Tuffy Talk

Tied 28-28 in the fourth quarter, Louisville breaks a 68-yard run and is walking into the end zone. Harvey Dyson III, a defensive end who rushed from the line of scrimmage on that snap, runs the back down and strips the ball out at the 13.

Dave Doeren called it "one of the best plays I've seen as a coach in my career."

NC State 31, Louisville 28. The first Power Four win of the season, and Layton, Greg and Ethan spend the hour on a win that actually looked like a team closing a game out instead of surviving one.

CJ Bailey went 24 of 40 for a career-high 373 yards, two touchdowns and one interception, and did it without JoJo Trader for most of the day, without Duke Scott, without Anthony McCrimmon and without Spike Sowells, behind his third different center of the season.

Popo Aguirre recovered all three fumbles the defense forced. That is a program record for a single game, it makes him the second player in the country since 2020 to do it, and he now leads the nation in fumble recoveries. The ACC named him Linebacker of the Week on Monday.

Ethan's Stat Pack lands on the number that decided it. Louisville had three red zone trips and scored seven points. NC State had six and scored 21. Louisville fumbled five times. In a three-point game, that is the whole margin.

Then the honest part. Wake Forest is 4-1, just beat Stanford 57-3, won at Louisville, and comes to Carter-Finley Saturday at noon as a 3.5-point favorite. Ethan takes Gio Lopez over CJ Bailey right now and explains exactly why, which is not a comfortable thing to say out loud two days after a win.

Also in here: why nobody on this panel cares about a blown 14-point lead against that offense, the 19 missed tackles, Preston Douglas at 19 catches on 22 targets, and the fans booing going into halftime while up 13-7.

Where do you have Saturday? Find us on Twitter and Instagram @tuffytalknow.

Tuffy Talk is live every Monday at 8:30 PM. Football all fall, basketball all winter, baseball all spring. Follow the show wherever you get your podcasts so you never miss one.

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Jeff Brohm called his starting quarterback a game-time decision on Monday. Five days before kickoff.

That is not an injury update. Our read is that Louisville already knows Lincoln Kienholz is not playing Saturday, and the betting line agrees, because it has moved three and a half to four points toward NC State since the week started.

So this preview is built around the question that decides the game. If Louisville hands it to Davin Wydner, a senior who spent two years at West Georgia and has thrown four passes as a Cardinal, can NC State's defense make him beat them?

Ethan's answer is yes, with reservations. Louisville ranks 114th nationally in defensive success rate and 108th in EPA per play. They sit in the fourth percentile against explosive plays and the first percentile against explosive passes. Wake Forest beat them 30-27 last week by holding Isaac Brown and Keyjuan Brown to two yards a carry across 38 attempts and simply refusing to let anything get behind them.

The counter-argument is real, and it is Keyjuan Brown at 9.3 yards a carry against an NC State run defense that leads the ACC at 121.5 yards allowed. Whether that number is real or an artifact of playing Richmond and an App State team that could not run at all is the argument we spend the most time on.

Also in here: why Louisville keeping Isaac Brown while NC State lost Hollywood Smothers still stings, whether Duke Scott is only good when the matchup is easy, and the defensive line numbers that are genuinely hard to look at. Harvey Dyson leads the team with six pressures. The whole team has six sacks. Josiah Victor has not recorded one all season.

Layton has it 28-24 NC State. Ethan picked the upset and would not put a number on it.

Kickoff is 3:30 Saturday at Carter-Finley on ACC Network. Where do you have it? Find us on Twitter and Instagram @tuffytalknow.

Tuffy Talk is live every Monday at 8:30 PM. Football all fall, basketball all winter, baseball all spring. Follow the show wherever you get your podcasts so you never miss one.

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Dave Doeren ended his press conference Saturday by stepping back to the microphone to say "by the way, we won that football game."

Macon spent about five minutes on that. You are 2-2. You just let a 21-0 lead become a 31-31 tie against a Sun Belt team. You have no place to say that. "It's just arrogance to me, and it's unnecessary and ridiculous."

Ethan is out sick and Greg could not make it, so this is Layton and Macon, the two who started this show six years ago, taking questions straight from the chat and from Twitter for an hour.

