“By the way, we won that football game.”
That's Dave Doeren after Saturday night. Not a joke. A direct quote. The head coach of NC State, in year 14, getting chippy with the media after his team nearly blew a 21-point home lead to Appalachian State.
He's right. They won. 41-31. The Wolfpack is 2-2.
Now here's everything else.
NC State led this game 21-0. It was 28-7 at halftime. CJ Bailey was dealing; three touchdowns in the first half. Duke Scott was gashing them. App State, a Sun Belt team State paid $300,000 to come to Carter-Finley, was dead on arrival.
Then the fourth quarter happened. And it was Vanderbilt all over again.
A strip sack on Bailey turns into a touchdown. The ensuing onside kick… which NC State looked completely unprepared for (coaching for all the Doeren defenders)…gets recovered by the Mountaineers like they'd practiced it all week. Because they probably had. Three plays later, a wide-open tight end strolls into the end zone. 31-31 with 9:41 left, and whatever was left of the 56,919 people in that stadium knew exactly how this movie ends.
It didn't end that way. Credit where it's due: Scott ripped off a 16-yard touchdown to retake the lead, the defense got a turnover on downs, and Kanoah Vinesett's 35-yarder with 1:51 left iced it. The players finished. Good for them. They deserved better than the position they were put in.
But this is the second straight week NC State has blown a three-score lead in the fourth quarter. That's not a fluke. That's a pattern. That's coaching.
Doeren wants to talk about how proud he is, how the team blocked out the noise. Fine. But the noise exists because the same thing keeps happening every single week. You don't get to be snippy with fans and reporters after needing a last-minute field goal to survive a team you were supposed to bury by two touchdowns at home.
Fourteen years. Same ceiling. Same guy setting it.
On to Louisville.