NC State’s offense was absolutely brutal on Saturday night as its line got swallowed whole more often than not by the Tennessee defense. These are not ideal conditions to operate under, and the results were predictable given that utter inability to block at the point of attack.
We’ve seen State for eight quarters now, and it has played well on offense for exactly one of them. Let’s go to the unfortunate chart!
(EPA = Expected Points Added; here is a good explainer.) A hat tip to Bud Davis for the data.
Playing like big hot super-poop for four quarters on Saturday is putting extra drag on these early returns, but uh, seeing NC State occupy that spot in the lower left by itself is rather alarming. Two games may be a bit early to render big-picture judgment, but safe to say that a legitimately good offense would not be living in that corner even if it had played Tennessee twice. I don’t think we should ignore the implications—good offenses don’t have a floor down here.
How much better should it get? Hard to say, really. There is still plenty of upside assuming the execution improves and Grayson McCall actually looks comfortable at some point, but I’m gonna go ahead and toss aside any notion that this might be, say, a top-35 offense.
But it will get better!