NC State embarrasses itself in 59-35 loss at Clemson

Heading into this game, I was just looking for something to build on for State after an aimless start to the season, and not only did I get zip there, State managed the most utterly disastrous start possible.

This game was over as soon as it was apparent that NC State’s defense was dead on arrival, and that was during Clemson’s second possession. After flipping the field with a couple first downs and pinning Clemson inside the 10, the Tigers ripped off a chunk play to flip it back, and then scored on an easy touchdown over the top of Aydan White to make it 14-0 in the first quarter.

When CJ Bailey failed to sense the backside pressure on the next possession and fumbled the ball away on a big hit, giving Clemson a short field, the Tigers had and took the opportunity to put this one entirely on ice. It’s tough circumstances when a game is over before you get to the second quarter. And you’re playing on the road. With a freshman quarterback.

NC State hasn’t been embarrassed this badly in quite a long time. Giving up over 400 yards of offense in a half has got to be the worst performance of the Tony Gibson era, and while that’s not an explanation of the problems on hand by itself, it does say a lot about effort, and that’s what’s really concerning. The effort just wasn’t there. Like everybody knew the line beforehand, knew they had a freshman QB, and just decided they didn’t need to try because what’s the point.

I knew the offense was going to struggle. The difficult part for me, and what portends far worse for the future, is just how bad this defense was. Not even remotely competitive. Toast from the jump. Gave up 160 yards on the first two drives to Clemson, which included multiple chunk plays.

Clemson had 45 points by halftime, rendering NC State into Directional State Tech for the second half. The Tigers took their foot off the gas then, and worked in your mom’s cousin’s third husband’s son in at quarterback.

We aren’t used to this. It sucks. It is a huge bummer.

It’s easy enough to see the limitations State is working with; the defensive line is just average, and the linebackers are bad. I could live with this if they were hitting their assignments and giving max effort, but there’s none of that, either. Whole thing’s gone bust, and Clemson just put a spotlight on it.

So I don’t know how you recover from here, but I don’t get paid to figure that out, either. It’s tough enough having to battle through a season when you’re undertalented, but if you can’t at least give your best effort every week? If you quit? That’s a lot harder still. There was no pride on display, no determination. Just sorry anger and frustration at failure, highlighted by Anthony Belton spitting on a guy and getting thrown out. The energy is terrible. That’s what Dave’s got to turn around if this isn’t going to get really bad.

I think he can do that; he’s done it before. But this is a whole different challenge after a bunch of guys spent months reading articles about how good they could be, about how good this transfer class supposedly was, and how far they might go. See, 2-2 is not a death sentence. It’s certainly not ideal, but as last season taught us, these seasons are long.

But these are large problems, larger than last year, and this team has serious fault lines. If they cannot at least get on the same page from an effort standpoint, then it’s only going to get worse.