Second to last. Fifth place in the ACC Atlantic Division. One spot ahead of Wake Forest.
Any way one chooses to word it, this is unfamiliar territory for the football team, especially after five winning seasons and four bowl victories in coach Chuck Amato’s six years at N.C. State.
And Amato is starting to feel the heat — especially after Sports Illustrated picked the Pack to finish 1-7 in the conference, 3-9 overall and 67th nationally — 19 spots behind North Carolina.
Asked about the “hot seat,” Amato surged into an answer that lasted longer than two minutes.
“Why should I be on the hot seat?” Amato said. “You see that stadium? It wasn’t there five or six years ago. See, I think to build a program, you got to win it within the state first.”
After comparisons to Clemson coach Tommy Bowden and other in-state rivals, Amato said he would shrug off comments about him being on the “hot seat.”
“If I’m on one, so be it,” Amato said. “I don’t know why I should be, because we’re winning, we’re going to bowls, we’re close, we’re close.”
The Wolfpack finished 3-5 in the ACC and 7-5 overall last season after defeating South Florida 14-0 in the Meineke Car Care Bowl. Yet, the media picked the Pack to finish next-to-last in the ACC Atlantic.
As far as the rankings are concerned, senior cornerback A.J. Davis said the rankings do not matter, especially considering they have no factor in determining where the team finishes at the end of the season.
“We use it as motivation,” Davis said. “I’ve been on both ends of the stick. I’ve been part of teams that have been predicted to finish top-10 and didn’t do well, and I’ve been on teams that were not projected to do well, and we’ve done well.”
With the early departure of Mario Williams and John McCargo and the graduation of Manny Lawson, all of whom were first-round NFL Draft picks and defensive linemen, State will have plenty of holes to fill on its defensive line.
While there will be new faces along the defensive front, senior kicker and punter John Deraney said the team has athletes who can fill the spots.
“We lost some guys, but we’ve got some guys that can come in and step up,” Deraney said.
Not only will the team be looking to fill holes on the defensive front, Deraney said, but he added the Pack will also be competing in one of the top conferences in the nation.
“The ACC is getting like the SEC used to be,” Deraney said. “No disrespect to the SEC, but we are starting to get some of their players.”
In order to stay competitive in the conference, Davis said the team can’t afford to continue to lose games it is supposed to win. The only team State was predicted to finish ahead of in the pre-season ranking was Wake Forest, a team the Pack lost to last season.
Although Davis said he expects his team to finish better than the media predicted, he said there are no off weeks in conference play.
“We are in a really tough conference,” Davis said. “We have to play good every week, we can’t play good one week and then not so good the next.”
Even so, after the Pack scored victories over Florida State and Maryland last season, teams predicted to finish ahead of State this year, Davis said the fans have a right to expect a lot from the team.
“The expectations should be there,” Davis said. “We have higher expectations than anyone. We just have to be sure to play the best we can play.”
Deraney said with the money the team has put into the program, fans should look for State to be one of the better programs in the ACC.
“With the facilities we have, it’s not wrong for fans to expect us to be top-notch,” Deraney said.
On the other side of the ACC, in the Coastal Division, rival North Carolina was also predicted to finish fifth. Deraney said that because the two programs are rivals, the game between the two, which is the last ACC game of the season for the Pack, could go either way.
“It doesn’t matter,” Deraney said. “It’s a rivalry game, it’s always going to be a close game. But I want to say we have a better program with better players.”
