I miss DaJuan Morgan. Not really because he was a great football player for the Pack, more so because he was one hell of a dancer. I’ve been taking dance lessons with Mrs. DFCF for a little over a month now and our instructor hasn’t got to this dance yet. But she wouldn’t hold a candle to DaJuan anyway so I told her to not even bother. The dance lessons have been fun. I recommend them to all the fellas out there. Great birthday, anniversary, Valentine’s day, etc. gift for the wife/girlfriend.
So Apache is how the Pack celebrates after a win. I’ve tried to trace it back to its origins, but that is not an easy task. I’m not sure when it started, but my best guess would be 6-8 years ago. The band played it randomly in a few games one season and it became popular with the students. Over the next few seasons it was played more frequently until it became, dare i say, a new gameday tradition. It reached epic proportions when DaJuan made it the official unofficial Pack victory celebration.
So far this season the band has not played it that much. I didn’t hear it at all during the South Carolina game and even though we were dominating Murray State I only heard it a couple times. It was good to see the team celebrate with it after the game led by Earl Wolff, who without a doubt has the best name of any Pack player of all time.
Earl Wolff doing the Apache
Btw, there is video out there of me doing the apache at a wedding this past spring. I may have had a few drinks in me and I may have looked like a fool, but had a lot of fun nontheless. If I get hold of the video I’ll post it here so everybody can see my dancing skills.
Murray State must have thought they were coming to Carter-Finley to play a flag football game. The Pack absolutely dominated the Racers in our most lopsided victory since the mid ’90s. There’s nothing really to analyze here since Murray St. was such an inferior opponent, but it was nice to see our guys come out sharp and ready to play from the opening snap.
Past games like this have seen the Pack sleep walk through the first quarter, look very sloppy all day, and only win by a couple touchdowns. We have often fell into the “play to the level of your competition” mode in the past and that was definitely not the case in this one. Hopefully we can keep that going for this weekend’s tilt against Gardner Webb.
This game doesn’t prove much of anything about our team except for the fact that we are not as bad as we looked in the South Carolina game. Still can’t say we are ready to win the ACC championship, but now we are at least moving in the right direction. The conference is still down so nothing is impossible if we can continue to get better.
OK, I said I wasn’t going to analyze the game, but I’m going to anyway. So I lie every now and then, just don’t tell my mom or wife that I admitted to that. Anyway, I’ll try to be quick and to the point. The defense tackled better. The O-line blocked better. The receivers caught the passes thrown to them. We didn’t fumble on our first play of the game (Murray St. did). Russell looked sharp and quick. Pretty much looked the exact opposite from the South Carolina game.
A lot of freshmen played in this game. RJ Mattes, Rashard Smith, and Earl Wolff continued to impress with the latter two getting their first start. Wentz and Bishop burned their redshirts. Glennon, Washington, and Barnes got extended playing time with both RBs scoring their first collegiate touchdowns. With a lot of sophmores also on the two deep, the future looks bright for the Pack.
At Carter-Finley already on beer #2. Just talked to my bro and his roomie who feel real good about this. Said the team looked really sharp in practice this week. Last week was a wake up call and the team wasn’t happy with their performance.
They also saw Murray St. last night when they got off the bus. Very small was their comment. I think I might could start for them on the O-line. Pack D-line should be able to get in the backfield all night and the O-line should be able to dominate.
At the end of the night it should be a happy day for Wolfpack Nation. Enough blogging already, time for beers #3 and 4. Yeah that’s right, two at a time so I can catch back up.
Last night’s Clemson-Georgia Tech game was interesting. Tech should have blown them out of the water, but Paul Johnson’s high school offense couldn’t do anything after the first quarter.
Dabo Swinney, who I think is possibly the worst hire in ACC football history, didn’t have a clue what was going on in the first half. He called timeout to direct snap to the FG kicker for a pooch punt, not realizing Tech had a guy back there to field the kick which got returned for a TD. Then PJ makes him look like a fool when Tech tries a similar play only their FG kicker doesn’t pooch it …. he throws a TD pass to a wide open reciever.
If not for very poor coverage and tackling on two long busted TDs for Clemson the game would have remained a blow out. PJ’s coaching job was suspect, but he still thoroughly outcoached Dabo. I hope Dabo can last 7 years at Clemson. Clemson is a sleeping giant in football due to their tradition, facilities, fan base, and the athletes they can recruit. They could have had a coach like Tommy Tuberville yet they settled for Dabo because the players like him. He’s going to run that program into the ground. Thanks Clemson. Keep up the good work.
