How NC State Can Disrupt the ACC One Last Time
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RALEIGH — Entering the 12th week of the college football season, the College Football Playoff rankings included five teams from the ACC in the top 25. The chaotic conference wants to send as many teams to the postseason as possible, but the parity over the last four weeks is making it difficult to imagine more than one program going to the Playoff.
Two of the stronger contenders to play in the conference title game, No. 16 Georgia Tech and No. 19 Virginia, have a combined three losses. Two of those three losses came at the hands of the NC State Wolfpack, a team that has properly contributed to the chaos at every possible moment.
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The Wolfpack, now 2-3 in conference play and 5-4 overall, is essentially removed from any contention for the ACC, although a vague path to the title game in Charlotte does exist. With that aside, NC State's goals are to make a bowl game and further prove the depth of the ACC.
Dave Doeren and his team will have another opportunity to put their fingerprints on a potentially disastrous finish to the season for the conference. The Wolfpack traveled to Miami to face the No. 15 Hurricanes, a team clinging to Playoff hopes based on an out-of-conference resume that remains impressive.
What Does a Wolfpack Win Prove?
When asked about the wild results across the conference over the last three weeks, Doeren explained the reasoning to the best of his ability.
"It's a well-coached conference. There's a lot of parity. The rosters aren't that different when you look at us in the beginning of the year," Doeren said. "Obviously, at the end of the year, the health changes and your rosters are different than when you started the season... The margin of error for victory is very small."
None of the other competitive teams in the ACC dealt with the injury onslaught that NC State did in the middle of the season, especially on the defensive side of the ball. Those injuries coincided with the schedule ramping up, which resulted in the Wolfpack losing four of five games before the Georgia Tech upset.
In the early portion of the season, NC State looked like it could be one of the more competitive teams in the conference. A win over Virginia in the final minute became a win against a team pushing for the CFP as the Cavalier season moved forward. The Wolfpack was competitive against Duke before a second-half collapse.
If Doeren and his team go to South Florida and stun the Hurricanes, it proves the point of what this team could have been had it stayed healthy and been able to play complementary football with more consistency.
What Happens to the ACC?
If more chaos ensues across the ACC and a team like Duke, which has four losses but remains very much alive in the ACC, were to win the conference title, there's a possibility that the conference champion could not be among the top four conference champions. That result would likely sideline the ACC from the playoff, unless a team like Miami or Georgia Tech finishes the season strongly.
Miami controls its own destiny for the most part and needs to be 10-2 when the regular season ends. Even if the Hurricanes missed the ACC Championship, they would still have a chance to make the College Football Playoff based on the strength of record and schedule. A loss to a hungry Wolfpack team very much throws these dreams into flux.
While the 12-team CFP is only in its infancy, it would be an unprecedented moment if one of the power conferences, in this instance the ACC, were to miss out on the bracket. A conference already dealing with issues over outside respect wouldn't have many excuses left to make.
As for the Wolfpack, it has only one goal: to beat Miami. If that causes more wreckage in the ACC, then so be it. Dave Doeren's November success is well-documented, but back-to-back wins over ranked opponents would be a new high for the veteran head coach. If his team gets it done in South Florida and ruins the ACC's chances for a playoff bid, the noise about his job will likely go silent.
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Tucker Sennett graduated summa cum laude with a B.A. in Sports Journalism from the esteemed Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University. A former basketball player, he has gained valuable experience working at Cronkite News and brings a deep passion for sports and reporting to his role as the NC State Wolfpack Beat Writer On SI.
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