s Jeff Scott took it to another level this week. He just didn’t agree to exchange one with NC State. Thus both schools did not have an official depth chart.

Scott can probably have some slack cut for him. After all, there were times last season where he apparently had as few as 64 players available to practice one week. Normally, a head coach can count on somewhere around 90 players.

With all the new transfers Scott has now playing for him (11 brought in last offseason alone), a new passing game coordinator in Bobby Bentley and now a full roster at his disposal, Scott potentially has the advantage of surprises that the infinitely more established team on the other sideline will not have.

The bottom line is NC State is a more talented roster than South Florida, and the hunch here is that will eventually show up in the final score. But I am going to go with an expectation that it could be a blowout slow to materialize.

South Florida will use the benefit of its unknowns to keep it close for about a quarter and maybe halfway through the second, but NC State opens up a lead going into halftime and pulls away afterward, covering the spread of 18.5 points in the process.

Matt Carter's prediction: NC State 41, South Florida 21

The question for me this week isn't if NC State will win its season opener against South Florida Thursday. To me, it's by how much.

The Wolfpack clearly has the better team than the Bulls on paper, and the first true home crowd advantage in nearly two years at Carter-Finley Stadium should present a tough challenge for USF starting quarterback Cadin Fortin, who will be making his third career start and his first on the road.

South Florida had a dismal 1-8 overall record last fall. And when the Bulls lost, they did so convincingly. Notre Dame beat them 52-0, Tulsa won handily 42-13, and even East Carolina defeated USF 44-24. It's hard to imagine, however, that the Bulls could be any worse than they were last year. And there won't be any lack of motivation for South Florida with the opportunity to start the fall with a road victory over a Power Five opponent to start the turn-around attempt.

Still, South Florida still has some strides to make as a program before it's ready to take down a fringe Top 25 opponent on the road, especially in front of a rocking opposing crowd on a Thursday night.

The Bulls' pass rush stinks, and so does their pass protection. Expect NC State to win the battle at the line of scrimmage and cruise to at least a two-possession victory in week one.

Justin H. Williams’ prediction: NC State 41, South Florida 16

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