NC State’s late-game struggles reappear in Military Bowl loss to ECU

ANNAPOLIS, Md. — You didn’t have to see the field to know how the game was going for NC State. Instead, the noises that emitted from the Wolfpack’s coaches box on the press level of Navy-Marine Corps Stadium told the story of the Military Bowl fourth quarter.

Clapping erupted out of the small room to the right of the main working space after senior safety Bishop Fitzgerald logged a tackle for a loss to force East Carolina’s first punt of the game. Hollering, including excited expletives, rang out when the Wolfpack ran a double reverse that ended with a 33-yard touchdown pass to redshirt freshman running back Hollywood Smothers midway through the period  — the go-ahead score and NC State’s first lead of the night. 

And when ECU, which had 3rd-and-10 from its own 14, broke off an 86-yard touchdown run on the legs of running back Rahjai Harris? A loud thud, likely from banging the blue wooden tabletop against the glass, sounded. 

That dash, which came with 1:33 to play, was the nail in the coffin for NC State. The Pack dropped its fifth straight bowl game in a 26-21 loss to ECU on Saturday evening. 

“We just didn’t finish,” NC State coach Dave Doeren said afterwards. “We had two drives offensively where we could have ran the clock out and didn’t. Defensively, had them 3rd-and-10 and gave up the [86-] yard touchdown run. We had chances to win that football game and didn’t get it done.”

NC State’s loss to ECU, the first since the Pirates won 33-30 in 2016, marked the Wolfpack’s fourth one-possession defeat of the season. The Pack, which seemed to figure out how to close games with its victory at North Carolina, struggled to do so against the Pirates. 

As Doeren alluded to, the Wolfpack had the ball twice in the final 3:49 of game time, but it ran just six total plays with a three-and-out and an interception. The first of those two series would have been the game-winning drive if the Pack could have strung together a couple first downs and forced the Pirates to burn timeouts. The latter was moving at an efficient clip until the interception, while ECU’s touchdown scamper was mixed in between. 

NC State’s run defense, an up and down unit all season, posted its worst effort in the bowl. The Pack allowed 332 yards on 39 attempts — 8.4 per attempt — as the Pirates exploited NC State’s poor run fits that seemingly allowed ECU’s running backs to consistently pick up chunk plays. 

Doeren, who was visibly frustrated with the outcome, believed the entire run defense wasn’t up to par in the game. 

“Stopping the run is about a lot of things,” Doeren said. “It’s gap integrity, beating blocks, leveraging the ball, tackling and its pursuit. There’s a lot of those things that weren’t good enough in this game.”

Harris, who scored the game-winning touchdown, finished with a game-best 220 rushing yards with the score on 17 carries. That marked the first time an opposing back rushed for more than 200 yards since Boston College’s AJ Dillon rushed for 223 during the 2019 season.

The Pirates’ long touchdown run spoiled the Wolfpack’s plans of finishing the game — and the season — on a high note. Doeren, who said the team stressed that all week leading up to the game, made it a point to make that one of the top priorities of the upcoming offseason. 

“It’s hard when you lose a game like that,” Doeren said. “We played a lot of young guys, we’ve got a lot of growing to do. That’s what this offseason’s going to be about — learning how to finish and putting ourselves in position to win those one-possession games.”

While young players were all over the field for NC State, including freshman quarterback CJ Bailey and Smothers, the two-headed snake that paced the Wolfpack’s offense down the stretch of the fall, it wasn’t enough against ECU. Bailey was 19-of-26 passing for 230 yards with three touchdowns with an interception, while Smothers had 181 yards of total offense (139 rushing, 42 receiving) with a touchdown.

The Pirates, undermanned at certain spots due to the transfer portal, appeared like they wanted the game more, especially in the first half as the Wolfpack had another slow start. That put NC State in a hole it nearly climbed out of before the long touchdown run thwarted any chance of bringing a trophy back to the Murphy Center in Raleigh. 

Both sides of the football have had their fair share of disappointing finishes, Doeren noted, and NC State saw that reappear against ECU. The offense couldn’t run the clock out and the defense allowed a back-breaking mad dash on 3rd-and-10 even though it seemed to be a passing down on the Pirates’ own 14. 

In the end, NC State felt like it had a chance to win the game. But unlike at UNC, there was no last-minute scoring drive. Instead, the Wolfpack left the U.S. Naval Academy with a sour taste after another one-score defeat. 

“You want to be a great team, you gotta win those games,” Doeren said. “We’re not good enough to do that right now. We’re not.”

NC State has 245 days to stew on this loss. ECU will visit Carter-Finley Stadium to open the 2025 campaign. The sounds from inside the coaches box, the jubilant claps and the pounding of a table, are likely bound to make their way into the Wolfpack’s meeting rooms in the meantime.