Here are some the thoughts from those who covered NC State's 24-10 loss at Mississippi State in Starkville, Miss., on Saturday night.
• Matt Carter, TheWolfpacker.com — Column: A familiar theme for Wolfpack football
Whether it’s losing on the road at Mississippi State or at West Virginia two years ago; or getting swept in a home-and-home series of season openers with South Carolina in 2008 and 2009; or falling to Tennessee and the Gamecocks on neutral fields (the latter in the 2017 season opener that has been recognized as Pack head coach Dave Doeren's best team); or not beating an SEC team other than Vanderbilt in a bowl game in over a quarter-century, the theme has indeed become tiresome for Wolfpack fans.
The big question is what now?
Next week’s opponent, Furman from the FCS level, will offer little-to-no telling answers. NC State will almost surely steamroll an inferior opponent ahead of its ACC opener against Clemson. The chance to make that game with the Tigers a marquee early-season affair worthy of national attention has gone away, but it’ll still be the next opportunity for NC State to prove it’s as good as it thinks it can be.
Between now and then, the status of redshirt sophomore linebacker Payton Wilson is a major question mark. The visual of Wilson on the sideline with his left arm in a sling and his shoulder wrapped in an ice was not a comforting site for the Wolfpack.
The NC State defense, however, while it bent quite a bit at times, probably did enough to win the game. Mississippi State had 316 yards of total offense and averaged 4.9 yards per play. Seven of its points did not come against the defense, but rather a kickoff return for a score.
The bigger questions reside on the offense, which tried to run seemingly exclusively to the left against a pretty good rush defense at Mississippi State, and attack the defensive backs with short passes to the perimeter. The strategy did not ultimately work, but it’s also important to note the missed opportunities.
An interception in the end zone, a missed field goal, failing to convert two deep throws to open receivers that would have possibly been touchdowns, a dropped pass on what would have been a third down conversion and a fumble on the Mississippi State side of the field all represented wasted chances to change the complexion of the game.
• Justin H. Williams, TheWolfpacker.com — Notebook: Bulldogs sink NC State in Starkville
NC State fans know all too well the feeling that set in roughly 13 seconds into Saturday night’s game against Mississippi State in Starkville.
The Wolfpack entered the game as a popular favorite against a seemingly equivalent SEC opponent.
But when Bulldogs skill player Lideatrick Griffin returned Trenton Gill’s opening kickoff 100-yards from endzone to endzone, the sideline appeared to share the same feeling of the Pack faithful.
Oh no, here we go again.
It’s not that NC State didn’t fight back. The Wolfpack had two great scoring opportunities in the first quarter to tie the game and settle down the deafening cowbells from the Mississippi State fan base.
But the Pack’s counter punches never landed. And now a team with high hopes exiting an impressive week one 45-0 route of USF is forced to go back to the drawing board following a 24-10 defeat at the hands of a team picked to finish last in the SEC West Division.
One word can describe the mood after N.C. State’s 24-10 loss to Mississippi State: Frustrating.
The coaches, the players, the fan base, all frustrated with the outcome. Not just the loss, but the way it all went down.
The Wolfpack (1-1) have shown a tendency to drop early season, hyped-up road games. The frustrating part about this one is N.C. State did more to hurt itself than Mississippi State (2-0). In order to beat an SEC opponent, on the road, at night, a team has to play complimentary football.
All three phases of the game (offense, defense, special teams) struggled Saturday night inside Davis Wade Stadium. With cowbells ringing loudly, the Pack gave up a 100-yard touchdown on the opening kick. The defense, one week after pitching a shutout, surrendered 17 points. Seventeen points should be enough to win on most nights, but not on a night when the offense struggled.
N.C. State actually outgained MSU 335-316, but went 1-for-3 in the red zone, including a missed field goal and an interception.
“It’s a team loss,” head coach Dave Doeren said. “It starts with the head coach, me, all the time.”
The struggle continues.
Another big game, another N.C. State heartbreak. The Wolfpack were favored on the road against SEC opponent Mississippi State. All signs were pointing to N.C. State getting over the hump and finally getting a defining win in the Dave Doeren era.
Fans will have to keep waiting.
The Bulldogs waved the SEC flag early and often and N.C. State heads back to Raleigh with more questions than answers after suffering a 24-10 defeat.
After a 45-point win in week one, a trip to Starkville would provide more of an assessment. The jury is still out. N.C. State’s defense did enough early, but eventually ran out of steam. Bulldogs’ quarterback Will Rogers shook off a slow start and picked the Wolfpack defense apart, finishing 33-49 for 294 yards and two scores.
Devin Leary decided to focus on the positives after his N.C State team suffered a 24-10 defeat at the hands of Mississippi State.
The redshirt sophomore wasn't ignoring the negatives, and there were many on Saturday night at Davis Wade Stadium. Enough for head coach Dave Doeren to mention putting several bullets in his foot when it came to offensive execution.
But a late fourth-quarter touchdown drive, a subsequent onside kick recover, and most importantly, the attitude of his teammates -- that's what Leary wanted to talk about late Saturday night.
"Obviously this was not the outcome we wanted at all," said Leary, who completed 30-of-49 passes for 303 yards and a late score and interception. "But it was good to see guys picking each other up. Older guys like Grant Gibson saying we are going to bounce back and learn from our mistakes. That's the maturity coming out in our team."
