Bill Connelly’s ACC preview dropped this morning, and as always, it’s a thorough summary of the big questions facing each team, and how they’ve tried to address them in the offseason. Clemson heads into the fall as the obvious league favorite—the Tigers lead the country in returning production—but there’s plenty of room for chaos beyond them.
There are a half dozen teams ranked between 36 and 47 in SP+, and NC State is one of them. State plays all five of the others in this secondary tier (FSU, VT, Pitt, Duke, GT), and if those are indeed roughly even matchups then this season can go in a whole lot of directions. SP+ has NC State at 7-5 (4-4), for the record—would you take that right now if you could? I’d think about it. It does top all of the Vegas win totals (typically six or 6.5) I’ve seen.
If the Pack ends up doing better than that, it’s almost certainly going to be thanks to the offense taking a significant step forward. First task: stop doing all the bad things, as Bill outlines:
If development and a new playcaller result in fewer negative plays — the Pack were 119th in turnovers, 116th in stuff rate and 74th in sack rate — this could be State’s best offense since 2021. That could be enough to drive a solid season if the defense doesn’t collapse further.
Dave Doeren is betting that Kurt Roper’s relationship with CJ Bailey will make a difference—Roper doesn’t get that promotion to OC otherwise— and I expect tweaks rather than sea change in terms of approach. Roper had a first-hand view of what worked and what didn’t last fall, and that in theory at least is an advantage over an outside hire coming in cold. We’ll find out if it matters soon enough.