The football facility located in the South end zone of NC State’s Carter-Finley Stadium is named after a guy named Murphy. It’s an appropriate title, considering the Wolfpack’s long-time relationship with the concept we all know as Murphy’s Law.
Its teams, especially those on the football field, have turned the phrase “Anything that can go wrong will, go wrong” into an art form. And it usually happens at the most inopportune times and in most excruciatingly painful ways possible.
But even the phenomenon known to the school’s fans as (sanitized for publication in a family website) #NCStateCrap reached a new level of agony last Saturday when the Wolfpack pulled off a feat that had only been done once in the past 20 seasons.
Teams with possession of the ball and the lead in the final 10 seconds of regulation were 1,046-1 before CJ Bailey tried to take a safety to protect a three-point advantage on the final play of scrimmage against Vanderbilt. By losing a fumble in the end zone – and with it, the game – Bailey and NC State joined Michigan against rival Michigan State in 2015 as the only unfortunate souls to snatch defeat from the jaws of what should have been a certain victory.
“Obviously, it’s a play that breaks your heart more than anything,” coach Dave Doeren said in the immediate aftermath of the epic collapse, adding that it was a play “where that should never happen.”
In fairness to Doeren and his offensive coordinator Kurt Roper, the decision to give up the safety in that situation was actually a sound one. The execution of that plan, however, left a lot to be desired.
That only added to the frustration among the Wolfpack’s long-suffering fan base when at his regular weekly press conference a few days later, Doeren admitted that despite spending “a lot of time” working on game-ending scenarios at the end of every Friday practice “we weren’t prepared for the moment.”
“Like I said after the game, C.J. takes ownership, I take ownership, Kurt Roper takes ownership, we take ownership,” Doeren said. “It’s a terrible way to end a football game that you controlled, so there was a lot of pain in that locker room after the game. And a lot of anger. I know the fans feel the same way,”
Doeren has always had something of a rollercoaster relationship with the Wolfpack Nation.
They’ve stuck with him for 14 seasons because he’s one of them – a self-proclaimed blue collar, hand in the dirt kind of guy who regularly puts rival North Carolina in its place. His popularity may never have been greater than in the aftermath of basketball coach Will Wade’s slimy exit to LSU after just one season.
At the same time, though, he’s continually disappointed those fans by frequently falling short of their expectations, especially when those expectations are the highest. Not only has the Wolfpack failed to get over the nine-win hump and reach double-figure victories, something that’s happened only once in program history, it has yet to make its first appearance in an ACC Championship Game. In-state rivals UNC, Duke and Wake Forest, meanwhile, have all been there multiple times, with the Blue Devils and Deacons each winning titles.
Some of that discrepancy can be blamed on the ACC’s former divisional format, which gave teams in the old Coastal Division a much less difficult path to the championship game than State had in the Atlantic.
But that doesn’t matter to the segment of the fan base subscribing to Albert Einstein’s theory that describes insanity as doing the same thing over and over again while expecting different results. Their calls for a coaching change have only gotten louder, and been joined by others, now that the Wolfpack’s offseason optimism has been dashed by a lopsided opening week loss to Virginia and last Saturday’s Nashville nightmare.
Doeren’s future will ultimately be decided by athletic director Boo Corrigan at a later date. What he decides will depend a lot on how well and how quickly NC State gets over the shellshock of the Vandy loss.
If there’s one thing the Wolfpack has going in its favor, it’s that Doeren has successfully salvaged seemingly lost seasons before.
“We’ve got to move on and take what we got from it because we played really good in a lot of areas and we’ve got to mimic those good things,” Doeren said as his team prepares to face Appalachian State, the first of three straight home games. “That’s all this week’s going to be about. It’s not going to be about what happened on Saturday last week. It’s going to be about what we’re going to get done this Saturday.”
His most important task has been helping Bailey maintain his confidence after being cast in the role of villain because of his decisive fumble, despite passing for 275 yards and three touchdowns on 25 of 37 completions.
“He and I love each other and have a lot of respect for each other,” Doeren said. “I’ve just wanted to make sure that we learn from what happened and that I understand completely what was going on with him, how we can move forward and best use this as a galvanizing moment with our football team. He is an important leader for us.”
Bailey isn’t the only one Doeren and his staff have spent time propping up this week. The key to bouncing back, he said, is reminding the entire team to stick together and do whatever it takes to prevent one bad result from snowballing into multiple losses.
“There’s a lot of football left,” he said. “It’s okay to be mad, sad, and disappointed. Just don’t point at somebody else. Look at yourself. What could you have done? Everyone’s going to talk about the last play … but there are things we could have done way better where it doesn’t come down to that. That’s the message: “What could you have done to help this game and help the team win?”