Last week’s showcase 30-19 victory over Cincinnati has many around the football program trying to remember the last time they’ve been so excited about Wolfpack football. But such hopeful talk was hard to find in the locker room following the week three win over the Bearcats.
“I think we’re playing hard,” coach Tom O’Brien said. “Now we have to play smarter. We can be a much better football team. We gutted it out, and found a way to win. Our defense was pretty good, but we gave up
too many long passes tonight.”
The stinging disappointment of a 2-6 finish in conference play after a 3-1 start in 2009 remains too fresh in the minds of most Pack players for them to buy into the hype they’ve created, junior linebacker Audie Cole said.
“”We’re still only 3-0,” Cole said. “We’ve got nine games left in this regular season. We’ve got a long way to go. I think we were 3-1 last year, and we didn’t end up too well.”
A large reason for the Pack’s struggles in 2009 was the defense’s inability to get stops. State gave up 31.2 points per game and surrendered career days to conference rivals including Duke quarterback Thaddeus Lewis and Boston College running back Montel Harris, but seems like a different unit through three games.
So far this season, opposing teams are scoring only 15.7 points per game, and without a strong defensive showing in the second half against UCF, players on both sides of the ball know they would likely not be undefeated. A big reason for the improvement on the scoreboard has been the defenders’ ability to do two things it often couldn’t in 2009 – take the ball away and get off the field on third down. State’s already forced seven turnovers this year after forcing only 14 all of last season. And perhaps more importantly, the Pack is allowing opposing offenses to convert only 24 percent of their third down conversions.
But with the conference opener against the Yellow Jackets comes the Pack’s most important, if not stiffest test of the season, especially for the defense.
Georgia Tech was the ACC champion a season ago and boasts one of the most difficult offenses to defend in the nation. Since Paul Johnson’s arrival in Atlanta in 2008, few teams have run an attack more potent than Tech’s option game, which enters week four averaging 345 yards per game on the ground. O’Brien said Monday he anticipated having difficulty getting his defense accustomed to the attack it will see in Atlanta Saturday at noon.
“It’s very tough to assimilate the speed of this offense, and definitely the precision of this offense,” O’Brien said.
No player has had more to do with the Jackets’ success than 2009 first-team All-ACC quarterback Josh Nesbitt, who has run for 294 yards through three games after rushing for more than 1,000 to help his team take the 2009 ACC title. Nesbitt’s backfield counterparts make his team’s attack all the more difficult to slow down, as he is one of only four players with at least 100 yards rushing in 2010. Nesbitt’s number is called on passing plays with little frequency, but when he has dropped back to pass, its often been for big gainers. Nesbitt has thrown the ball less than nine times per game this season, but has made his connections count, averaging more than 20 yards per completion.
