ATLANTA — NC State football’s fall from grace hasn’t been glamorous. Not that any of them are, though.
From College Football Playoff expectations to desperately clamoring for a bowl appearance, the Pack’s 2024 campaign has been marked by unexpected turns of fate, constant inconsistency on both sides of the ball and simply bumbling mistakes.
Despite the Pack’s handful of blunders, NC State still fell just feet short of a victory in Atlanta. With seconds left, a 58-yard field goal — the potential game-winner — from graduate kicker Collin Smith sailed just outside the left goal post, sentencing the red-and-white to its sixth loss of the season, a 30-29 primetime defeat at the hands of Georgia Tech.
Even though the Wolfpack nearly overcame its mistakes at the end of a fourth quarter for the ages, the Yellow Jackets survived the Pack’s attempt to claw itself out of its self-dug hole — a common theme across NC State’s losses this season.
“There’s a lot of teams that wouldn’t fight the way we fought, with all the things we battled through this year,” said head coach Dave Doeren. “And they wanted that game. They wanted it bad, and they showed that. And they’re resilient, and I told them I was proud of them.”
Freshman quarterback CJ Bailey continued his breakout campaign and dominated on the ground against the Yellow Jackets by scoring three rushing touchdowns. However, for every score Bailey punched in, he and his offense gave the ball away.
Bailey coughed up a trio of interceptions, one of which was a first-quarter pick-six on a muffed pop pass to sophomore wide receiver KC Concepcion. Another interception later in the game resulted in Georgia Tech reclaiming the ball at the three-yard line. Both turnovers translated into 14 points for the Yellow Jackets.
Despite the turnovers, Bailey persevered while his defense held Georgia Tech’s dual-quarterback system at bay for three and a half quarters.
“He knew that there were some plays that were his fault, and that’s the thing you love about him,” Doeren said. “He’s not afraid to own things. And he said, ‘I’m going to make up for it. This is our half.’ And he went out and performed. And that’s kind of how the game was, anytime the other side needed the other side to step up, they did. It happened multiple times in the game.”
The NC State defense repeatedly stepped up, holding the Yellow Jackets to just three field goals before the fourth quarter, allowing the Pack to stay in the bout by stopping Georgia Tech’s formidable run game led by quarterback Haynes King.
“I mean, we’ve been playing desperate, trying to get this win,” said senior safety Bishop Fitzgerald. “So when we play desperate, everyone just plays a little bit harder. I think that’s been one of the keys. And we’ve just been flying around, stopping the run.”
However, once Bailey threw his third interception, Georgia Tech punched in a three-yard touchdown to pull ahead 23-14 on the very next play.
“We’re hurting ourselves,” Bailey said. “We have self-afflicted wounds every time we take these losses, and our mindset, every time it is just to try to keep bounce back and go get a win.”
Bailey did battle back. On the next drive, he finished off his trifecta of touchdown runs with a one-yard scamper into the endzone to cut into the deficit. One Yellow Jacket three-and-out later, redshirt freshman running back Hollywood Smothers took a 53-yard run to the endzone with less than two minutes on the clock. In an instant, NC State turned a nine-point deficit into a six-point lead.
However, the NC State defense couldn’t come up clutch when needed. The Georgia Tech quarterbacks took over, using their legs to race down the field. Before long, Haynes was in for his second touchdown of the day. NC State’s defense had collapsed with just 20 seconds remaining.
“[It was] just not being able to contain the quarterback,” Fitzgerald said. “We were worried about man coverage [that] we had on the back end and didn’t really have a spot player for the quarterback, so we just got to execute better next time down the stretch.”
However, the fourth quarter in Atlanta had one more twist up its sleeve. Down just one point, and armed with two timeouts and just seconds of clock, Bailey and NC State saw a brief glimpse of light at the end of the tunnel.
The Pack had time for just one completion — a 28-yard reception by redshirt junior wide receiver Dacari Collins. With less than 10 seconds on the clock and just a few too many yards away from a comfortable field goal, Doeren was forced to make a decision.
With five seconds left, the head coach decided to burn his final timeout and turn to Smith for a long, 58-yard field goal. However, after the timeout, another precious second was added to the game clock.
“Felt like with five seconds, the field goal was the safest thing to do — if you throw it and they don’t get out of bounds, the game’s over,” Doeren said. “Obviously, the clock operator has some things to do with that. And the thing I’m disappointed in is after the time out, after we break the huddle, they come over and tell me they’re adding a second to the clock. And if I had known there were six seconds, it would have been a different conversation.”
Smith had the distance on his potential game-winning kick, but it skewed wide left, leaving NC State empty-handed on the ride back to Raleigh.
The Pack will finish its 2024 season with a bout at UNC-Chapel Hill against the Tar Heels, where it will look to dispense its pent-up frustration from its season of wasted opportunities.
“We don’t have time to feel sorry for ourselves,” Doeren said. “We got to go play our rival this week and sort of take all the pain that you’re feeling inside and put it away and get ready to use it.”
NC State will play its final regular season game of the year and vie for a bowl appearance in Chapel Hill on Saturday, Nov. 30 at 3:30 p.m.
