Payton Wilson continues dominant play, NC State's defense prepares for trip to Wake Forest

A week after NC State graduate linebacker Payton Wilson left the Clemson game early with what appeared to be a knee injury, he was back in the lineup like nothing happened against Miami. 

The small knee brace on his right leg was the only trace of Wilson’s premature exit from the contest against the Tigers when he took the field at Carter-Finley Stadium for the prime time matchup against the Hurricanes. 

Other than that, Wilson looked like his usual self. And his statistics backed it up with a team-best 16 tackle day that included seven solo stops, a tackle for loss and two pass breakups. Not a bad day at the office.

But Wolfpack defensive coordinator Tony Gibson, who is also Wilson’s position coach, was not surprised by his star defender’s showing against Miami.  

“The kid is a freak of a football player,” Gibson said Wednesday. “Plays extremely hard. Nothing that he does surprises me just for the fact that I’m around him every day. … If you had asked me last week if he’d have 16 tackles, I may not give 16 but I’d probably say 15.”

Well it was 16 tackles, and Wilson continued to carve out his Butkus Award resume as he eclipsed 100 total stops on the season for the second time in his NC State career. He logged 108 in 2020, and already has 105 this fall with three regular season games to play. 

Wilson is a semifinalist to be named the nation’s top linebacker, and his body of work continues to make a case in his bid for the trophy. He has just two games where he has not recorded double-digit tackles, the Clemson contest that he left early in and the VMI win where the Pack won 45-7. 

Other than that, he’s been all over the field the entire game for NC State’s defense this year. For Wolfpack coach Dave Doeren, there is not another player in college football that is doing what Wilson is this fall. The 11th-year coach prefaced it with he does not have time to watch every team play, but Wilson is playing at a level among everyone else, Doeren thought.

“He is the best defensive player in college football right now,” Doeren said earlier this week. “What his impact is on the field during a game, I just don’t know if anyone has that on their team. He’s impacting the course of the game, throughout the game, in every game, and it’s not like he just has a good game 

Wilson, NC State’s most senior leader on the defense in his sixth season, did not have to return to the Wolfpack. But with his sights set on the NFL, he did, and he is seeing the fruits of his labor pay off this season. 

For junior cornerback Aydan White, Wilson’s leadership has helped elevate the entire defense as a whole.

“Payton being the more vocal leader on the defense, it just brings all that energy that helps us bring energy, too,” White said. “Payton’s definitely a dog, and we all feed off the energy that he provides for us.”

But as Wilson continues to play at an elite level in his final season of collegiate eligibility, Gibson noted what that shows the rest of the country about the Pack’s star defender.

“That tells you how much he loves NC State, and how much he loves his teammates,” Gibson said. “He’ll lay it on the line every single week for those guys, for any coach in the building, for GAs, trainers, whatever it is. Payton Wilson’s an NC State guy.”

While Wilson has been the heart and soul of NC State’s defense this season, the unit has stepped up over the past two weeks after it gave up 41 points to Marshall and 24 points to Duke. The Pack held Clemson to just 17 points — and made a stand on the Tigers’ final drive — and it limited Miami to a pair of field goals. 

The defense’s improvement has come as the team responded from its “humiliating” loss to the Blue Devils heading into the team’s bye week. NC State has approached every game since as a new season, and it has worked. 

NC State’s ability to hold Miami, which entered the night as the third-best scoring offense in the ACC with just over 35 points a game, proved what the unit can do. And for Gibson, it was a near perfect performance, in terms of points allowed. 

“I love it,” said Gibson, who led the Pack defense to its first ACC game without a touchdown allowed since 2011. “I love those kinds of games. I wish every game was like that. I like the pressure when it’s on us to get stops. Our kids like the pressure when it’s on us to get stops to win a game. Every challenge that we had, we just kept stepping up.”

The next challenge for the Wolfpack is a trip to Wake Forest, where NC State has only won twice since 2000. But the house of horrors track record that NC State has in Winston-Salem was not something that Gibson cared about. 

He just wants to win the game, no matter where it is played.

“What we have to do is get our team prepared,” Gibson said. “I don’t care where we play. If we play on the interstate, if we play in the parking lot, if we play in the gym, we have to go be us. Being us is being aggressive, and hitting people in the face, trying to get turnovers. That’s what we do, and that’s how we’re built.”

NC State’s defense will likely go as Wilson goes, which usually bodes well for the Wolfpack. He has become the standard for the red and white, and as NC State prepares for its contest at Wake Forest, each play is the biggest until the next one is run. 

“The standard is the standard on defense right now,” Gibson said. “Every play, in our mind, is going to be the play that changes the game one way or the other. We take the field in the first quarter with the same mindset we do in the fourth quarter. We’re out here to get stops. Put the ball down and let’s roll.”