Ah, the bye week. A time for reflection. Rest. Self-scouting what you’ve done on the field to cut out some issues you might have been creating for yourself. For Robert Anae, the mission is simple, as far as I’m concerned: please remove half of your playbook. I don’t even care which half. Pick the middle half. Take every other page.
Alec did a good job after the Syracuse game articulating a lot of what’s bothered me about this offense, namely that it looks like an exercise in what-does-this-button-do each week. It has no tendencies in particular, no foundational throughline, and through two-thirds of the season, has no bread-and-butter to its repertoire. This is an appalling failure on Anae’s fault, especially given the upgrades in skill talent.
Moving to a freshman quarterback in-season will always create setbacks, but it feels at times like CJ Bailey is improving in spite of the offense; the unit as a whole feels less than the sum of its parts.
There is no reason for this offense to be so scattershot in its deployment of personnel or game plans, and it’s not doing the players any favors. Maybe the ground game wouldn’t be quite the same struggle if it weren’t trying to make like a dozen different ideas work all the time. Perhaps the passing game would have more chemistry if the wide receiver deck weren’t being reshuffled every couple of quarters.
If NC State is going to make something of the last third of the schedule, it’s got to start with Anae’s approach.