The No. 20 NC State football team lost a heartbreaker Saturday. With a chance to take a stranglehold on the ACC Atlantic, the Pack dropped a 38-31 decision to the No. 4 Clemson Tigers at Carter-Finley Stadium.
While this year’s Textile Bowl loss was devastating for the Wolfpack and its fans, with the team’s hopes of an ACC title game likely gone, NC State gave the defending national champions a whale of a fight. There’s plenty of good, bad and ugly to digest from this one, so let’s get to it.
The good: wide receivers- Redshirt junior Ryan Finley’s pass catchers were by far the Pack’s best unit in this one. NC State’s offense piled up 31 catches for 338 yards (10.9 yards per catch) and three touchdowns against the Tigers’ vaunted defense.
The Pack’s wideouts gave the team a chance to win with big play after big play. As per usual, sophomore receiver Kelvin Harmon led the way with eight catches for 155 yards, including a 40-yard catch and run over the middle for the game’s first touchdown in the first quarter, and would have had another touchdown had Finley not overthrown him on a double move early in the third quarter. With the Pack trying to mount a game-tying drive with no timeouts in the fourth quarter’s final minute, Harmon added a pair of his patented leaping sideline grabs to move the chains and give the Pack a chance.
Redshirt sophomore wideout Jakobi Meyers continued his breakout season, with nine catches for 105 yards and a score. Redshirt junior Stephen Louis added six catches for 55 yards. All in all, the Pack’s stacked group of wideouts had a very strong day against the 13th-best overall defense in the country.
The bad: rush defense- An overwhelming strength, perhaps the bread and butter for the Pack’s defense through the first seven games, stopping the run has been a glaring hole in a two-game losing streak to Notre Dame and Clemson. The Fighting Irish and Tigers have strong rush offenses, and the Pack has no doubt been limited by the injury to senior defensive tackle Justin Jones, but getting gashed on the ground the way NC State has the past two weeks is not a recipe for success.
The Pack allowed Clemson 224 yards on 35 carries for an average of 6.4 yards per carry, including an 89-yard touchdown run from running back Tavien Feaster at the end of the third quarter that put the Tigers up by two scores and left the Pack chasing the game the entire fourth quarter. The team also gave up a number of key scrambles to mobile quarterback Kelly Bryant, who rushed 20 times for 88 yards and two scores.
After ranking sixth in the nation in run defense going into the Notre Dame game, the Pack has dropped to 31st, allowing 131.2 rush yards per game on the season. If NC State wants to get back in the win column against Boston College next week, tightening things up against the run would be a good starting point.
The ugly: third quarter- Yikes. It’s a close competition between the third quarter of this one, the third quarter against Notre Dame last week and the opening quarter of the week two game against Marshall for the worst 15 minutes of football NC State has played this season.
Clemson thoroughly outplayed the Wolfpack in Saturday’s third frame, by far the biggest factor in the loss. The Tigers outgained NC State 202 yards to 48, and put two touchdowns on the board to zero points for the Pack to wipe out NC State’s four-point halftime lead and take a 10-point lead to the final quarter.
The offense could not move the ball at all in the third quarter; after a dynamite start to the game, Finley completed six of 13 pass attempts in the opening frame of the second half. After holding Clemson scoreless on its first two second-half possessions, the Pack’s defense, likely worn out by the offense’s inability to stay on the field, buckled and allowed the Tigers to take a commanding lead, including the run by Feaster to end the third.
If not for the Pack’s abysmal third-quarter performance Saturday, this year’s Textile Bowl may have had a very different result.
