After Saturday’s disaster against Boston College, it doesn’t take a keen football expert to see our defense has some issues with stopping the run.
Montel Harris turned Tom O’Brien’s second return to Chestnut Hill into his own private highlight reel as he fended away State’s defenders and their paddy-cake tackling attempts on his way to setting school records for single-game rushing yards and touchdowns.
But anyone who has followed Wolfpack football for more than a week would wonder why the Eagles even bothered handing the ball off.
I’m not saying Frank Spaziani didn’t look at the Duke film, but after the aerial barrage of passes Thaddeus Lewis rifled through the Pack’s disheveled secondary, it’s a wonder how Dave Shinskie managed to keep his passing yardage sub-200 in the Eagles’ 52-20 romp.
It also breeds questions as to how much more lopsided the score could have been if BC had relied more on Shinskie’s arm, but hypothetical situation-building doesn’t expose anything more about State’s defense than we already know: it’s streaky, at best.
Or is there another factor that contributed to the Pack giving up 49-plus points two Saturdays in a row? Maybe redshirt senior defensive end and captain Willie Young has an answer for how two teams have had their pick of how they would like to reach the end zone–either through throwing over or running through State’s defense.
Young said State has played great teams and “great teams are able to make things happen.”
Beyond my concern with his inclusion of Duke as a “great team” is a deeper issue. He’s blaming the defense’s poor performance on how good the other teams in the ACC are.
History lesson: N.C. State was a founding member of the Atlantic Coast Conference in 1953, so let’s find another excuse as to why instead of being a great team that makes things happen, we’re just a team that makes other teams look great.
Yes, Duke has improved and Harris is an athlete, but why is the captain of the defense complacent with accepting that some teams are just better than us?
The issue, as I see it, isn’t with the secondary, and it’s not with the run-defense either. It’s something much worse, especially when the defensive captain says he’s going to approach the next two weeks of practice the same as if his team was undefeated.
When a team can chalk up a 21-point home loss to Duke as just a great team beating a not-so-great team, it’s not time to go back to Xs and Os–it’s time for a dramatic attitude adjustment.
Maybe O’Brien’s “we’re not a very good football team” comments have finally gotten to this team, but I doubt TOB was looking for his players to accept defeat as inevitable.
There’s a fine line between cockiness and confidence, but the team’s at-all-cost avoidance of the former could be hurting its ability to have faith in its own abilities.
O’Brien said the coaches are going to re-evaluate everything before the Halloween showdown in Tallahassee against Florida State. Let’s hope the first thing the staff re-evaluates is the team’s attitude.
