NC State football countdown to 2023 kickoff: 64
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The NC State football season opener for 2023 is at Connecticut on Aug. 31 — or 64 days away. TheWolfpacker.com’s countdown for the season looks at the significance of the number 64 in Pack history.
NC State Football And No. 64
• There is a new No. 64 on the NC State football roster.
Freshman Rico Jackson has big shoes to fill. He assumes a number that was worn last year by Chandler Zavala, a fourth round NFL Draft pick by the Carolina Panthers.
Jackson was a one-time Illinois verbal commitment from Fort Lauderdale (Fla.) Dillard High. The Pack had a chance to eyeball Jackson in person when his team made a stop at the NC State football camp in the summer.
That’s when the Pack gave Jackson an offer, but at the time he was pledged to the Illini. Between then and his decision to decommit, NC State filled up on its allotment of offensive linemen in the 2023 class.
Fast forward to after the season, former NC State offensive line coach John Garrison was hired at Ole Miss and replaced by Garett Tujague. That changed prompted Wolfpack offensive line commit Charlie Symonds to open up his recruitment (he would sign with Stanford). The first call made by NC State was to Jackson, and he quickly arranged an official visit that would lead to him signing with the Wolfpack.
• During Earle Edwards’ career as NC State football head coach, the Wolfpack won five ACC conference titles. Three of those came in consecutive years, from 1963-65. The only one of those three, however, that NC State won outright, came in 1964.
That team lost all three non-conference games they played — including a 21-0 shutout loss at No. 3 Alabama coached by Bear Bryant. NC State was additionally defeated on the road by future ACC rivals Florida State and Virginia Tech.
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However, within the ACC, NC State went 5-2, beginning league play with three straight wins, including topping UNC and Maryland by identical 14-13 scores. A lopsided road loss at Duke was answered by a win at Virginia and a 17-14 home triumph over South Carolina on Halloween in what proved to be the difference in the league standings.
• The second most pass attempts in a game in NC State history was 64. That’s how many passes that Ryan Finley threw in the 2017 season opener against South Carolina in Charlotte. Finley completed a school-record 45 of those pass attempts for 415 yards, which was the 12th most in one contest.
Coincidentally, the most pass attempts ever attempted in a game against NC State is also 64, done twice — Virginia in 2020 and Texas Tech in 2003.
• During his career at NC State, kicker Damon Hartman made exactly 64.0 percent of his field goal attempts, 48 of 75. However, when it mattered most, Hartman delivered — a 56-yarder to beat archrival North Carolina in 1990.