The question that opens it comes from a listener and it is a fair one: has Doeren actually raised the floor, or does it just feel that way? The numbers are closer than anybody wants them to be. Doeren is at a 57.5 percent win percentage. Chuck Amato was at 57. Tom O'Brien was at 53.3. None of the three won an ACC title. Amato's best season was 11-3, better than anything Doeren has had. What Doeren has that neither of them did is eight wins in five of the last six years.

We also get into whether fans should stop filling Carter-Finley to send a message to Boo Corrigan, which is where the two of us disagree most sharply, what it would actually take at this point for Doeren to keep the job, and the onside kick that nobody on the kickoff team appeared to be ready for.

Then the part that is genuinely fun: basketball is back. Two exhibitions are on the schedule, Van Al Lubin has been cleared, and we project a starting five that might be the best shooting team in the conference.

Louisville comes to Carter-Finley Saturday at 3:30 and NC State opened as a home underdog.

Where do you stand? Find us on Twitter and Instagram @tuffytalknow.

Tuffy Talk is live every Monday at 8:30 PM. Football all fall, basketball all winter, baseball all spring. Follow the show wherever you get your podcasts so you never miss one.

PATREON
12 members-only breakdowns a month for $5, plus our members-only rumor chat.
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Support the show

New episodes every week. Follow the show so you never miss one.

🐺 Support Tuffy Talk on Patreon and get 12 members-only NC State breakdowns every month for just $5:
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Find Tuffy Talk on all major podcast platforms — Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, iHeart, and more. Search "Tuffy Talk" wherever you listen.

Follow us everywhere:
Twitter/X: @tuffytalknow
Greg "The Leg" Haas: @PackFanInNOVA
Ethan Barry: @ncstatestats

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Ethan said the quiet part out loud four days after Nashville: "If it weren't for the way NC State lost, I don't know that I'd be thinking App State could win this game."

That is where this program sits going into Saturday night. A 14 point favorite at home against a Sun Belt team that cannot run the ball, and a real conversation about whether Carter-Finley boos in the first half.

App State comes in 3-0 under Dowell Loggains, who was South Carolina's offensive coordinator before taking the job. Malachi Singleton leads the Sun Belt in passing at roughly 300 yards a game with five touchdowns and one interception, and he is on his third school in three years after Arkansas and Purdue. But take the Maine game out and the Mountaineers are averaging 2.8 yards a carry with a rushing success rate that ranks 131st in the country.

We also spent twenty minutes on the run game, which has not shown up against a real defense yet. 16 carries for 50 yards in Nashville, and outside the Richmond game almost nothing has broken loose. Ethan's honest question at the end of it is the one worth sitting with: were the expectations ever realistic in the first place?

Plus the Asher Lockleer stat that reopens the fourth down call, what moving Teague Anderson to center actually costs you, and the best thing either of us said all episode, which is Ethan on the 60,000 people at the game who are not on the internet and are going to cheer either way.

Kickoff is 7:30 Saturday on ESPNU. Ethan likes the Pack against the spread. Layton has it 42-17.

Where do you have this one? Find us on Twitter and Instagram @tuffytalknow.

Tuffy Talk is live every Monday at 8:30 PM. Football all fall, basketball all winter, baseball all spring. Follow the show wherever you get your podcasts so you never miss one.

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https://www.patreon.com/tuffytalk

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Do you LOVE to barbecue? Our sponsor Oconee Gold makes small batch sauces and rubs down in Statham, Georgia, and they've won Flavor of Georgia twice. Use code TUFFYTALK for 15% off your ENTIRE order, every single time you order. #ad

Support the show

New episodes every week. Follow the show so you never miss one.

🐺 Support Tuffy Talk on Patreon and get 12 members-only NC State breakdowns every month for just $5:
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Greg was in the building in Nashville. Layton found out from a text message at a wedding. Ethan spent Sunday with the box score and came back with a number nobody else in NC State media is saying out loud: by win expectancy, NC State had roughly a 15 percent chance to win that football game.

We led for 59 minutes and 59 seconds and lost 35-31. Over the last 20 seasons, teams with the ball and the lead inside 10 seconds were 1,046 and 1. We are the second.

