CLEMSON, S.C., — Maybe Clemson head coach Dabo Swinney is right. Maybe his unwillingness to build a roster through the transfer portal has real merit. Maybe the two-time National Championship-winning head coach knows how to build a roster.

While Swinney’s approach of not using the portal at all is probably extreme, NC State football head coach Dave Doeren is proving why it can be dangerous to construct a roster with players from different schools.

In Saturday’s 59-35 loss to Clemson at Memorial Stadium, the Wolfpack fielded 10 transfers who played starting snaps — seven on offense and three on defense. The Wolfpack’s secondary, which accounts for all three defensive transfers, was picked apart by Tigers’ quarterback Cade Klubnik who threw for three touchdowns in just over two quarters that he played.

While only three players on defense are in their first year with the Pack from another school, all 11 players on the field need to be on the same page and the lack of continuity they have with the rest of the defense most likely played a part in the breakdowns.

Klubnik and the Tigers also gashed NC State’s run defense for 270 yards and the secondary is the last line of defense in those scenarios and their lack of knowledge on how to fill the gaps in defensive coordinator Tony Gibson’s 3-3-5 scheme most certainly played a role in Clemson’s day on the ground.

“Just certain guys aren’t where they need to be in the fits,” said redshirt junior linebacker Caden Fordham. “We’ll learn from it. It’s all we can do at this point. We got eight games left so from here on out we got to come out and play better ball.”

Offensively the Wolfpack started a running back and center who are in their first years with the Wolfpack after coming from different schools. Graduate running back Jordan Waters has yet to find success behind an offensive line that doesn’t know his tendencies and vice versa.

Too many times this season Waters can be seen waiting for a hole to open up from his offensive line and the lineman not knowing where Waters is, causing the run game to struggle.

And would NC State have been better off handing the reins over to freshman quarterback CJ Bailey to start the season instead of bringing in graduate quarterback Grayson McCall? It sure looks that way, as Bailey has played better than McCall in his six and a half quarters under center.

The freshman has stood tall in the pocket, made decisive throws and thrown the ball accurately —- all as things McCall struggled to do. And this is without Bailey getting the first-team reps in practice for all of spring and fall camp.

“I’m proud of CJ,” Doeren said. “For one I thought he prepared well for the game. He did some good things. That’s a tough environment for a first start. He was not intimidated one bit. He had good energy, good spirit and when he made a mistake, he stayed the same way as he did when he made a play. And he’s going to grow a lot from that game.”

There’s no way to know if Bailey had started the season as QB1 that the offense would be better, but one has to wonder how far ahead Bailey and the offense would be if he was brought in to be the starting signal caller from day one.

It’s not like this is a first-time instance for Doeren either. Last year he had a promising sophomore quarterback in MJ Morris but decided to bring in Brennan Armstrong from Virginia and name him the starter at the beginning of the season.

Armstrong was benched after the fifth game of the season for Morris because of the lack of continuity he had with the rest of the offense. Morris played the next four games but after the fourth game, Morris opted to preserve his redshirt and transfer at the end of the season.

While we may never know why Morris left, one can only imagine Doeren bringing in an older quarterback to start over Morris after he flashed potential his freshman year played a part in it.

Doeren doesn’t want to play that same game with Bailey. As sad of an ending as it would be for McCall to lose his job to injury in his final season, Doeren has to play Bailey for the rest of the season.

For one, Bailey believes he can step up for this Wolfpack team and the players around him feel the same way.

“I’m really a great leader and I got a lot of fight in me,” Bailey said. “I noticed that the team goes off of my energy. I had a lot of great energy for the offense and the offense said they had my back.”

Not only has Bailey looked better in the Wolfpack’s offense, but it would behoove the 12th-year coach to not play Bailey the rest of the year in order to allow him to acclimate to college football and build a connection with the skill players who will most likely be here next year. You never know who’s coming back with the transfer portal, though.

This is not to say that Doeren and his staff shouldn’t have used the portal at all but relying on multiple players at key positions and the most important player — the quarterback — has proven to be a dangerous game.

NC State’s slow start to last season while trying to find chemistry ultimately prevented it from appearing in the ACC Championship game. And this season it seems the Wolfpack has struggled to find an identity while trying to piece together so many new faces.

For every success story in the portal, like Caleb Williams at USC or Jayden Daniels at LSU, there are 10 more failures. Williams and Daniels had the talent to overcome chemistry deficiencies but the truth is, at the collegiate level there aren’t many talents like that who can come in and immediately have success in a new environment.

After two straight seasons of trying to use the portal to overhaul his team, Doeren has to reassess his thinking because, for the second straight season, a slow start might doom NC State’s preseason aspirations.