Tuffy Talk

NC State fired Dave Doeren after 14 seasons, and Philip Rivers is the name everyone is talking about to replace him. Athletic director Boo Corrigan still hasn't taken a single question. So who made the call, why now, and is Rivers the right hire? Greg was in the stands at Stanford on Friday night when NC State lost 31-28 in front of an announced crowd of 13,949. By Saturday night Doeren was gone. All four of us get into the timing, the silence from the top, the 2016 overtime loss at Clemson ...

NC State went 1-2 in Chris Hart's first fall, and Ethan still walked away liking this team. Greg and Ethan go through all three exhibitions, including the 7-4 win over UNC at the DBAP. They cover the three stars at the top of the roster, Hunter Warren's new power, the catcher battle between Andrew Raymond and Drew Lanphere, Sam Harris' elite slider, and first looks at transfers Jesse Gutierrez, Chet Lax, Justice De Jong and Connor Chicoli. Then they answer the big one: if the season started...

Lila Manfredonia is the No. 8 overall recruit in the 2028 class, and she committed to NC State before she left Raleigh. She came down for the Louisville weekend, went to the football game, and told the staff she was in. "I don't see myself anywhere else really." We got seventeen minutes with her, and most of it is not about recruiting. Her parents both played, her mom softball and her dad baseball, and that is where it started. She wears 32 because it was her dad's number at Akron. Her go-...

Tied 28-28 in the fourth quarter, Louisville breaks a 68-yard run and is walking into the end zone. Harvey Dyson III, a defensive end who rushed from the line of scrimmage on that snap, runs the back down and strips the ball out at the 13. Dave Doeren called it "one of the best plays I've seen as a coach in my career." NC State 31, Louisville 28. The first Power Four win of the season, and Layton, Greg and Ethan spend the hour on a win that actually looked like a team closing a game out ins...

Dave Doeren ended his press conference Saturday by stepping back to the microphone to say "by the way, we won that football game." Macon spent about five minutes on that. You are 2-2. You just let a 21-0 lead become a 31-31 tie against a Sun Belt team. You have no place to say that. "It's just arrogance to me, and it's unnecessary and ridiculous." Ethan is out sick and Greg could not make it, so this is Layton and Macon, the two who started this show six years ago, taking questions straight...

Greg was in the building in Nashville. Layton found out from a text message at a wedding. Ethan spent Sunday with the box score and came back with a number nobody else in NC State media is saying out loud: by win expectancy, NC State had roughly a 15 percent chance to win that football game. We led for 59 minutes and 59 seconds and lost 35-31. Over the last 20 seasons, teams with the ball and the lead inside 10 seconds were 1,046 and 1. We are the second. This one is long because there was ...

Victor Snow has one catch through two games. The coaching staff spent the preseason telling everybody he was a dog. Through two games he has been out-touched by a fourth string running back, he went out with the twos on the first play of the second half, and he muffed a punt. Ethan's take, and he warned us he was going to be mean about it: this is exactly what NC State has always done at receiver. You rotate guys, and when it is your week it is your week. This week it was Keenan Jackson. T...

CJ Bailey has taken four days of it. So the question worth asking is whether the criticism is justified. During the game Layton tweeted that either Bailey was extremely overrated and playing terribly, or nobody was open. Four days and a lot of film breakdowns later, he has an answer. They were open. He just did not see them. Ethan's answer is yes, the criticism is warranted, and he says he has been at the front of that line all offseason. His harsher version: this is the same quarterback he...

Eric Mac Lain from the ACC Network joined us to preview NC State at Virginia, and he picked the Cavaliers. But the part worth staying for is what he said about Dave Doeren. Asked about the fans who want a change, a national voice with no stake in it said what a lot of Wolfpack fans will not: you have had double digit wins once, ever, he is the best coach you have ever had, so why are you trying to get rid of him? His score is 24-21 Virginia, though he also thinks that if CJ Bailey is feelin...

Layton has NC State going 10-2 this season. Ethan has them 8-4. And both of them circled the exact same game as the loss, which is not UNC and not Florida State. It is Duke, on November 7th. Ethan's case is that the Blue Devils have been a boogeyman for NC State across three different coaching staffs, and that even a depleted Duke roster finds ways to cause problems. That Duke roster is depleted for a reason worth understanding. Darian Mensah led them to their first outright ACC championshi...

The Technician ran a piece headlined "don't let the Doeren hit you on the way out," twelve days before the season starts. Sub .500 in conference, no ACC Championship appearances, a losing bowl record. Here is what that argument leaves out. Dave Doeren inherited a 2013 roster that gave up 35 points in a single quarter to Florida State. Take those eight losses off his record and he goes from a .48 coach to a .52 coach. And NC State has won ten games once in its entire history, with Philip Rive...

NC State spent two weeks being told its defensive line was the scariest thing on the roster. Then a federal judge handed the Wolfpack its nose guard back, nineteen days before kickoff. KaTron Evans is eligible and practicing. The NCAA denied his waiver, denied his appeal, and had him off the roster on July 28, one day before camp opened. He went to federal court and won a temporary restraining order. The catch: a TRO is temporary by definition, and there is another hearing on August 18. Gre...

We got asked to submit our top 5 NC State football players of all time. The list got rejected, because Philip Rivers wasn't on it. Layton stands by it anyway: Ted Brown, Torry Holt, Bradley Chubb, Mario Williams, Adrian Wilson. Greg argues you cannot build a top 5 without a quarterback, and brings his own list. Ethan watches the two of them go at it. Before that: a federal judge just granted an entire class of athletes a fifth year of eligibility, and three former Wolfpack basketball player...