Here are some of the thoughts from those who covered NC State's 45-7 win over Furman on Saturday night at Carter-Finley Stadium in Raleigh.
• Matt Carter, TheWolfpacker.com — Column: All you could ask for from NC State against Furman
Well, that was easy.
Give Furman quarterback Hamp Sisson credit, the junior showed some toughness as he was hammered on repeated occasions, especially from NC State linebackers redshirt junior Isaiah Moore and sophomore Drake Thomas, yet kept getting back up off the turf.
Furman has some nice pieces for a Football Championship Subdivision team, especially when Sisson can try to complete passes against a defense more at Furman’s level than the Wolfpack, who even without star linebacker Payton Wilson and starting safety Cyrus Fagan are still an athletic bunch that looks well above average at the Power Five level.
But that was also the overall point of this game: Furman is not at NC State level, literally. Furman belongs in the more scholarship-restricted, less talented FCS and the Pack represents a Power Five conference, the highest level in all of college football, even if that particular league (ACC) is isn't much acting like a Power Five on the field these days.
That disparity between Furman and NC State was known going into the contest, and solidified by halftime. The most entertaining aspect of the first half may have been an impressive execution of the wave by fans at Carter-Finley Stadium near the end of the first quarter that successfully carried through to the earliest portions of the second.
There were only a few real questions about this game.
• Matt Carter, TheWolfpacker.com — Notebook: Offense finds its rhythm
There were a lot of issues to address on offense after its stumbling performance against Mississippi State on Sept. 11, a 24-10 loss in Starkville, Miss. From head coach Dave Doeren’s perspective, much of it revolved around not playing as one unit.
"I thought last week the offensive players, I don’t know the right way to explain this, but they weren’t playing 11 as one,” Doeren noted. “There were guys that wanted this play call or that play called, and weren’t just doing what they were supposed to do.
“We addressed it. We talked a lot about it.”
Granted it came against an inferior defense, but the Pack bounced back with a balanced attack Saturday in its 45-7 home win over Furman at Carter-Finley Stadium. NC State piled up 505 yards of total offense, 287 passing and 218 on the ground.
Redshirt sophomore quarterback Devin Leary was under a bit of a microscope after an inconsistent performance at Mississippi State, especially misfiring on several open deep passes, and was 23-of-29 passing for 259 yards with three touchdowns and also ran for a score. He did not turn it over once.
Doeren was quick to note, however, that Leary needed more help from his teammates at Mississippi State, and he got that Saturday against Furman.
“I thought they played for each other tonight on offense,” Doeren said. “The rhythm was better.
“For Devin, he just needs guys to be where they are supposed to be and play hard, and he’ll get the ball to him. I felt like that was accomplished tonight. … I think the players really learned a lot from last week’s game, and there were a lot more plays where you could see 11 guys doing what they were supposed to do.”
There wasn’t much doubt that N.C. State was going to defeat Furman.
The Wolfpack came into the contest a perfect 7-0 against FCS opponents under Dave Doeren. The question was, how would N.C. State respond to a challenge from their coaches during the week?
The Wolfpack staff looked like they pushed all the right buttons as N.C. State improved to 2-1 with a 45-7 win over the Paladins. That sets up a showdown next weekend with Clemson, which edged Georgia Tech, 14-8, Saturday afternoon.
But before the Wolfpack could look ahead to the Tigers, they had to right their wrongs from week two. After losing to Mississippi State, Doeren said his team didn’t make their “layups,” the routine plays that can be the difference in a win or a loss.
N.C. State needed to lock in this week in practice and show the kind of maturity expected from a team with so much experience. The team was up to the challenge, jumping out to a 38-0 first-half shutout and a 45-0 lead before Furman got on the board.
Quarterback Devin Leary, who was shaky at times last week, was locked in from the start, hitting 10 different receivers in the first half. Leary finished with 259 yards through the air and was responsible for four touchdowns. N.C. State had 309 more total yards than Furman (2-1) and the defense didn’t surrender 100 yards on the ground for the second straight game, the 38th time that’s happened under Doeren.
Whatever the message was, it was well received.
“We responded well,” Doeren said. “And that’s what I was looking for, a response.”
The offense responded by going a perfect 6-6 in the red zone. The defense responded by forcing a turnover after not doing so last week and had chances at several others. The special teams unit had 48 yards in punt returns and won the battle for field position. It was the complementary football that was missing last week, but popped off the screen from the start against the Paladins.
Dave Doeren said he would be aggressive against Furman.
He emphasized that the rest of the way, it would be all about his team and not the opponent on the schedule. N.C. State needed to make sure they executed and did the little things. If those things were crossed off the list, it didn’t matter who they played.
The Paladins just happened to be the next team on the schedule, and Furman got caught between a motivated Wolfpack team and the Clemson game. N.C. State tuned up for the showdown with the Tigers by blowing out the Paladins, 45-7.
Most expected a big win over Furman (2-1) and the Wolfpack (2-1) delivered, scoring on six of their final seven drives to end the first half. N.C. State led by 38 at halftime.
The Pack went on four straight scoring drives, all touchdowns, in the second quarter. After a Christopher Dunn field goal made it 10-0 in the first, Devin Leary was responsible for the next four scores. He threw three touchdown passes, covering 4, 42 and 12 yards and rushed seven yards for another.
N.C. State football’s starting units looked crisp and confident in a blowout home win over Furman on Saturday night, soothing the sour taste of last week’s deflating loss at Mississippi State.
Some 300 miles away, No. 6 Clemson flirted with disaster in Death Valley and needed a last-second goal line stand and then some to sneak past Georgia Tech and avoid its second loss in three weeks.