This is another good outcome for the Pack as it gives another division rival a conference loss. With FSU and Clemson both starting 0-1 in the ACC, the Pack still has a shot to make it to Tampa.
Note: I can’t take credit for coming up with the catchy title. My brother coined that phrase at the end of last year.
It still baffles me how the SEC officiating crew missed this facemask. The whole stadium saw it. I mean Rashard got pulled parallel to the ground and was violently flipped around 180 degrees. Absolutely brutal. And why the hell does the visiting team’s conference supply the refs? Aside from the BCS, that’s the dumbest thing going in college football.
I think it’s an understatement to say that opening weekend was not very kind to the ACC. Duke and Virginia losing to FCS teams, Wake losing at home to a bottom rung Big 12 team in Baylor, Maryland getting punked by Cal, and Virginia Tech looking very average against Bama in the Saturday prime time spot. The best non conference win was against Middle Tennessee St. By comparison our loss to South Carolina doesn’t look so bad now. The ACC is still very weak and we have a team that’s still capable of competing for a spot in the ACC title game.
The Miami-FSU game Monday night saved the ACC from totally being the laughing stock of the country. What a game. Still early in the year, but both teams looked in mid season form. At least offensively they did. If either team can find some defense then watch out. I was hoping for a Miami wide right, but it wasn’t meant to be. Even though I hate Miami, this gives FSU a conference loss so it was the best outcome for the Pack. That raises the stakes on our game in Tallahassee. Should be fun. Look for me there …. I’ll be the guy in red.
One word describes what we witnessed last night … very ugly. OK, two words. With all the hype surrounding this game the Pack laid a big fat egg and on national tv to boot. I was very disappointed in the intensity, effort, and execution, but if you’re looking for a “the sky is falling” blog then you’ve come to the wrong place. I haven’t been on any of the NC State sites or message boards today, but I pretty much know what they all say.
It’s way too early to be jumping ship and giving up on the season. It was one game. Yeah we played bad, but we found a way to hang around and still had a chance to win it at the end. Bottom line is SC was better than us last night. Tip your cap to them, learn from our mistakes, and move on to the next game.
I watched the game twice today. Yeah, I guess I’m a glutton for punishment. I wanted to watch for a few things and see if what I saw last night was actually what happened. It’s really not as bad as it seemed. Here’s my observations.
The O-line as a whole was bad. Way too many SC defenders were blowing up plays in the backfield, but the right side of the O-line was very solid. Larsen was a beast. He routinely dominated his defender and had multiple pancakes. McCuller was solid and Mattes getting his first collegiate action held his own. The left side was a whole different story. Williams, Barbee, and Wallace (all 3 plays he was in the game) were the main culprits. You know the signs at gas stations that say “pump has 3 second delay”? Whoever made those signs must have seen Williams try to block. His guy was in the backfield several times last night before he even got out of his stance. Barbee made it look like he was guarding Kobe Bryant as much as he was getting juked out of his shoes and whiffing on blocks. And I’ll give Wallace a break. The whole country heard how bad he was. I think we’ll be fine if we can shore up LT and LG.
The offensive playcalling was atrocious. The knock on Bible when he was at BC was that he was way too conservative. Well last night was not only conservative, but down right stupid. I think we ran variations of the same 5 plays all night. Slight exaggeration, but you get the point. Our whole running game was stretch plays out of the shotgun. Those plays only work when you run them a few times a game, yet we ran them all night. And the stretch plays only make it harder for a struggling O-line because they have to hold their blocks even longer. With all the blitzing SC was doing we didn’t run many short quick passing plays all night. Most of our passing plays were deep routes and Russell just didn’t have the time to let the plays develop. It was a totally different offense than what we ran at the end of last season.
Our receivers dropped way too many passes. Screens, slants, posts, and gos. You name it we dropped it. Even dropped a pass in the endzone that could have won the game. Can we move Lemon to WR? What an interception he had. Those were some of the softest hands I’ve ever seen. This is D1 football. I don’t care how “tough” the catch is, if the ball hits your hands (or chest) you have to make the play. This goes for Graham, J5, Jay Smith, Bryan, and Howard. Surprisingly Spencer caught every pass thrown his way.