This one is long because there was a lot to get out. It opens as a therapy session and it does not really stop being one.

Ethan's case: Vanderbilt's success rate was 52 percent to NC State's 39. They ran 20 fewer plays and were better per play, better per pass, better per rush, better in the red zone, and more explosive. Clark Lea said afterward that NC State was the better team. The numbers disagree with him.

Greg was in the stadium for the two penalties at the end of the first half, the pass interference flag thrown by the official standing furthest from the play, and the holding call that turned first and 10 into first and 20. 17-0 became 17-7 and the game became a dogfight.

Then the part that will get the emails. Doeren's buyout sits around 10 million and climbs after January 1. He is 96 and 72 at NC State. Greg says out loud that he is okay with a change of scenery. Ethan argues the real lesson is to stop paying one quarterback like a difference maker and start doing what Wake Forest did with Gio Lopez.

Where do you stand? Find us on Twitter and Instagram @tuffytalknow.

Tuffy Talk is live every Monday at 8:30 PM. Football all fall, basketball all winter, baseball all spring. Follow the show wherever you get your podcasts so you never miss one.

PATREON
12 members-only breakdowns a month for $5, plus our members-only rumor chat. Ethan's full win expectancy breakdown is up there now.
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Support the show

New episodes every week. Follow the show so you never miss one.

🐺 Support Tuffy Talk on Patreon and get 12 members-only NC State breakdowns every month for just $5:
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Find Tuffy Talk on all major podcast platforms — Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, iHeart, and more. Search "Tuffy Talk" wherever you listen.

Follow us everywhere:
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James Henderson from Inside Pack Sports joined us, and he is taking NC State in Nashville.

His reasoning is the whole episode: "If you're NC State, you have to believe you have the better quarterback going into this game, regardless of recruiting expectations, accolades, all those different things."

Jared Curtis is a five star freshman making his first career start. CJ Bailey is a three year starter. James would take Bailey, and so would we, and that is the entire bet.

The stat he could not get over: NC State threw for 84 yards against Virginia in a game where PFF did not credit the offensive line with a single sack allowed. The one sack was a blitz pickup by Davion Gause. His line was "I was blown away." Someone on the Inside Pack Sports forums summed it up by saying he did not know whether that was good or bad, because it is good that the line held and it is alarming that there was no production anyway.

That is why his matchup that decides the game is NC State's offensive line. Vanderbilt is schematically similar to Notre Dame, which makes sense because Clark Lea came from there, and also similar to NIU and Duke. Those are three teams that have given CJ Bailey problems.

On Vanderbilt: this is not last year's team. They lost Diego Pavia, who was in New York for the Heisman ceremony, and Eli Stowers, who is now with the Eagles. For a program like Vanderbilt those are generational players, not just good ones.

And the part that frustrated James most about the Virginia loss had nothing to do with the score: "You don't get touches for Victor Snow. You don't get touches for Jonathan Taylor. That's the part that concerns me."

WHERE WE LANDED
James Henderson: NC State 24-20
Layton: NC State 30-20
Ethan: Vanderbilt 24-21

The line is NC State plus three. The total is 50.5.

Kickoff is Saturday, September 19 at 12:45 PM ET.

Go check out James and the whole crew at Inside Pack Sports, on Twitter at @insidepacksport.

Follow Tuffy Talk wherever you listen, and catch us live every Monday at 8:30 PM on YouTube.

Support the show on Patreon, 12 members-only videos a month plus the members-only rumor chat, $5: patreon.com/c/tuffytalk

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Do you LOVE to barbecue? Our sponsor Oconee Gold makes small batch sauces and rubs down in Statham, Georgia, and they've won Flavor of Georgia twice. Use code TUFFYTALK for 15% off your ENTIRE order, every single time you order. #ad

Support the show

New episodes every week. Follow the show so you never miss one.

🐺 Support Tuffy Talk on Patreon and get 12 members-only NC State breakdowns every month for just $5:
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Find Tuffy Talk on all major podcast platforms — Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, iHeart, and more. Search "Tuffy Talk" wherever you listen.

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Twitter/X: @tuffytalknow
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Victor Snow has one catch through two games.

