NC State football, narrowly surviving its opener at ECU, learns how other half lives

They walked off the field with their heads down, faces somber, absent joy. Devin Leary didn’t even take his helmet off. Athletic director Boo Corrigan had the opposite emotion as he moved among them, trying to cheer them up, a man who could appreciate the difference between 1-0 and 0-1 even if the players, in that moment, could not.

The winning team looked very much like it had just lost — and No. 13 N.C. State probably should have, the way East Carolina played in the second half — but for a change the Wolfpack was the team wondering how it had somehow dodged fate, profiting from the agony of a college kicker instead of being punished by it.

Saturday’s final-minutes combination of a missed extra point that would have tied the game and a missed field goal that would have won it is certainly one that doesn’t veer far from N.C. State’s tortured repertoire of historical experience — if Kyle Bambard wasn’t watching, somewhere, he must have felt a great disturbance in the force — but for once the Wolfpack got to see how the other half lives, at East Carolina’s expense.

“The one thing I can’t do is change our record tomorrow,” N.C. State coach Dave Doeren said. “We’re 1-0. As ugly as it is, it doesn’t count any different than if we won by 100.”

The 21-20 victory fell into N.C. State’s lap when poor Owen Daffer — who hit from 54 yards to beat Navy last season — pull-hooked the extra point that would have made it 21-21 and then, after the ECU defense produced a critical stop, pushed the would-be game-winning field goal wide right.

N.C. State survived, even if that’s not exactly what it felt like.

“Obviously, you know I’ve been on the opposite side of that a couple times,” Doeren said. “It’s tough.”

So there’s two ways to take this, from the Wolfpack’s perspective. It was certainly the kind of game N.C. State has found a way to lose in the past, including on this very turf six years ago, a loss that wasn’t far from Doeren’s mind afterward. In that respect, not losing is almost a bigger deal than winning.

N.C. State may have looked like the worst version of itself at times, ceding the initiative with the game in the balance, but it also still won. That counts for something.

“This is a different year. This is a different team,” tight end Christopher Toudle said. “We’re going to find a way to win these games. Close games like this, you saw last year with Clemson and everything, there’s a different feel for our team and we know we can grind out a win.”

But “grind” doesn’t really apply to watching helplessly as East Carolina tried to kick for the win, and as well as the Pirates played, it never should have been this close. Up 21-7 at the half, the Wolfpack got the ball to start the third quarter and did almost nothing for the rest of the game.

Failing to score on six plays within 3 yards of the East Carolina goal line is a recipe for failure against any opponent. So is a penchant for missing tackles, starting with two on the very first play of the game.

So if the players didn’t look happy with the win … well, they shouldn’t be.

“They’re probably more mad than I’m going to be at them right now,” Doeren said. “There’s a lot of guys that expected to play better than they played today. That film’s going to be very embarrassing for some of them, and not because I’m going to embarrass them.”

N.C. State came into this season with bigger goals than beating East Carolina, and other than the final score there was not a lot about this performance to build confidence that the Wolfpack can achieve those goals. But it is just one game, and emerging unscathed from these circumstances is a victory of its own, although losing star linebacker Payton Wilson — his first game in 51 weeks, and he only made it through one quarter — does potentially have longer-term consequences.

On this crazy day in North Carolina college football, when North Carolina escaped Appalachian State in similarly narrow and bizarre fashion at one end of the state, N.C. State somehow survived at the other, winning exactly the kind of game the Wolfpack has so often lost.

Never miss a Luke DeCock column. Sign up at tinyurl.com/lukeslatest to have them delivered directly to your email inbox as soon as they post.

Luke DeCock’s Latest: Never miss a column on the Canes, ACC or other Triangle sports