Scouting Report: NC State Wolfpack

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After a blowout loss in week 0 to UVA and one of the worst losses I’ve ever seen to Vanderbilt, it seemed like the season might be over before it ever really started for the Wolfpack. Since then, however, NC State has bounced back with wins over App State and Louisville. It seems like the fanbase is starting to buy back in a little bit, and a win over a very good Wake Forest team this weekend could essentially put NC State’s season back on track. Expect Carter-Finley stadium to be packed and loud this weekend.

The NC State offense started the season in week 0 with all time terrible performance—the Wolfpack finished the game with just 8 points and 168 total yards, resulting in a 34-8 blowout loss to Virginia. We may have to just chalk that one up to not being prepared for the season to start as soon as it did, because NC State has been one of the best offenses in the nation since that game, putting up 31 or more points and 440 or more yards in each of their last 4 games. Outside of the 428 rushing yards NC State leaned on against FCS Richmond, the reason for the turnaround has been QB CJ Bailey.

Despite the week 0 disaster and the laughably awful fumble on the final play of the Vanderbilt game, CJ Bailey is still one of the best QB’s in the ACC. At 6-6, he has an NFL caliber frame and a rocket arm that allows him to make basically any throw. In his 3 seasons at the helm for NC State, Bailey is completing 67% of his passes with 50 touchdowns and 23 interceptions. In the Pack’s last 3 games, he is averaging 300 passing yards per game and has thrown 7 touchdown passes, including a 373 yard, 2 touchdown performance last week against Louisville.

CJ Bailey hasn’t changed, but the receivers around him certainly have. Star tight end Justin Joly is at the Miami Dolphins now, former Deac Wesley Grimes is on the 49ers practice squad, Terrell Anderson transferred to USC, Noah Rogers is at Alabama, and Teddy Hoffman was suspended for taking PEDs—all in all, the Wolfpack returned just 1 of their top 7 pass catchers from a season ago. The one guy who did return—junior Keenan Jackson—is off to a great start this season with 22 catches for 336 yards and 5 touchdowns. Just 5 games into the season, Jackson has already eclipsed his career high in yardage from last season, has more touchdown catches than his first 2 seasons combined, and is currently tied for 11th in the nation in touchdown receptions.

What’s even more impressive is that he has done all of that basically in the last 3 weeks—210 of his receiving yards and all 5 of his touchdowns catches have come in the games against Vanderbilt, App State, and Louisville. With 5 of CJ Bailey’s 7 touchdown passes against FBS teams this season going to Jackson, the Deacs are probably going to want to make sure they have him covered this weekend.

The Wolfpack rushing attack is going be missing their best weapon this weekend, as starting RB Jayden Scott has officially been listed as “out”. Scott, who has run for 358 yards and 4 touchdowns so far this season, left the Louisville game after just 5 carries with a foot injury. The Pack haven’t been that successful running the ball so far this season to start with—outside of the game against FCS Richmond, NC State is averaging just 142 yards per game and 3.7 yards per carry—so not having their best running back could make things easier on the Deacs.

Without Scott, the biggest threat for Wake in the rushing game could be backup QB Will Wilson. NC State will put Wilson into the game on short yardage situations to give the Pack more of a dynamic, dual threat runner at QB. So far this season, Wilson has run the ball 35 times for 166 yards and leads the team with 6 rushing touchdowns. He hasn’t thrown a pass in the last 3 weeks, so the Deacs should probably just assume he’s going to run the ball whenever he gets in the game.

The other thing to note in this matchup is that Wolfpack were missing a couple of offensive linemen against Louisville, causing them to start some inexperienced players and shift some other guys out of position. If that is something that carries over to Saturday’s game, the Wake Forest defensive line may be poised for a big game.

Starting center Spike Sowells and starting left guard Yousef Mugharbil are still listed as “out” for Saturday, while starting left tackle Jimarion McCrimon is currently listed as “questionable.”

Year 2 of the NC State defense under DJ Eliot has not seen a very big improvement over last season. One of the big reasons is that the Wolfpack have been unable to stop the run this year. In week 0, UVA gashed the Pack for 258 yards and 2 touchdowns on the ground, Vanderbilt ran for 132 yards on just 24 carries (5.5 ypc) in State’s 3rd game, and Louisville just torched them for 231 rushing yards (9.2 yards per carry!) and 2 touchdowns last week.

That puts the Wolfpack at 119th in the nation, giving up 4.8 yards per carry. Without the Richmond game, where NC State held the Spiders to 34 total rushing yards on 22 carries, that number jumps up to 5.3 yards per carry.

That is probably not a complete surprise, considering what NC State lost in the offseason—from just the defensive line and the linebackers, State lost around 451 tackles, 17.5 sacks, and 49.5 tackles for loss off of last season’s squad. That included 1st Team All-ACC linebacker Cade Fordham, who finished 2025 with 143 tackles, 3.5 sacks, and 10 tackles for loss. Running the ball might become extremely important in this game with a tropical storm moving its way up from the Gulf this weekend, so it would be very conducive to winning the game if the Deacs were able to replicate Louisville’s success on the ground from last week.

If the weather does hold up enough to throw the ball around, Gio Lopez and Carlos Hernandez might be set for another big day, because State really hasn’t been that great against the pass either. While the Pack are 81st in the nation in yard allowed through the air, that is pretty heavily skewed by Richmond throwing for just 76 yards and Virginia completing just 9 passes for 155 yards, simply because they didn’t need to pass the ball. Against FBS teams, the Wolfpack are allowing opponents to complete 67% of their passes for 250 yards per game with 9 touchdowns and just 2 interceptions, both against Vanderbilt. That puts them at 119th in the nation in EPA/Play on passing downs so far this season.

Again, that shouldn’t really be a surprise, as NC State had one of the worst pass defenses in the nation last season (132nd) and lost DB Devon Marshall, who led the nation with 16 passes defended, to the NFL. With just 7 sacks in 5 games this season, NC State’s inability to generate a pass rush has definitely not helped the secondary out at all, either. We saw what Gio Lopez can do with time against a bad secondary last weekend, where he completed 74% of his passes for 265 yards and 2 touchdowns in just 3 quarters against Stanford—a repeat of that performance would be nice.

On paper, the Deacs should have no issue moving the ball and scoring points this weekend. In reality, Raleigh is always a tough place to play and weird things tend to happen in this rivalry every year. Hopefully the Deacs just get the win anyway they can.

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