Backing The Pack
Cheering for anyone else is for quitters.
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Linebacker AJ Richardson out for the season
NC State’s defense took a substantial hit in the Virginia game, as linebacker AJ Richardson suffered a biceps injury that will keep him out for the rest of the season. It’s a tough loss for a unit in need of all of the potential playmakers it can get. Richardson missed most of the 2025 as […]
NC State a 30.5-point favorite against Richmond
It’s about time for NC State to get on with the rest of its season, and thank goodness for that, since having to sit on a terrible performance for two weeks is pretty unpleasant, it turns out. I’m sure the Pack is more than ready to get back on the field. The task will be […]
Thank you, but not goodbye
As you may have noticed, my posts around Backing The Pack have become less frequent of late. My work and family commitments have become greater, and those are the areas where my focus should be. I just don’t have the time necessary to meet SB Nation’s demands for the number of posts required to continue […]
Week 1 college football open thread
We are back, baby. No amount of bad NC State football could possibly ruin the first full college football Saturday, which is today, and here and now. This is always a long wait, and it’s just nice to be able to sit back and take in an entire day of sports nonsense. Now we get […]
NC State women’s soccer off to a scalding start
It’s football season, and also football season, and at least one football team on campus is on a path of exceeding expectations. That’d be the women’s soccer team, which is 7-0 after a 2-0 victory at Western Carolina on Thursday. Already that’s two more wins than this team had all of last season. The Wolfpack […]
DJ Eliot discusses NC State’s defensive performance against Virginia
DJ Eliot handled Dave Doeren’s radio show duties on Wednesday and spoke at length about his unit’s rough first game, and one comment in particular has raised the ire of many. Given the sour mood around town, I guess that’s to be expected, but it is also unwarranted. ON BEAU PRIBULA BEING USED ON MORE […]
UNC has a lot going on over there
Michael Lombardi, a cantankerous buffoon and also UNC’s football GM, resigned from his position today after a month on administrative leave, but that’s not all! They got a lot going on in Chapel Hill these days, let me tell you. I don’t know where they find the time for all of this stuff: Lawyers hired […]
NC State’s offense has been here before
As it turns out, NC State on Saturday added to a streak that I did not realize was in progress. This is the fifth year in a row in which NC State’s offense has been limited to 4.0 yards per play or fewer in a game. How unfortunate. It’s happened nine times since 2020, and […]
Get the best of Backing the Pack on the new SB Nation app
It’s a big day for Backing the Pack. Today, the SB Nation app is live, and it’s the best way to follow the Wolfpack. You can download it by searching SB Nation for iOS or Android. A year ago we made some big changes to our community, including offering fewer ads and the addition of […]
Yeah, that was bad
Was that NC State performance as bad as it looked? You bet it was! All this purple from the advanced box score really puts a nice bow on things, I’d say. (The national percentiles are based on 2025 stats.) It’s just about impossible to find something to be encouraged about in this effort, which we’ll […]
NC State drubbed by Virginia, 34-8
Where even to begin with this monstrosity? NC State found the worst-case scenario for the season-opener and dared to dig even deeper, effectively putting itself out of the game by the early stages of the second quarter. It was a disastrous collision of poor play on both sides of the ball, which let Virginia dictate […]
Game thread: NC State vs. UVA
No more talkin’, it’s time for the footballin’. Wolfpack vs. Cavaliers Kickoff: 3:30 p.m. ET TV: ESPN (Wes Durham, Max Browne, Madison Fitzpatrick) Online streaming: WatchESPN
NC State vs. UVA: What are we watching for?
What are the early indicators, for better or worse? These are a few. 1.) Can NC State’s defense be more consistently disruptive on passing plays? State’s defense was really, really bad on passing downs last season—its havoc rate stunk, it was bad on a per-play basis, from an EPA basis, from pretty much every basis. […]
The pains of being pretty good
David Ubben has an article out today in The Athletic examining the double-edged sword that is Dave Doeren’s consistency at NC State—it’s impressive what he’s accomplished, but also, inevitably, after a certain amount of time (much less than 14 years, clearly) people are going to view that consistency as stagnation. Those people are wrong, but […]
Initial injury report encouraging for NC State
One bonus that comes with a Week 0 conference game is it means we get an official injury report for NC State much earlier than we would normally. And that initial report indicates that the Pack made it out of camp pretty healthy—no key players are listed. Virginia’s injury list is much longer, though the […]
UVA’s offense will test NC State’s new defensive front
Coming off a breakthrough 11-3 season, Virginia finds itself in the rather unusual position of returning an offensive line basically intact and having to replace just about everything around it. There are worse places to start when it comes to rebuilding an offense, though. The o-line returns a couple of guys who were third-team All-ACC […]
NC State heads to UVA as 5.5-point underdog
We’re wasting no time in 2026 getting right to the important games on the schedule, and there is pressure on both NC State and Virginia to get off on the right foot. If getting to the ACC title game is going to be a possibility for both, then winning what looks pretty close to a […]
Welcome back to game week!
Congratulations are due once again to all of us for making it through another offseason. The damn thing never gets any easier, yet here we are, conquerors of the dismal summer months, the very models of heroic perseverance. Fall camp is over, game week prep is happening, and we have exactly zero more Saturdays without […]
Wolfpack offense’s ceiling hinges on the development of the pass catchers
While the health of players will always be the single biggest factor to the success of any unit of any team in any sport, the offense of the 2026 Wolfpack football team won’t be able to fully hit the heights they’re capable of without dramatic forward development of the guys catching passes from JR QB […]
Boo Corrigan discusses the sports year ahead, budget deficit, unending quest for more money
Boo Corrigan held his annual preseason press conference today to discuss the NC State sports season ahead and answer some questions, though most of those questions had little to do with the actual sports on the field. He was among other things asked about his department’s budget deficit, about the process for stadium naming rights, […]
Catching up on Light It Red
The second episode of the web series Light It Red, which documents NC State football’s offseason, debuted on Thursday, and if you’ve missed either episode, both are embedded below. In Episode 1, we discover that Dave Doeren read at least one factually dubious history book this offseason, as he has established the motto “Burn The […]
Coach Gainey’s Tobacco Road Classic Press Conference
Coach Gainey meets the press as the Tobacco Road Classic is officially announced. The Wolfpack and UNC will play each other in Greensboro as non-conference opponents this season on December 15 and again next season. Coach Gainey gets the opportunity to share some memories about his experiences playing against UNC and having played in the […]
A look at college football roster spending heading into 2026
CBS Sports recently conducted a survey of college football GMs, staffers, agents, and others to get an idea of what each power-conference school is spending on its football team this season and found the average roster cost to be well over $20 million. Here’s what they found for the ACC: Over 40 MillionMiami Over 30 […]
It’s never too early to go lobbing grenades at Dave Doeren, apparently
I have to say that I did not anticipate someone from Technician launching a haymaker at Dave Doeren here in peak optimism season, mere weeks from the start of the 2026 campaign, but the kids these days are full of surprises! Some of you may be pondering various position battles, but Presley Cox is thinking […]
Roster Update: Ven Lubin Returns
Coach Gainey has convinced Ven-Allen Lubin to ride with the Wolfpack one more season where Ven had the best season of his career in ’25-’26. He logged career highs in: Lubin was granted his eligibility by a Texas court on Friday 8/14; he is assured of playing this season. VAL will immediately challenge for the […]
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