That maturity and experience was a huge selling point for the Wolfpack entering the 2021 season. With 20 starters returning from last year's 8-win team, a victory over Mississippi State would've signified this team's growth and potential trajectory in the ACC.
Now the maturity of this team will be judged not by prior experience, but by how resilient that experience will make them.
"We've got to do a better job of playing off each other," safety Tanner Ingle said. "That's that."
Neither team was efficient on third downs (N.C. State 4-of-17, Mississippi State 3-of-12), but the Bulldogs made the most of the Wolfpack's mistakes.
From the 6:18 mark of the second quarter and into their first possession of the fourth quarter, the Wolfpack ran only 27 plays on seven drives with 4 three and outs.
Simply, the defense ran out of gas when the offense couldn't move the ball.
N.C. State finished with 191 total yards after starting the first quarter with 114 yards of offense. Quarterback Devin Leary never really found his rhythm, completing 30-of-47 passes for 303 yards with a good chunk of the yardage coming in garbage time, including a four-yard touchdown pass to Thayer Thomas with 1:06 left in the game.
Emeka Emezie led the team for the second straight week with six catches for 92 yards.
"Obviously guys are frustrated," Leary said. "Obviously this was not the outcome we wanted at all, but it was good to see us staying positive at the end, to have older guys pick each other up."
• Joe Giglio, WRALSportsFan — NC State falls to Mississippi State 24-10 on the road
NC State stumbled early, got burned in the middle and couldn’t recover late.
Mississippi State used a kickoff return for a touchdown, a fourth-down gamble before the end of the first half and a stout defensive effort to hand NC State a 24-10 road loss on Saturday night.
A week after struggling against Louisiana Tech, and needing the biggest comeback in school history for a 35-34 win, the Bulldogs got a 100-yard kickoff return from Lideatrick Griffin on the first play of the game.
NC State (1-1) then helped out with an interception in the end zone on its second possession of the game and a missed field goal in the first quarter. But down only 7-3 after a series of mistakes, the Wolfpack had a chance to get out of the first half only down four points.
Then the wheels came off. All-ACC linebacker Payton Wilson left the field with 5:25 left in the half with an apparent left shoulder injury.
Breaking out of the mold is a tough task in college football. In stark contrast to the parity of the NFL, in which every team can beat one another on any given Sunday, the college game is defined by the haves and the have nots — Alabama runs roughshod over everyone, Western Carolina provides easy victories for opponents and Texas is never back. That’s just the way it is.
One could avoid watching a single college game, pick winners simply by brand name and do so accurately. Very seldom does a team rise above its assigned station, buoyed by a fantastic player or an undiscovered coach, and even more seldom does it stay at that elevated level.
NC State fits into the college football landscape as a perennial seven or eight win program. It’s the team that provides many a tough contest, even threatens a major upset now and again, but never gets the job done. But with a surprising 2020 campaign, the Wolfpack looked like it was genuinely capable of greater with the talent and coaching to back up its hype. Twice now those hopes have dimmed following an encounter with the SEC. In NC State’s 2020 bowl game, Kentucky led from beginning to end by forcing special teams miscues, stifling the offense and forcing turnovers.
Saturday, after heading to Starkville, Mississippi at 1-0 via a 45-0 thrashing of USF, Mississippi State beat NC State by outperforming it on special teams, shutting down the Wolfpack rushing attack and, you guessed it, winning the turnover battle 3-0. It was a winnable game that slipped away, something that happens again and again against good competition.
If NC State had any glimmer of hope left Saturday night at Davis Wade Stadium, it left in a hurry, in the form of a corner blitz on fourth-and-21.
Mississippi State football’s defense had been dominant throughout the 24-10 win, but the Bulldogs needed one last stop to put the contest to bed with about six minutes remaining. So cornerback Emmanuel Forbes blitzed off the edge, came up on Wolfpack quarterback Devin Leary in a hurry and pulled him down for the sack.
Then Forbes leaped up, waved his arms and was met by his teammates, a punctuation mark of sorts on a performance that flushed any concerns from Mississippi State’s season-opening come-from-behind win against Louisiana Tech. While the Bulldogs (2-0) looked down and out at times last weekend, they were in control from the opening kickoff.
MSU’s defenders talked throughout fall camp about their unit’s ability to generate turnovers and put their offense in favorable spots. Between last week’s four takeaways along with Saturday’s trio, it has become apparent the defense can do as it said.
But it hasn’t necessarily been a result of schematics.
“Coach (Zach) Arnett and our defensive staff preach fanatical effort on every play because you never know the outcome of the play,” Johnson said. “I think it’s our effort — just pursuing to the ball with high intent and bad intentions.”
Mississippi State’s success defensively — the program’s fewest points allowed since a 45-7 win against Abilene Christian in 2019 — started at the line.
The Bulldogs lone sack in Week 1 was more of a technicality as it came from an intentional grounding call.
MSU had four sacks and five quarterback hurries against N.C. State. When Mississippi State wasn’t bringing down the quarterback, its defenders were shutting down a rushing attack that had 293 yards on the ground in Week 1.
The Bulldogs collected nine tackles for loss with 12 players contributing. It was an effort valiant enough to limit N.C. State to 39 rushing yards in the first half while building a lead that eliminated that facet of the visitor’s offense in the second half (negative-seven yards).
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