Those contrasting results can’t predict the future – but they certainly add an extra level of intrigue to the looming Week 4 battle between a Wolfpack team determined to find its footing in the ACC’s Atlantic Division and a Tigers team ready to prove that some early turbulence hasn’t hurt its lofty aspirations.
“We’re going into conference play now with the exception of L.A. Tech, and, as we know, this league’s got a lot of teams in it that can win any Saturday,” N.C. State head coach Dave Doeren said. “We just need to build on each week and continue to try to be better than we were the week before.”
The Wolfpack (2-1) indeed took tangible steps forward in a 45-7 win at Carter-Finley Stadium, a week after they went down immediately and rarely threatened Mississippi State afterward in a 24-10 loss.
And perhaps that offers an extra moral boost against Clemson (2-1), which eked out a 14-8 lightning-delayed home win over Georgia Tech only after a fourth and goal shovel pass stop at the two-yard line.
• Chapel Fowler, Fayetteville Observer — 5 takeaways from NC State's 45-7 win over Furman
Knight, the talented sophomore back who’s led N.C. State in rushing yards the last two seasons, started Saturday at a low point: losing a fumble on his first touch and the Wolfpack’s first drive of the game.
It was a far cry from an excellent season opener against South Florida, in which Knight ran 16 times for a career-high 163 yards and a touchdown. So how did Doeren handle his running back’s early error?
He went right back to him.
After N.C. State’s defense held strong and forced Furman into a long field goal attempt that missed wide right, Knight got the Wolfpack’s next offensive touch. And the next. He gained six yards and one yard on those carries, respectively, then broke off a 42-yard gain and punched in the game’s first touchdown.
Five carries for 56 yards and a score on that eight-play drive fueled Knight’s final stat line of 11 carries for 104 yards, a marked improvement from his eight-carry, 31-yard effort against Mississippi State.
• Joe Giglio, WRALSportsFan — NC State crushes Furman to improve to 2-1
NC State couldn’t score on Mississippi State.
Furman is not Mississippi State.
After suffering its first loss of the season on the road to an SEC team last week, NC State got back at home and back on the winning track.
Quarterback Devin Leary accounted for four touchdowns and Bam Knight ran for 104 yards to lead the Wolfpack to a 45-7 home win over Furman on Saturday night.
Knight couldn’t find much running room against the Bulldogs in a 24-10 loss last week. He had 31 yards on eight carries. As a team, NC State had a total of 34 rushing yards against an SEC defense.
Furman, from the lower level of Division I in the Southern Conference, didn’t provide the same type of resistance against the run. Knight, after fumbling on the first drive of the game, had big runs of 42 and 28 yards and got all of his yardage in the first half.
• Jaylan Harrington, Technician — Tune-up FCS win just what NC State’s offense needed
After a disappointing trip to Starkville, Mississippi, Saturday evening’s 45-7 rout of the Furman Paladins may not have been the most impressive performance for the Wolfpack, but it was needed. In a final outing before the toughest opponent NC State will face all season, the offense got back on track in nearly each phase of the game which failed it against Mississippi State.
Starting with the red zone offense, the Wolfpack was 6-6 in scoring when inside the 20 with five of those drives ending in touchdowns. Then there’s the passing game, specifically deep passing. In the first three quarters against Mississippi State, the offense had just three passing plays of 15 yards or more as redshirt sophomore quarterback Devin Leary consistently overthrew players down the field. Against Furman, though, Leary had five such plays through two quarters, including a 42-yard bomb to Anthony Smith.
Comparing Leary’s 4.4 YPA mark in the first three quarters against the Bulldogs with his 8.9 clip versus the Paladins, it’s clear that the offense had something to prove against an easy opponent, and it came out and did so.
The wide receivers rotation also changed a bit on the outside, with freshmen receivers Anthony Smith, Julian Gray, Porter Rooks and Jalen Coit seeing a jump in their snap count. Those four combined for nine receptions, 125 yards and a touchdown as Leary spread the ball around for 13 different receivers in one of his most complete games in the red and white.
“Credit to my offensive line, they did a great job of giving me time back there helping me get into rhythm, as well as the running backs, too, doing a great job of blocking and protection,” Leary said. “It all starts in practice. It's very common to hear around here that we go 1-0 every single day and just being able to take that same approach from a play by play standpoint is very important for us.”
The run game improved over the past week as well as NC State’s backs had a combined 7 yards per carry; that comes with a caveat, though. Even against an FCS opponent, the Wolfpack couldn’t really get things going to the right side of the field. It did work the middle more, however, but it isn’t great to have such a glaring weakness coming into a matchup with one of the best defenses in the country.
• Scott Keeler, Greenville News — Furman humbled by NC State: 'We just couldn't block them'
While Furman got off to an impressive 2-0 start to this football season, Paladins coach Clay Hendrix knew his squad was in for a different kind of animal Saturday at N.C. State.
Facing an FBS squad, especially a Power Five one, is always a special challenge for FCS teams, but Hendrix was confident his team was good enough to play well no matter the outcome. He said as long as they did that, he’d be happy.
There wasn’t very much to be happy about in a completely one-sided opening half, though. That was highlighted by a 28-0 second quarter that allowed the Wolfpack to cruise to a 45-7 win before 56,919 at Carter-Finley Stadium.
“I thought we were keeping it manageable for a little bit, and it just completely got away from us in the second quarter,” Hendrix said. “They’re as good and as talented as I thought they were. We just kept throwing our defense out there way too much in the first half.
“I thought our kids played hard for 60 minutes. We just couldn’t block them.”
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