The coaching staff spent the preseason telling everybody he was a dog. Through two games he has been out-touched by a fourth string running back, he went out with the twos on the first play of the second half, and he muffed a punt.

Ethan's take, and he warned us he was going to be mean about it: this is exactly what NC State has always done at receiver. You rotate guys, and when it is your week it is your week. This week it was Keenan Jackson.

The number that frames everything else: NC State running backs forced 29 missed tackles against Richmond. Against Virginia it was four or five. Ethan supplies his own caveat immediately, which is that you are not forcing 29 missed tackles against Vanderbilt, and that is the whole question heading into Saturday.

His stat pack argument is that the offensive line is the most sustainable thing this team has. They created 2.86 offensive line yards per carry against Virginia, which is 80th percentile, and 3.7 against Richmond. That number does not care who is carrying it. On the other side, 359 yards after contact at 8.35 per run is not a repeatable thing against an SEC defense.

Also in here: the basketball schedule, where Ethan makes the case that NC State could walk into ACC play without a single Quad 1 win, and where Greg still cannot let go of the cancelled VCU game. Plus fall baseball, the Atlantis Collegiate Baseball Series in the Bahamas against Michigan, two four-star softball commits out of the Texas Bombers, and Garrett Bradbury and Joe Thuney lining up next to each other for the Bears.

4 days until NC State at Vanderbilt. Saturday, September 19, 12:45 PM ET.

Follow Tuffy Talk wherever you listen, and catch us live every Monday at 8:30 PM on YouTube.

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Support the show

New episodes every week. Follow the show so you never miss one.

🐺 Support Tuffy Talk on Patreon and get 12 members-only NC State breakdowns every month for just $5:
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Find Tuffy Talk on all major podcast platforms — Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, iHeart, and more. Search "Tuffy Talk" wherever you listen.

Follow us everywhere:
Twitter/X: @tuffytalknow
Greg "The Leg" Haas: @PackFanInNOVA
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Two of the three of us are taking Richmond and the points.

The number is 32.5. Ethan took the Spiders, Greg took the Spiders, and Layton went the other way mostly so it would not be a clean sweep on our own team.

Ethan's framing is the one that stuck: this is not a quiz. This is classwork. Nobody remembers classwork. The quiz comes next week at Vanderbilt.

He is also honest that the offense cannot move the needle for him no matter what happens Friday, so he is watching the defense. His one exception: if CJ Bailey throws eight to ten passes of 20-plus air yards, that would be genuinely noteworthy, because he has not been willing to do it even against overmatched opponents.

Layton wants swagger back. Against Virginia you saw concern, nervousness and fear from almost everybody for the entire game, and the first thing he is looking for is CJ being CJ again.

Greg calls it the ultimate definition of a get right game.

The football conversation that matters: Doeren said NC State had to scheme receivers open against Virginia. That is not a formula that survives real competition, so the thing to watch is whether these guys can win one on one. Plus the tight end rotation, more than seven snaps for the young guy, and getting Davion Gause involved.

Also the ACC through one week. Florida State is who we thought they were, Cal got blown out by UCLA, Georgia Tech lost to Colorado, and Clemson looked as bad as anybody. Miami and Wake Forest were the most impressive, but Ethan makes the case that Syracuse moved the needle most relative to expectations with Steve Angeli back from the Achilles.

And the Wolfpack Warriors uniforms, the Army partnership, and the 25th anniversary of 9/11. Greg was active duty that day.

Kickoff is Friday, September 11 at 7:00 PM at Carter-Finley.

Follow Tuffy Talk wherever you listen, and catch us live every Monday at 8:30 PM on YouTube.

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Support the show

New episodes every week. Follow the show so you never miss one.

🐺 Support Tuffy Talk on Patreon and get 12 members-only NC State breakdowns every month for just $5:
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Find Tuffy Talk on all major podcast platforms — Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, iHeart, and more. Search "Tuffy Talk" wherever you listen.

Follow us everywhere:
Twitter/X: @tuffytalknow
Greg "The Leg" Haas: @PackFanInNOVA
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CJ Bailey has taken four days of it. So the question worth asking is whether the criticism is justified.

