Nearly two years ago to the day, the NC State football team traveled to UNC-Chapel Hill facing a game that was the Pack’s last chance to qualify for a bowl that year and, depending on who you ask, head coach Dave Doeren was coaching for his job.
The Pack won 28-21 that day, and since then, seemingly everything has gone right. Including that game, NC State has won 17 of 24 football games, 10 of 16 conference games, two bowl games convincingly, signed a recruiting class just outside the top 25, has another in the top 25 on the way and had seven players drafted into the NFL, second-best in the country. That’s a pretty good 24 months for most programs in the country.
Things went south last week when the Pack lost to Wake Forest, whose bowl prospects were not looking good before that win. Of the seven losses the last two years, this was the first to a team that finished with less than eight wins, unless the Demon Deacons win out. There’s no doubt it was a horrifying loss, and there’s no need to rehash all the reasons why. Now the question is, how will the Pack respond to the first adversity faced in nearly 24 months?
There’s still a 10-win season on the table, which would go down as the second in school history. Despite what happened against Wake Forest, it’s important to keep perspective that there’s three games left and the Wolfpack should win each. Win those three, and the bowl game would give the Pack a chance at 10 wins.
There’s still a recruiting class that needs to be signed. In football recruiting, players often times entertain other schools and don’t necessarily sign with the school they originally committed to. The early signing day is just over a month away and the Pack needs to get this group to the finish line. Recruiting is the backbone of a program and the importance of back-to-back top-30 classes cannot be overstated.
Program momentum is a real thing, and the Pack had been building momentum for two years. Last year’s draft was a big part of it, maybe the biggest part, because without a doubt, success in the draft directly leads to success in recruiting.
The good news is that no matter how the season ends, the draft is going to bring good news and momentum back to the good side of NC State. Junior receiver Kelvin Harmon, graduate quarterback Ryan Finley and graduate linebacker Germaine Pratt are all potential first-round picks. There’s a handful of other players who could get drafted. Realistically, anywhere between five to eight players could get drafted, which will once again be one of the best in the country.
Between now and the draft, the Pack needs to do itself some favors. A loss in any of the three remaining games would likely sap all of the good will built up over the last two years. Any hits to the recruiting class wouldn’t be disastrous, but it would hurt.
On the other hand, four wins to finish the season, including a bowl win over what would likely be a quality opponent would be an excellent finish. Keep in mind, NC State has only ever won 19 games over two seasons once before (2002-03), and it took 27 games to do so. If the Wolfpack wins the next four games, it would match the 19 wins in one fewer game.
A second 10-win season in program history wouldn’t erase the misdoings from the loss to Wake Forest, but if people are upset with 10-win seasons because more was left on the table, then you’re doing something right.
As I wrote a couple weeks ago, the Pack is still building a program and progress isn’t linear. Painful losses are part of the building. However, the loss to the Demon Deacons wasn’t a painful loss as part of building a program, it was just a bad loss. Contrary to popular belief, bad losses happen to every team. That’s all it is for now, a bad loss, but the players and coaches need to make sure it doesn’t turn into more, and they do that by handling business the next three weeks,
The loss to Wake Forest was a detour in the process of building the football program. Now the Wolfpack has to make the right turn and get back on track by winning the next three games and giving themselves a chance at ten wins in the bowl game. A wrong turn with a loss to Louisville, ECU or UNC-Chapel Hill would mean losing all, or most of, the progress that has been made the last two years.
NC State needs to show it knows how to handle adversity and make the right turn to get back on track.
