Unpredictability is what makes college football so interesting. In a normal year, the lead-up to NC State’s 2020 football season would be punctuated by questions about redshirt sophomore quarterback Devin Leary, the completely overhauled coaching staff and how hot head coach Dave Doeren’s seat is. But this year, the intrigue is just whether or not each Power Five conference can actually pull off some semblance of a season.

College football will happen… until it doesn’t. But as long as the season hasn’t been canceled, it’s full speed ahead for fall camp, which started Tuesday morning. The Wolfpack ran with no pads and helmets with mouth coverings in a shortened practice designed to reacclimate student-athletes who have been away from team facilities for almost half a year. These six weeks will be extremely important for a new coaching staff that has to try to get over a hundred players in some semblance of playing shape.

“I’ve told them this is the only year in my life as a coach where every guy on the roster could play in a game, could start the game,” Doeren said. “You don’t know when you’re going to have that contact tracing thing wipe out a position and, all of a sudden, your fifth guy’s your first guy… It’s real, they have to prepare themselves that way. So keeping these young men healthy and engaged and understanding of the reality is part of what we talked about.”

Keeping players healthy is easier said than done, especially during a global pandemic, and that’s without considering these are college-aged young adults. Doeren’s message to them: Wear masks, wash hands, use Purell, avoid parties and that “common sense needs to be common right now.” That common sense means following safety guidelines. Players will have to hold each other accountable, and Doeren noted redshirt junior center Grant Gibson and redshirt junior linebacker Isaiah Moore are two that stand out in terms of leadership. Moore said the word for this year is sacrifice, and Gibson echoed his thoughts. 

“I think that we all understand that, if we want to play this year, then there’s certain things that we can’t do,” Gibson said. “We can’t go out and things like that because everybody on our team wants to play. We’re willing to give up some things to be able to do that. So if we can’t go out, then that’s fine with us. We just want to get the chance to play.”

Over in Orange County, UNC had to pause its football workouts after a surge of positive tests in early July, as have many other programs, but NC State has not had that issue. According to Senior Associate Athletics Director Fred Demarest, as of July 31, 595 COVID tests had been administered across all NC State athletics with only seven positives. The same day that news was released, NC State students living on campus began to move in, adding another variable in the equation of keeping these athletes healthy.

“We are able to do what we want to do right now because we’re sort of isolated from everyone and we haven’t had a lot of cases because of that,” said redshirt junior wide receiver Thayer Thomas. “We’ve probably done one of the better jobs in the country of having control over the team, of what we’re doing and staying safe. In order for that to continue, we definitely have to really watch what we do when these regular students come back, and hopefully, it doesn’t derail us. But I feel like we have the right leadership in position to guide the players on what to do and what not to do.”

Despite all the uncertainty hanging around this season, the players and coaches all seem extremely ready and willing to push forward with games. According to Doeren, no player has opted out of the season thus far, and both Moore and Gibson said they hadn’t heard any conversations of other players not wanting to play. Last year left a bad taste in everyone’s mouths, and Doeren said, as players and coaches, the Wolfpack has a lot to prove.

“I really like this team,” Doeren said. “I don’t know how many games we’re gonna win, we got to earn every one of those. But I do like their hunger. I do like their growth. I like their dissatisfaction with what occurred before and the things that we did over the offseason to be better for that. I think losing provides you an opportunity for growth, and I feel like our guys took advantage of that opportunity. Now we’ve got a lot of work to do to figure out who our best 11 are.”