NC State’s loss against Tennessee was bad – the one at Clemson might’ve been worse

About five minutes remained in the second quarter here at Clemson’s Memorial Stadium when droves of orange-clad fans began heading for the exits, lines of them filling the aisles on the way out. To be sure, the exodus was not because they were disappointed.

Bored? Yes. Probably bored. Disinterested? Maybe, given the Tigers’ 59-35 victory against N.C. State was long decided, all except the final score.

But upset? Hardly.

How could they be, at the sight of such a one-sided annihilation by the home team? But it was, nonetheless, a mid-September Saturday in the heat and the humidity of the South Carolina Upstate, and by then, approaching halftime, there was nothing much to see — nothing at all, and especially not any kind of competitive college football game worth sticking around to watch.

Utter domination by Clemson

And so why not head out early and go back to the tailgating tent, into the shade? Why not heed the call of the cooler, or fire up the grill and lay out a few more strips of bacon — the smell of which filled the air through the parking lots on what had been a beautiful morning on the last day of summer.

A few hours later, though, it was oppressively hot and this football affair between Clemson and N.C. State was over. Long over. Way, way over, by halftime and much sooner than that. In truth, it was probably over about 90 seconds in, when Cade Klubnik rumbled for an easy 55-yard touchdown up the middle, pretty much untouched against a feckless Wolfpack defense.

And if it wasn’t over then, it was most assuredly over during a dizzying flurry in which Clemson scored three more touchdowns over the next 10 minutes. And just like that, it was Tigers 28, Wolfpack nothing — though somehow it felt like less than nothing.

If only it just could’ve stopped there for State. If only the misery could’ve ended.

If this had been a Pop-Warner football game, among children, the coaches might’ve had the good sense just to end it halftime. Everyone go home, maybe stop for some ice cream on the way, and get out of that heat: go get ‘em next time, losing team, and for the winners, realize it’s rarely so easy. If this had been a high school game, the coaches at least could have agreed to a running clock throughout the second half.

That would’ve been the merciful thing to do, anyway.

But instead, as difficult as it was to believe, this was a real live game between two FBS college teams — two ACC rivals, in fact — and the worst part about it for N.C. State, after two quarters, is that it still had to go back out there for two more and continue to face the indignity of it all.

And what to say, after that, about the Wolfpack? That it showed some late heart, with the outcome long decided? That it didn’t give up, and scored a couple fourth-quarter touchdowns? Well, OK.

Another orange nightmare for Pack

If you thought the game in Charlotte against Tennessee was bad a couple weeks ago — and it was indeed terrible, for a team and program that had embraced its considerable hype and talked the talk throughout the preseason — this, on Saturday, was somehow worse.

By halftime, teams wearing orange had outscored State 90-17 through six quarters.

For the foreseeable future, some garish, mixed shade of Tennessee and Clemson orange will tint the bad dreams of State coach Dave Doeren and his players. (And they still have to play against Syracuse!) But at least they can wake up from those nightmares. There may not be any awakening for a team that has looked completely outclassed, out-coached, out-everythinged in its two most important early-season games.

And a couple of things can be — and are — true: Doeren, in his 12th season, has clearly become State’s best head coach since Dick Sheridan. He has raised his program’s floor. The Wolfpack regularly wins eight or nine games, beats North Carolina (which suffered through its own sort of parallel disaster in Chapel Hill Saturday) and State in recent years really has been a tough, good program.

All of which makes the meltdowns against Tennessee and Clemson all the more confounding. The other side of the more positive truth surrounding Doeren and State football is that the start of this season has been an unqualified disaster, and there’s no satisfying answer as to why.

What happened to this program’s culture, which has been so rock solid in recent years? What happened to its defensive-minded identity? Tennessee and Clemson are good — perhaps even top-10 good — but what does it say for the Wolfpack to look so bad?

N.C. State spent an untold amount of NIL money revamping its roster, especially on offense. Doeren and his players not only embraced the considerable preseason hype, but talked often about how the time was “now” to go from good to great.

The Wolfpack, as crazy as it is to think about now, was just a few weeks ago still a popular dark horse pick to make the College Football Playoff. Doeren certainly behaved and talked like a coach who believed State just might win the ACC for the first time since 1979.

And there’s no shame, necessarily, in suffering through a blowout defeat at Clemson. The Tigers have done to a lot of teams over the years what they did Saturday against N.C. State. But if you’re Doeren and the Wolfpack, you can’t follow up one embarrassment on a national stage, against Tennessee, with another one a couple weeks later.

You can’t fall apart in the second half against Tennessee, and carry over the dysfunction to the first quarter here on Saturday. You can’t look completely unprepared for the moment against one marquee opponent ... and then completely unprepared for the moment, in an even more jarring way, against your next marquee opponent.

In the best-case, fantasyland scenario State supporters imagined before this season, the Wolfpack was to be 4-0 by now, with two massive victories against name brand schools. And as difficult as it is to believe now, that actually seemed within reach just a few weeks ago.

But now? Who knows.

State again faces quarterback uncertainty, with Grayson McCall out and CJ Bailey, a freshman, leading the offense in the meantime. And Bailey, it should be said, was the least of his team’s problems against Clemson.

There’s talent here, supposedly. This is the same coaching staff that in recent years has brought State to the cusp of larger success, without truly breaking through. A lot of these players were indeed highly recruited, and several of the incoming transfers undoubtedly cost a lot of money. But it isn’t working, at least not now.

State entered the season with a September schedule built for a breakthrough. If the time was indeed now, as Doeren and his players believed, they were going to have the opportunity to prove it. Those games against Tennessee and Clemson loomed large, and they were going to to tell us what this State team was capable of.

And unfortunately for the Wolfpack, those two games did tell us a lot.

Last season, Doeren bristled when Steve Smith, the former Carolina Panthers receiver, went on ESPN’s College GameDay and described N.C. State as a basketball school. But, well, a men’s ACC Tournament championship and two Final Fours later, and there’s not much of a case to be made otherwise, is there?

Indeed, sometimes the truth hurts. And the truth, for State and its football-weary supporters, is that a long miserable afternoon in the South Carolina sun brought them one day closer to basketball season. For once in recent memory, that wasn’t the worst thing.