1/16/2020 football Edit

The Wolfpacker's No. 6 story of the decade: The 2014 class leads football

Matt Carter • TheWolfpackCentral

Editor

Throughout the week, The Wolfpacker will be enumerating its choices for the top 10 stories of the past decade that was in NC State athletics.

No. 6: The 2014 class leads football

Bradley Chubb headlined a banner 2014 recruiting class that led NC State to some of its best successes in football. (Rivals/North Carolina State)

When Dave Doeren was hired in December of 2013, NC State director of athletics Debbie Yow wanted to improve recruiting after lackluster results under his predecessor Tom O’Brien. She rather famously blurted out in a team meeting when explaining O’Brien’s dismissal that she wanted a coach that would bring Alabama-type talent to Raleigh.

Realistically, that would be hard for a Wolfpack coach to do on the gridiron. But the 2014 class was Doeren’s first full effort, and he signed a collection of talent that turned out to be the type Alabama would have been accepted.

Prior to the group arriving, NC State had two national award winners in football — Marc Primanti (Lou Groza Collegiate Placekicker Award in 1996) and Jim Ritcher (Outland Trophy for best interior lineman in 1979). The 2014 class doubled that after Bradley Chubb won the Bronko Nagurski Trophy as college football’s best defensive player in 2017 and Garrett Bradbury received the Rimington Trophy as the nation’s top center a year later.

And that is only the top line on the list of accomplishments achieved by the group, which produced eight NFL Draft picks overall, at least three more than any other NCSU class since the turn of the century. Four players made All-America lists, and a fifth was a Freshman All-American. Seven more garnered an all-conference selection.

In their five years at NC State, the team won 40 games, including back-to-back nine-win seasons to cap their tenure, the first to do that since head coach Dick Sheridan’s final two teams in 1991-92. The Wolfpack also had the second best ACC record in the conference between 2017-18 at 11-5.

The only time the Pack won more games in a five-year span was when it captured 41 victories from 1990-94.

The class was never home for the holidays, going to five consecutive bowls. The only longer streak at NC State was seven straight from 1988-94.

This group will be remembered for being Doeren’s first — and more notably one of the best in school history.