Here are some of the thoughts from those who covered NC State's 27-21 double-overtime win over No. 9 Clemson on Saturday night at Carter-Finley Stadium in Raleigh.
• Matt Carter, TheWolfpacker.com — Column: NC State earned that sweet feeling
Much have been made about Doeren’s previous 1-22 record against teams that finished the season ranked. This Clemson squad has to prove itself before we can assume it’s now going to be at least 2-22, but that’s also a misleading record regardless.
Sixteen of those 22 teams that beat NC State won double-digit games that year, and 10 of them were in the top 10 of the final polls. Those 10 squads combined for a final record of 128-14, or a 90.1 winning percentage.
In other words, a lot of teams would have piled up bad records against such highly-accomplished teams.
Yet it was the manner of NC State’s record was accumulated that led to storylines that the Wolfpack is “cursed.” It was the proverbial one-step forward, two-steps back feeling. Which is why man NC State fans were experience déjà vu when Dunn missed his field goal.
NC State fans sometimes expect doom. It’s probably why every time there is a third down stop there feels like a brief lull after the initial excitement from the crowd just because some are expecting to see a flag or some other catch to mitigate the defensive stand.
When it was over Saturday, there were no flags or whistles to blow a play dead. The only signal from the officials were that the pass was incomplete, and the game was finished.
NC State won.
Faced with another feeling of doom and gloom, NC State’s players didn’t flinch, as Doeren described it.
They prevailed and felt joy.
They earned it, too.
The Pack did it. It finally did it.
For the first time in head coach Dave Doeren’s nine-year tenure at NC State, the Wolfpack took down the six-time defending champions of the ACC, Clemson, 27-21 in a thrilling double-overtime classic before a vintage home crowd at Carter-Finley Stadium.
Accomplishing the feat the program has dreamed of for years didn’t come easy. In fact, at times, ghosts of past missed opportunities against the Tigers glared directly into the souls on the Wolfpack sideline.
With two seconds remaining in regulation, NC State junior placekicker Christopher Dunn had a game-winning field goal attempt from 39 yards. He missed it, and his other two field goal attempts of the night, to go 0 for 3 in a game that could have been won in regulation with just one make.
“We didn't flinch,” head coach Dave Doeren said. “We missed three field goals. And those are all hard things. Chris will bounce back. Offensively, if you have the ball that much and don't get as many points as you want, some teams would say 'Oh, here we go again.' Our guys just say keep playing, put the ball down, and next play is the play we're gonna win the game. That's how we approached it.”
During the 27-21 double overtime Wolfpack win, N.C. State (3-1) made plenty of the big boy plays Doeren talked about.
“Emeka’s catch was a big boy play for sure,” Doeren said about Emeka Emezie’s diving touchdown grab in the first half. “A couple of the sacks we made, were incredible plays. Drake’s interception … we had to make a couple special, special plays and we did.”
The biggest of them all was Devin Carter’s touchdown catch in the second overtime. Carter, who just missed a touchdown catch in the first half, came up with two scores in the second half. His game winner was a thing of beauty from Devin Leary.
Leary, who finished with 238 yards and four touchdowns, looked for Emezie first. Emezie (14 catches, 116 yards) was covered and Leary had time to go back to his right and threw a dart over two defenders to Carter in the back corner.
It was the type of play that may solidify Leary’s and Carter’s legacy in red and white. Carter has had some drops this season on what looked like easy plays, or layups as Doeren has called them. Against Clemson he was targeted seven times, coming up with five catches and two scores for 54 yards.
Part of making the spectacular look routine, according to Carter, is just that; keep it routine.
“We play football everyday, whether it’s practice or a game,” Carter explained. “So making it bigger can hurt you. You really just have to keep it small and go one play at a time, that’s it.”
The ACC’s Atlantic Division is officially up for grabs for the first time in five years. The Wolfpack beat Clemson for the first time in 10 years. And for the first time in even longer, N.C. State is in real control of its own ACC destiny.
Those three milestones are not unrelated. While the other half of the ACC is so often a free-for-all, the Atlantic Division has been Clemson’s turf for what feels like an eternity. And now, where there is always Coastal chaos, there is new Atlantic anarchy.
N.C. State did that Saturday night, outlasting Clemson through two overtimes for its first win over Clemson since 2011 and its biggest win, period, since a year after that, when now-famous fan Jake Robinson shook his bare belly on national television after a win over then-No. 3 Florida State. This trumped any in Dave Doeren’s tenure by far, now 1-10 against top-10 teams.
It’s too soon to say whether this celebration will have a viral moment, but the students gave it a shot, storming the field in relief as much as joy after Clemson’s final pass went awry to seal a 27-21 Wolfpack win. Their patience and perseverance had been tested by a missed field goal that would have won the game in regulation — the second in five games against Clemson, although with a different overtime outcome this time around.
N.C. State vanquished Clemson and its own demons, all at once.
