NC State lost to Vanderbilt 35-31 in Week 3.
CJ Bailey rolled out of his own end zone with six seconds left, NC State ahead 31-28 and backed up at its own 5 after a delay-of-game penalty. The plan was to burn clock and concede a safety. Instead edge rusher Miles Capers hit him and knocked the ball loose, cornerback Cayden Daniels scooped it up for a touchdown, and officials upheld the play on review and put one second back on the clock. Vanderbilt 35, NC State 31, the Commodores' only lead of the afternoon arriving at 0:00.
Dave Doeren did not disown the call. "It's just a play where you roll out and you don't get tackled, you try to burn as much time as you can and then fall to the ground and protect the football," he said. "He got hit, and he didn't protect the football." He also said he was proud of how his team played "for 59 minutes and 59 seconds."
The rest of the afternoon is the part worth carrying forward. NC State outgained Vanderbilt 446-409 and held the ball 35:49 to 24:11, scoring on its first two drives and going 7-of-16 on third down. Bailey threw three touchdown passes, all three to Keenan Jackson, from 30, 6 and 23 yards. That is a Power Four road offense operating the way Kurt Roper drew it up.
What the game left unresolved
The defense's ledger reads the same way. NC State took the ball away from freshman starter Jared Curtis three times, via a Jaren Sensabaugh interception, a second-quarter fumble recovery, and Brody Barnhardt's interception at the NC State 2 with 1:04 left, and held Vanderbilt to 5-of-12 on third down. It gave up 409 yards, and let Vanderbilt score on three of its final four offensive possessions after leading 24-7 in the third quarter. Three takeaways from a freshman quarterback are not something to count on again; a pass rush is. Three games in, DJ Eliot's front still has not produced consistent pressure, and that is the clearest thing to watch Saturday against an App State offense that has not faced a front like this one.
The other open thread is up front. Starting center Spike Sowells Jr., who left the Richmond game early, traveled to Nashville but did not dress, even after Doeren said earlier in the week he expected him to be ready. That is extended missed time in back-to-back games at the one position that touches every snap, and it matters more than usual for an offense built around Bailey's timing. Tight end Vander Ploog played against Richmond but did not appear against Vanderbilt, and kickoff specialist Nick Konieczynski's availability remains unknown after his Week 1 injury at Virginia, with former soccer player Drew Lovelace the primary alternative. Duke Scott, meanwhile, had 16 carries and produced 50 yards, no touchdown and a lost fumble. Jonathan Paylor's only touch was an 18-yard return on the opening kickoff. Neither is a crisis; both are questions the box score keeps declining to answer.
Saturday: App State at Carter-Finley, 7:30 p.m. ET, ESPNU
App State comes to Raleigh 3-0, having beaten Maine, East Carolina and Charlotte. That is a real record against a schedule that has not yet asked much, and Carter-Finley is the first stadium on it that bites back.
So this is not a game that needs to be exciting. It needs to be finished. Watch the first quarter for whether the offense that scored on its first two drives in Nashville shows up again, and watch the fourth for whether NC State plays a clean final possession with the game decided. Doeren's message this week has been to move on, and he reached for 2016 as the warning, a loss to Clemson followed by three more defeats. There is fan and media noise about his job, though athletic director Boo Corrigan has publicly opposed in-season firings and Doeren is under contract through 2029 with a buyout north of $9.75 million. None of that gets settled Saturday. A comfortable win by halftime does more for the week ahead than any of it.
Doeren's own read on Vanderbilt was that "there were 10 or 20 plays in that game that, if we had played better on, maybe it wouldn't have come down to that." That is the honest frame for a team ACC media picked seventh in a 17-team league before it had played a down. They are close enough to good, not yet finished. This is the last week before that judgment starts for real, and nothing else on the national slate changes what NC State needs from it.
Full week details are in the interactive guide, and the forecasting approach is explained in the methodology.