Backing The Pack

We are back, baby. No amount of bad NC State football could possibly ruin the first full college football Saturday, which is today, and here and now. This is always a long wait, and it’s just nice to be able to sit back and take in an entire day of sports nonsense. Now we get to start learning about the rest of the ACC. We learned plenty about Miami last night (no one in this league is going to beat Miami), but Miami is boring for its lack of comedy.

It’s football season, and also football season, and at least one football team on campus is on a path of exceeding expectations. That’d be the women’s soccer team, which is 7-0 after a 2-0 victory at Western Carolina on Thursday. Already that’s two more wins than this team had all of last season. The Wolfpack has scored at least two goals in every game it has played, and three or more goals on five occasions.

ON BEAU PRIBULA BEING USED ON MORE DESIGNED RUNS THAN AT MIZZOU We really didn’t know what they were going to do. That’s par for the course in college football now. Every year brings a new roster, so you don’t know exactly what you’re going to get from an offense. They’re still making the pieces that they have now part of what they do.

CHAPEL HILL, NORTH CAROLINA - APRIL 12: Defensive Coordinator Steve Belichick of the North Carolina Tar Heels at Kenan Stadium on April 12, 2025 in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. (Photo by Peyton Williams/Getty Images) Getty Images Michael Lombardi, a cantankerous buffoon and also UNC’s football GM, resigned from his position today after a month on administrative leave, but that’s not all! They got a lot going on in Chapel Hill these days, let me tell you.

As it turns out, NC State on Saturday added to a streak that I did not realize was in progress. This is the fifth year in a row in which NC State’s offense has been limited to 4.0 yards per play or fewer in a game. How unfortunate. It’s happened nine times since 2020, and NC State did actually manage to win once, which is impressive. What do these results tell us? Not much, except that NC State can still put together bowl seasons in spite of them.

It’s a big day for Backing the Pack. Today, the SB Nation app is live, and it’s the best way to follow the Wolfpack. You can download it by searching SB Nation for iOS or Android. A year ago we made some big changes to our community, including offering fewer ads and the addition of the Feed. Today, we want to give you even more community tools and fewer ads with this app. It will make starting and joining conversations here as simple as posting to your favorite social media platform.

Was that NC State performance as bad as it looked? You bet it was! All this purple from the advanced box score really puts a nice bow on things, I’d say. (The national percentiles are based on 2025 stats.) It’s just about impossible to find something to be encouraged about in this effort, which we’ll have to hope will prove to be NC State’s worse of the season.

Where even to begin with this monstrosity? NC State found the worst-case scenario for the season-opener and dared to dig even deeper, effectively putting itself out of the game by the early stages of the second quarter. It was a disastrous collision of poor play on both sides of the ball, which let Virginia dictate terms all day.

RALEIGH, NC - SEPTEMBER 06: NC State Wolfpack cheerleaders run across the endzone with flags after a touchdown during the College Football game between the NC State Wolfpack and the Virginia Cavaliers on September 6, 2025 at Carter-Finley Stadium in Raleigh, North Carolina. (Photo by Katherine Gawlik/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images) Icon Sportswire via Getty Images No more talkin’, it’s time for the footballin’. Wolfpack vs.

What are the early indicators, for better or worse? These are a few. 1.) Can NC State’s defense be more consistently disruptive on passing plays? State’s defense was really, really bad on passing downs last season—its havoc rate stunk, it was bad on a per-play basis, from an EPA basis, from pretty much every basis. Whole thing was ugly.