“The curse is broken, N.C. State fans, finally,” Doeren said. “Finally. I’ve been here nine years. I’ve seen a lot of crazy stuff. You wouldn’t believe it. I think it was real and it’s not there now. We can move on and be happy about that.”
History has a way of repeating itself. Dreams can quickly turn into nightmares.
Wide right. Questionable calls. Laptop controversies. It all hurts the same.
Well, not this time.
"The curse is broken, N.C. State fans," Dave Doeren proclaimed moments after the Wolfpack defeated No. 9 Clemson 27-21 in double overtime on Saturday night. "We’ve seen some crazy stuff. I believe it was there and now it’s gone.”
Doeren and N.C. State exorcised a decade of demons while erasing an eight-game losing streak to the Tigers.
It was the biggest win in Doeren's nine-year tenure. His words.
"Not only because they are a Top 10 team and it's the first ACC game of the year and the number of times we tried to beat them but couldn't ... that's a great football program that we just beat," he said. "We wanted to beat them for a long time. We’ve had chances to beat them, and we didn’t. We didn’t make the plays. We made the plays tonight."
Think what you want of Devin Leary. He'll never be forgotten at N.C. State.
The redshirt sophomore quarterback delivered the best pass of his career in double overtime, putting a perfect pass to the back shoulder of Devin Carter in the right corner of the end zone.
"We knew it was going to be a four-quarter game, at least...We didn't flinch at all," Leary said after the win.
The score gave the Wolfpack a 27-21 lead and Clemson would fail to convert on 4th and 5 on the next possession. N.C. State had a chance to win at the end of regulation, but Christopher Dunn missed a 39-yard field goal with two seconds left.
The Wolfpack, though, would not be deterred.
"The maturity kicked in," said head coach Dave Doeren after the win.
• Joe Giglio, WRALSportsFan — A win to savor for Wolfpack, Doeren
Leary led off the second overtime with a beautiful throw to the back right corner of the end zone for Carter. Earlier in the game, and earlier in the season at Mississippi State, Carter couldn’t come up with those big plays.
Those misses will be forgotten. His twisting catch for the win won’t be. At least not any time soon.
The Devins get their place in Wolfpack lore with Bryan Underwood, Mike Glennon from the FSU win in '12 and Reggie Gallaspy (from Doeren’s other OT win in 2018 at UNC).
But this win was bigger for Doeren, in Year 9, than anyone else.
A loss to this inferior version of Clemson, with an offensive line that looked straight from the Rick Trickett School of Missed Assignments and Quarterback Endangerment, and it would have been difficult for Doeren to recover.
Now, well, he gets a win to put on his fireplace. He had been missing one of this variety and magnitude for his mantle.
The debate over a win over Liberty last year or a 4-win Notre Dame team in 2016 doesn't matter anymore.
It doesn’t put the Wolfpack in the ACC championship game, they’re only 1-0 in the conference, but it does give them the confidence that they can beat anyone in their way.
The pipe dream of State and Carolina playing two weeks in a row — in the regular-season finale and then as Atlantic and Coastal Division champions — suddenly isn’t so far-fetched.
There’s still hurdles with Wake Forest, Boston College and Florida State and Miami and, well, let’s just list the final seven conference games here.
But that’s a worry for another day. NC State finally beat Clemson. Missed kick and all.
Doeren’s been a part of more than a few field rushes in his time as a coach, which spans back stints at Wisconsin and Kansas, but few are as sweet as this one. This is the victory the team had to deliver to its supporters, and boy did it deliver. Minutes after taking down the Tigers, students were already swarming the Belltower.
“They deserve to party like that,” Doeren said. “And [l] hope they stay safe. But that's what this is all about, you know, if they could rip the goalposts down and walk them down there and lean them up against the Belltower, that'd be even better. But it's an awesome thing, man, when you light [the Belltower] red like that.”
Nine years into leading the Wolfpack, Doeren was just 1-22 against teams that ended the year ranked — and that one was last year’s Liberty team. He was 4-18 against teams that were ranked when they played. The knock was that while NC State would sometimes lose to teams it shouldn’t lose to, the same was never true on the flip side.
After a crushing road defeat at the hands of a solid, but not great, Mississippi State squad, it seemed that even with the best roster State had fielded in a while, it couldn’t weather the bright lights. The offensive line couldn’t create holes. There was no pressure on the quarterback. Redshirt sophomore quarterback Devin Leary couldn’t make plays. But it re-grouped against Furman with a blowout win, and surprisingly, looked competitive early against the five-star factory from South Carolina.
• Larry Williams, Tiger Illustrated — A new low for Clemson
For some brief moments, Clemson fans could think back to that missed chip shot by State in 2016 that led to overtime and a skin-of-the-teeth win on the way to a national championship.
For a few moments, you could look at the "not again" expressions of panic on the red-clad faithful and rejoice in the belief that Clemson might be down, but it still has exclusive ownership of the psyches of Dave Doeren and Wolfpack fans.
