NC State football: What they're saying about Clemson loss

NC State football suffered a first loss Saturday, falling 30-20 at No. 5 Clemson Saturday evening. Here is some of what those who covered the game are saying.

Matt Carter, The Wolfpacker — Column: NC State football flaws exposed, ACC hopes dashed

However, what Saturday did deliver was a potential fatal blow to the league title chase for the Wolfpack.

If you climb up the hill to Memorial Stadium, observers will undoubtedly pass by a cemetery. NC State’s ACC championship dreams may have been buried not far away in the turf of Death Valley.

Clemson now would have to lose twice for the Pack to have hope, and that seems unlikely since the Tigers already have wins over the Pack and Wake Forest, the latter on the road. Those are arguably the two best teams outside Clemson in the league.

A slip-up for the Tigers along the way is possible, but two is far-fetched.

That’s why there was so much at stake for NC State football Saturday. Clemson and the idiocy of ACC divisional play in a year where the Coastal may be the weakest in Power Five history combined to dash a lot of the Pack’s hopes in the league.

However, there is still a lot to play for, and a banner, historic season ahead can be had if NC State accepts the obvious deficiencies and builds a formula around it.

Ethan McDowell, The Wolfpacker — NC State’s heartbroken locker room reaction to Clemson loss

NC State took a 10-6 lead in the first half with less than two minutes to go, and all of the momentum was on the Pack’s side. Clemson responded with an 8-play, 75-yard drive that took just 1:20 and ended in a touchdown.

“I feel like we gave him a touchdown going into the half,” Doeren said. “I really feel that way, not to discredit Clemson, they made a nice throw and catch. We’re in a three-deep with two hard corners, and they run a flat route, the corners should be all over that.”

That play led to a 26-yard completion from DJ Uiagalelei to running back Will Shipley, setting up for a rushing TD by the quarterback one play later. Clemson scored again on its first drive of the second half, and NC State spent the rest of the game playing from behind.

“You don’t have to be perfect, but you’ve got to play the defenses and offenses and execute and make your layups and not turn the football over,” Doeren said. “We didn’t do that well enough.”

Luke DeCock, News & Observer — NC State’s flaws, which proved fatal in loss at Clemson, could be seen for months

It was the avoidability of it all that seemed to rankle Devin Leary the most, not merely a missed opportunity but one N.C. State never really fully grasped. It wasn’t just that the Wolfpack couldn’t seem to get out of its own way at times. It was that the flaws N.C. State couldn’t overcome could be seen so far in the distance. Months even.

There was anger in the Wolfpack quarterback’s words, and it seemed to emanate from the closed doors of the locker room behind him as well.

“A little bit heartbroken, a little bit pissed off,” Leary said. “We walked off that field knowing we didn’t play to the best of our ability. We had very high aspirations. We had very high expectations coming into this game and we thought we prepared well, but we didn’t execute well.”

All the hopes and dreams — the very high aspirations — N.C. State brought into this season were long gone by then, washed away like so many others before on this field, not only at the hands of merciless Clemson but the Wolfpack’s own — the first and most crucial turnover of the 30-20 loss Saturday night bounced off the hands of an N.C. State receiver.

In the end, for all the N.C. State players who decided to come back to play in this game, under these lights, for these stakes, it was the two who didn’t who N.C. State missed the most: Emeka Emezie and Ickey Ekwonu, the big-play receiver and left tackle the Wolfpack sorely needed Saturday night.

David Thompson, Fayetteville Observer — NC State football vs. Clemson report card: Why offense got a D+

It’s hard to blame this loss on coaching or even play-calling. Right now, NC State’s offense has no identity to go along with its impressive defense. Is that Tim Beck’s fault? Maybe? This game, though, showed an uncomfortable truth for Wolfpack fans — this team is not as good as expected.

Matt Connolly, Clemson Sports — Snap judgments as Clemson pulls away for victory over NC State

It’s one thing to put up impressive stats against Georgia Tech, Louisiana Tech, Furman and Wake Forest, but to do it against one of the best defenses in the country in NC State shows just how much DJ Uiagalelei has improved.

The junior completed 70 percent of his passes, had 282 total yards and 3 total touchdowns. Uiagalelei is finally playing like the Heisman contender he was supposed to be going into last season.

Chapel Fowler, The State — After top 10 win over NC State, is Clemson football officially a contender?

Clemson hasn’t budged from its No. 5 spot in the AP Top 25 rankings since Week 2, after a less than convincing win against GT, but has spent the last four weeks working back up to the top-tier reputation of, say, No. 1 Georgia, No. 2 Alabama, No. 3 Ohio State and No. 4 Michigan.

That has peaked over the last two weeks with consecutive wins over ranked divisional opponents. Clemson once again controls its destiny in the ACC Atlantic entering next weekend’s game at Boston College (Syracuse is also undefeated through five weeks).

And the Tigers are doing it like they used to: with an excellent quarterback (junior DJ Uiagalelei is up to 11 passing touchdowns against 1 interception this year); a substantial group of playmakers around him; and a defense with a knack for rising to the occasion.

Clemson needed all of those players and then some to get past N.C. State for an ACC record-tying 37th straight home win and remain squarely in the College Football Playoff conversation. That, Swinney said, is all his program can ask for.