During the game Layton tweeted that either Bailey was extremely overrated and playing terribly, or nobody was open. Four days and a lot of film breakdowns later, he has an answer. They were open. He just did not see them.

Ethan's answer is yes, the criticism is warranted, and he says he has been at the front of that line all offseason. His harsher version: this is the same quarterback he was as a freshman. Same happy feet. Same throws off the back foot from a clean pocket. Same trouble reading an RPO, including on the first play of the game.

But he also thinks the locker room is not taking this anywhere near as hard as the fanbase is, and that there is a good reason for that. They are kids. They are athletes. It is a season and you flush it.

The other side of that comes from Kai Crutchfield, the former NC State women's basketball player now at ACC Network, who pushed back on the Bailey criticism and pointed out how experienced Virginia's defense is. Ethan's response is that her perspective is noteworthy precisely because it is how athletes look at it.

Plus the thing that will surprise people: Ethan thinks the offensive line was the best unit NC State had on the field. He also argues the defense is nearly impossible to evaluate from this game, because two turnovers handed Virginia short fields and 31 points instead of 34 would not have been a crazy number.

Where they land: if Beau Pribula has to throw the ball 25 or 30 times, Virginia is in trouble. NC State never made them do it.

Also in here: the Doeren losses that would have gotten him fired, why Richmond has nothing to gain and Vanderbilt is the real test, and why Ethan does not think NC State's administration sees this the way the fanbase does.

8 days until Richmond. Friday, September 11, 7:00 PM at Carter-Finley.

Follow Tuffy Talk wherever you listen, and catch us live every Monday at 8:30 PM on YouTube.

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Support the show

New episodes every week. Follow the show so you never miss one.

🐺 Support Tuffy Talk on Patreon and get 12 members-only NC State breakdowns every month for just $5:
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Find Tuffy Talk on all major podcast platforms — Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, iHeart, and more. Search "Tuffy Talk" wherever you listen.

Follow us everywhere:
Twitter/X: @tuffytalknow
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Doeren said at halftime that the wide receivers needed to get open.

Ethan's answer: the wide receivers who do get open, you let them walk. You told The Athletic last week that you picked the offensive line over them. And we all know you picked CJ Bailey over them.

That exchange is the show. Virginia 34, NC State 8, and we spent 85 minutes on how it happened.

The argument worth staying for is the one about roster construction. Ethan's case is that Virginia put together a masterclass and NC State looked like a team that overpaid its quarterback and lost every piece around him. Virginia decided they did not care who played quarterback, took a running quarterback, built a very good offensive line and a very good defense, and took four to five yards a carry all afternoon. His line: they got smoked in the front office.

The follow-up is the uncomfortable one. If the number really was three to four million for Bailey, would you rather have paid seven fifty to a million at quarterback and put the other two and a half million on defense? And his point is not that you paid a quarterback, it is which quarterback you paid, because last year the receivers were elevating Bailey and now those receivers are gone.

Also in here: why Virginia never faced a third and long, how a long fourth-quarter-style drive with four fourth down conversions took the life out of the building, Harvey Dyson getting only eight pass rushing snaps, Popo Aguirre's 18 tackles that did not matter, and the NFL roster cuts including two undrafted Wolfpack who made 53-man rosters.

Where we landed: Layton came down from 10-2 to 8-4. Greg is staying at 9-3. Ethan never moved off 8-4.

10 days until Richmond. Friday, September 11, 7:00 PM at Carter-Finley.

Follow Tuffy Talk wherever you listen, and catch us live every Monday at 8:30 PM on YouTube.

Support the show on Patreon, 12 members-only videos a month for $5: patreon.com/c/tuffytalk

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Support the show

New episodes every week. Follow the show so you never miss one.

🐺 Support Tuffy Talk on Patreon and get 12 members-only NC State breakdowns every month for just $5:
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Find Tuffy Talk on all major podcast platforms — Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, iHeart, and more. Search "Tuffy Talk" wherever you listen.

Follow us everywhere:
Twitter/X: @tuffytalknow
Greg "The Leg" Haas: @PackFanInNOVA
Ethan Barry: @ncstatestats

#NCState #GoPack #Wolfpack #TuffyTalk