You don’t win a game you have no business winning by playing it safe. NC State (4-3, 4-3 ACC) had an opportunity to pull off a huge upset over No. 11 Miami in front of a home Carter-Finley crowd, and it should have, but missed opportunities and poor coaching decisions may haunt the team moving forward.
Three drives in particular may have meant the difference between victory and defeat. The first of these drives came just before halftime, with NC State having the ball at its own 23-yard line with just under two minutes remaining.
Despite that being enough time to work the ball downfield, in a game in which drives more commonly ended in touchdowns than punts, the coaching staff elected to play it safe with five rushes called to just one pass. It passed up a scoring opportunity to go into the half up just three points, a lead nowhere near safe in a game that smashed the over.
Through three quarters, NC State was up 38-31, and statistically, both teams were pretty similar in terms of total yards, yards per play, time of possession — even the penalty numbers were comparable. It was the fourth quarter that separated the Hurricanes from the Wolfpack.
Redshirt junior quarterback Bailey Hockman has not been a reliable starter for NC State, nor has he consistently looked as good as he ended up playing today. With the bye week to prepare, offensive coordinator Tim Beck had Hockman ready to play, and he stepped up and turned in a 19-28, 248-yard, two touchdown performance. He even caught a ball and took it 31 yards for a touchdown.
“I thought he played well,” said head coach Dave Doeren. “[He] had good rhythm, he was seeing things, he was putting the ball where our guys could make plays… I thought he was on target for most of the night.”
Despite how well Hockman was playing, Beck shied away from putting the game in his hands in the fourth quarter. Up just 41-37, after Hockman passed for a first down, two straight run plays that went for a total of 1 yard derailed the drive. Playing it safe while up just 4 points against a team with an offense as explosive as Miami’s was inadvisable, and it came back to bite the Pack.
In the fourth quarter, Hockman was forced to try to convert on third-and-11 and on third-and-9 because playcalling gave away first and second down, spending it on run plays. While Hockman didn’t exactly set the world on fire with his four attempts for 15 yards in the fourth, the Wolfpack rushed for a total of -9 yards in the final stanza and was outgained 213 to 6.
“They got in our backfield in that last drive a couple times,” Doeren said. “That’s a good front [for Miami]. They made some plays on us, particularly there in the second half. We really didn’t get our running game going.”
After the game, sophomore running back Zonovan Knight attributed the change in the effectiveness of NC State’s running game to adjustments made by Miami and improved play on that side. Regardless, offensive woes weren’t the only reason why the Wolfpack blew a 10-point lead in less than 15 minutes. We know the story for the 6 yards offensively, but let’s talk about the defense and its key failure: Miami’s fourth quarter go-ahead touchdown.
After pinning Miami back at its 8-yard line, the defense gave up a 35-yard pass to Mike Harley before forcing a third-and-7 at Miami’s 46. Up 4 points, defensive coordinator Tony Gibson dialed up the pressure, sending everyone and leaving the secondary in man-to-man coverage across the board. The same situation occurred for NC State in a pivotal game in 2018 and saw bad results then, too.
Up less than a touchdown, Gibson called cover zero, a look that is known for risking giving up a touchdown and what was the result? A 54-yard catch and run for a touchdown. There’s playing aggressively and then there’s putting yourself in a position you don’t need to be in. Matched up with Miami’s receivers, NC State’s secondary rarely had answers, and on that drive, that fact was clear on those long passes.
“We were playing hard; there was just a lack of focus on the back end of the defense,” said junior nickel Tyler Baker-Williams, who moved over to start at safety for the injured Tanner Ingle. “It happens. It was a tough loss tonight.”
After the loss, NC State’s goal is for this game not to beat it twice. The Wolfpack still has bowl eligibility on the horizon, despite all its injuries. If the NC State we saw today comes out for the next four games, that isn’t outside of the realm of possibility.
Out of the hardest portion of its schedule and done with most of its road games, NC State’s remaining ACC schedule has the following records: 2-4, 1-6, 2-5. After the game, Doeren and his players said all the right things, but we won’t know if NC State can truly move on and put this loss behind it until next week against Florida State.