“5-0 is where we hoped to be,” he said.

Jon Blau, Charleston Post and Courier — Clemson claims 30-20 win over NC State

Last year, the Wolfpack helped rip a chance at another ACC title from the Tigers in a double-overtime stunner in Raleigh. But not this year.

Not in a raucous Death Valley on a night where Clemson’s offense continued to surge and the defense held its ground, all the way until Henry’s fumble recovery with 7:39 left in the game and beyond.

As he took that leap onto the bench, Henry joked he just hoped not to fall off. But it also reminded him of something Clemson coach Dabo Swinney has said.

“Coach Swinney has alluded to the man in the arena a lot these last couple weeks,” Henry said. “If I had to put that in a moment, that was a man in the arena moment, for sure.”

This year, No. 5 Clemson (5-0, 3-0 ACC) followed a shootout win at then-No. 21 Wake Forest with a decisive win over No. 10 N.C. State. They faced the stiffest challenge they will probably face this conference season, and they came out victorious.

Now, everything sits in front of the Tigers, just as Henry gazed into that sea of orange in the stands.

“The credit goes to those players, I love their effort, I love their heart, I love their belief, their grit,” Swinney said. “I told them in the locker room, if we can just bottle that up, it’s special to be a part of that.”

Brett Friedlander, SaturdayRoad.com — Heartbroken, pissed off … that’s NC State football after falling short yet again

This was State’s moment.

It was the opportunity to finally prove that it wasn’t just ready to play with the big boys, but that it was actually ready to become one of the big boys. If it wasn’t the biggest game in program history, then it was certainly the most important of the Doeren era.

And yet, instead of rising to the occasion, the Wolfpack came up short.

Again.

“It was a big missed opportunity for us, we realize that,” said senior linebacker Isaiah Moore, one of several defensive stars that did all they could to keep the game within reach. “This one hurts.”

The most difficult aspect of the loss was that thanks to some uncharacteristic mistakes by the Tigers – including a rare missed field goal by the usually automatic BT Potter and a key targeting penalty that extended a scoring drive, leaving Clemson’s already depleted secondary without safety Andrew [Mukuba] – the game was actually there for the taking.

Associated Press — No. 5 Clemson tops No. 10 NC State 30-20 in ACC showdown

“I thought DJ was in total command of what we were doing,” Clemson coach Dabo Swinney said.

Clemson’s defense did the rest, holding the potent Wolfpack to just a field goal over the first 29 minutes of the second half in building a 17-point lead. The Tigers also picked off Leary and recovered a fumble when N.C. State went for it on 4th-and-13 down 10 with less than nine minutes left.

“Lost the turnover margin, lost the line of scrimmage, you don’t win many games like that,” Wolfpack coach Dave Doeren said.

Clemson, which hasn’t lost at home since November 2016, matched Florida State’s ACC mark of 37 straight at home set from 1992-2001. The Tigers’ 11 in a row since last season [is] the longest current streak in the FBS.

“We’re definitely not there yet,” Henry said. “But I can say the mindset for four quarters definitely showed up tonight.”

Clemson also holds tiebreakers in the division over the Demon Deacons and Wolfpack.

Joe Giglio, WRAL.com — The pain and the wait continues for the Wolfpack

The culture of Clemson is the culture of winning, even if their lineup doesn’t look like the ultra-talented national championship teams of 2016 or ’18. Uiagalelei doesn’t have to measure up to the impossible standard the Tigers have set at quarterback over the past eight years for Clemson to be the class of the ACC.

Not with everything else the Tigers have going for them. Mike Tomlin likes to say that the “standard is the standard.” Well, Clemson is Clemson and the Tigers are the standard in the ACC.

And, well, NC State is NC State. Unfortunately for them.

The Wolfpack hasn’t won the ACC title since 1979. It hasn’t won a division title since the league expanded to two sides in 2005. Only one other ACC member in ’05 can say the same thing — Maryland, who joined the Big Ten in 2014.

That’s what makes last year’s such a bitter pill to swallow for NC State. State beat Clemson last year but still couldn’t win the division.

Just to bend your mind, Wake Forest lost to Clemson and won the division. So there’s your silver lining and one Wolfpack coach Dave Doeren was preaching.

“We can’t sit here and say, ‘What if?'” Doeren said. “It’s a long season and there’s a lot of games left. All we can control is next week.”

Bryan Pyrtle, Technician — Clemson still rules ACC, squashes NC State football in primetime bout

There are two drives that will stick with NC State perhaps more than any other. When Clemson kicker B.T. Potter missed a 46-yard field goal with 6:06 left in the third quarter, NC State was presented with a golden opportunity to go down and score, but the Pack went three-and-out.

In the fourth quarter, down 23-13, the Pack got it in Clemson territory, but a fumbled snap by redshirt junior quarterback Devin Leary on 4th-and-13 turned the ball over and led to a Tigers touchdown that essentially put the game away.

“It was just a miscommunication between me and [graduate center Grant Gibson],” Leary said. “We go on the clap a lot; I think something was heard. … It’s on me whether I did call for the ball or not to get on top of it.”

Similar to the East Carolina game in Week 1, missed opportunities were a theme in this one, and something the Pack will look to shore up as it tries to at least keep pace in the Atlantic.