But that sensation couldn't have lasted more than a few seconds, because then you realized that staying in this game and winning it was still up to the offense.
It couldn't reasonably be up to the Tigers' defense, which was on the field for a ridiculous 96 plays as N.C. State smartly chewed up clock and took advantage of an offense that had seven straight three-and-outs after going 80 yards for a touchdown on the second possession.
The defense was on the field so much in the first half that the Tigers looked gassed by halftime and yet just kept coming.
That’s a different tone, especially from the always-positive Swinney.
“I thought D.J. gave us a chance to win the game,” he said. “I thought he did a lot of good things. He’s going to continue to get better. He has a great future.
“... At this point, you look at everything.”
That includes the entire offense, not just Uiagalelei. Clemson last season averaged 43.5 points and 500 yards per game. This season, the Tigers, including the game against an FCS opponent, have the worst offense (295.5 yards) in the ACC. Against three FBS teams, the Tigers (in regulation) have averaged 188.7 yards and 10.3 points.
“We’ve been an offense that has been really, really good for a long, long time,” Swinney said. “But the criticism is warranted because that’s where we are right now. The way we’ve performed, we’re going to get criticism. We’re going to get comments and things like that. And you know what? That comes with the territory because of the expectation and the standard at Clemson. We’re not meeting that.
“... We’re not very good right now.”
Clemson will host Boston College on Saturday with a new goal of just trying to reach the ACC championship game in Charlotte, where the Tigers began this season with a 10-3 loss to Georgia. They have made the four-team College Football Playoff for six straight years with two national championships and two runner-up finishes.
With two losses already, national title hopes are gone.
“This is certainly not what we intended,” Swinney said. “We’ve just got to regroup. That’s all I can say. It’s been a long time since we’ve been in a situation like this, that’s for sure. We’ll just focus on this week and what’s in front of us. .. We need to continue to stay together. That’s the main thing. Let’s find a way to win a game.”
• Jon Blau, Charleston Post & Courier — No. 9 Clemson falls to N.C. State, 27-21, in double overtime
This isn’t what Clemson has been the last six seasons, when the program reached six consecutive college football playoffs. The Tigers certainly haven’t looked like this over the last eight years, when they claimed eight consecutive wins over N.C. State in the Textile Bowl series. But as the end of one streak possibly snapped another, it was what it was.
A series the Tigers had owned in 15 of their last 16 meetings went the other way. Another season with hopes of a CFP may be irrevocably damaged, especially given Clemson (2-2, 1-1 ACC) already lost its season opener to Georgia. The Tigers sit in a place they haven’t been in a long, long time, and Swinney just had to acknowledge where their collective feet stood.
N.C. State’s fans were able to rush the field, even after their kicker missed three field goals, including one from 39 yards away to end regulation, because this Clemson team was far too vulnerable. A program that hadn’t lost to a full-time ACC member school since 2017 has found itself humbled, searching for answers, facing questions it hasn’t faced in a decade, because Wolfpack quarterback Devin Leary found Devin Carter in the corner of the end zone for a 22-yard touchdown reception in the second overtime period, and D.J. Uiagalelei couldn’t connect with Justyn Ross on two deep throws for the end zone.
After N.C. State’s fans poured onto the field, rushing to the 50-yard line, Clemson had to look inward. Just 2 of 11 on third downs. Just 49 offensive plays to N.C. State’s 96.
“We’ve been an offense that’s been really, really good for a long, long time, but the criticism is warranted because that’s where we are right now,” Swinney said, “and that’s what we displayed.”
The Trevor Lawrence and D.J. Uiagalelei comparisons have been unavoidable because of how much the latter was talked up during the offseason. There wasn’t supposed to be any offensive dropoff and the Tigers’ defense was expected to rival the “Power Rangers” defensive unit of 2018. Only one of those projections have come to fruition.
The offensive struggles are legitimate and have been creeping up since the season opener against Georgia. The Tigers lost that game but then turned in two wins, neither of which was close to being clean. The squad got by Georgia Tech with a 14-8 win on Sept. 18, but N.C. State wasn’t as gracious. The Wolfpack took the Tigers to the wire and came out with the double overtime victory, the first over Clemson for the program since 2011.
Clemson ended Saturday’s game with 214 total yards of offense, a stark contrast to the numbers of yesteryear. They only ran 49 plays to the Wolfpack’s 96 and were on the field for just 18 minutes, 12 seconds. That meant the defense, which had its own uncharacteristic penalties Saturday, was out there for a whopping 41 minutes, 18 seconds.
“It has a cumulative effect,” defensive coordinator Brent Venables said. “No. 1, you gotta be more efficient to get off the field. Guys had to pipe down and take more reps than they like to take. I’m just thankful for the guys I have and the fight, the toughness and love for each other. We had a chance to win the game at the end because of their resolve.”
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