I initially thought Russell looked a step slow all night. He didn’t seem to have that explosiveness that we remember from last year. But after watching the game it was more Russell hesitating and taking a tad too long to make decisions. All offseason TOB has harped on the fact that he wants Russell to go through his progressions more before looking to run. Well it’s time to scrap that. Let Russell play his game. Several times it looked like he wanted to tuck and run, but he hesitated a split second and the defense was able to get to him and make a play. Let’s also not forget SC’s defenders are very fast.
The defense played well, but our tackling was still very sloppy. The defense was swarming all night, but we let SC get a lot of yards after first contact. We have to get better at tackling or guys like CJ Spiller and Tyrod Taylor will have field days against us. Byers still is scared to hit anybody. Wolff looked very good and he needs to replace Byers in the starting lineup immediately. I don’t buy TOB’s line that Morgan was beat out at CB in the fall. Wilson and George did not impress me at all. The only thing keeping Morgan out of the starting lineup is the fact that he’s been hurt all fall. True freshman Rashard Smith was making plays all night and needs to be inserted into the starting lineup like yesterday.
The fans for the most part brought it. The stadium was loud and rocking most of the night. Even after we fumbled the ball away on our first offensive play of the year. I’m not a big fan of “white outs” and stupid stuff like that, but the students pulled it off. But I do have one huge major gripe. With around 8 minutes to go in the game (score 7-3) and our offense working on our best drive of the night, the fans decide to do the wave. Now anybody that know me knows how much I hate the wave. The three things I hate the most in this world are Tarholes, liberals, and the f-ing wave. But even if you like the wave, it was the absolute worst time in the world to do it. Hello dumbasses, there is a football game going on and this drive is pretty damn important. My bro heard several players on the sideline that were absolutely dumbfounded by what was going on.
Even with the disappointment of this game, football season is finally here. That’s reason enough to be exited. Bring on Murray St. GO PACK!
So it’s game day. I’m beyond pumped up about this season. Can’t wait to get to the stadium and start tailgating. Got a DVD copy of last years 41-10 beat down of the Tarholes to watch. What an unbelievable game that was. By far the best NC State football game I’ve ever seen. I’d love to see a similar beat down tonight.
I’ll probably head into the stadium a little earlier than normal. I want to check out the upgrades around the stadium and looking forward to seeing all my friends in Section 18 and catching up with them. I use the term friend very lightly there. I think most of the people like me, but there are a few that don’t too. Believe it or not, sometimes I can get a little bit carried away. When I returned from my 30 day hiatus last season following the ECU incident, which will not be discussed in detail on this blog so don’t even ask, the overall sentiment was that everybody was glad to have me back. I have run a few people off to different sections in the past so it’ll be interesting to see if I ran anybody off again this year.
Well the website is not done yet, but the season begins tomorrow so it’s time to start blogging. Hopefully the website will be up before we get into the ACC schedule. Anyway, big weekend. Golf tomorrow a.m. possibly with former wolfpack great Koren Robinson. Tailgating will commence promptly at 2:00pm. Can’t wait to set up shop at Carter-Finley (my home away from home) and crack the first Coors Light of the 2009 season. Fried chicken will be on the menu for the tailgate and for the football game. Big time matchup with the Cocks on ESPN. I have a lot of family, friends, and work contacts that are Cock fans so I need a little revenge on last year.
I’m feeling pretty confident about this one and the season as a whole. It does sucks a big one that Nasty Nate is gonna have to miss the whole year. Mrs. DFCF won’t know what to do this year. Last year I told her to just watch Nate and she’d see all the action, which was so very true. I guess she’s still got Russell to watch. What a stud. If we can keep him healthy, watch out. My bro’s last year as a manager too. I’m gonna hate it next year. The inside scoop I get from him is what keeps me sane in the offseason. Anyway, let’s get this party started. GO PACK!!!
The rest of the long Labor Day weekend will go something like this. During the day Friday will be spent celebrating/recovering from our big win. Friday night I’ll be hanging with the bro at the Carolina Mudcats game and talking with my former Legion coach who is now the pitching coach for the Mississippi Braves. Saturday is opening day of dove season and I’m hoping to get my limit for the first time. I really suck, but I’ve been shooting a lot of skeet recently trying to practice so we’ll see how that goes. Then back to the Mudcats game that night. Sunday some more golf (which I also suck at) before I head back to Charlotte. Only thing missing for the ultimate guys weekend is a visit to the strip club, but that’ll have to wait for a few weeks until we celebrate my bro’s 21st birthday.
