Also a holding penalty on second and long is not nearly as detrimental as a holding penalty that brings back a first down. I have long believed that if you wanted to throw a game a few strategic holding penalties could do the trick. You could even cover yourself by calling holding penalties on the other team when they had minimal effect.
I don't want to believe it of course, but with all the gambling sites and already some cases of games being manipulated. The Alabama baseball coach is the biggest, but there have been players suspended for gambling schemes, in a number of schools. The Irish men's swimming team was suspended for gambling, the swimming team!! I think there wasa a NBA ref who was fired for gambling/fixing games. But refs pretty much have never been caught in any gambling schemes, and game manipulation.
Still no kicker for the Irish. Noah Burnette who is a reliable kicker is still not 100% and clearly the kid Schmidt who was highly recruited and had an excellent HS career is not going to do it this year and the other kid is good for extra points but not likely to be very reliable beyond maybe 20 yd FG's. Big problem for the Irish.
Jordan Greathouse will miss his 2nd game. There is a lot of rampant speculation that he's setting things up so he can use this as a redshirt year and hit the portal. The gurus don't seem to know for sure if that has any legs.
Don't see the sense in doing that. Right now he's got a really talented young QB which to me is an asset for a receiver. He's a junior so why need a red shirt this year? Fields is a stud but he'll be gone probably in the pros next year.
Maybe gip, but there is some good young freshmen behind him. He might want return home and play with Arch at Texas.
Boy, if I'm a head coach, I just can't wait to sign a player who would sit out games when he could play for a team in the hunt for a playoff spot. He's not too self-centered.
Irish had great first drive, but have looked flat since and a questionable call bu our OC on 4th and inches gave NC State life and it's 7-7 lat 2nd qtr.
Another 4th down failure in the redzone and even I hated 1) that we didn't just kick the FG, 2) that the play call was what it was. There was a play on the ND wr that should have been some sort of penalty but it wasn't called and it was an INT in the endzone.
Well a couple of truly awful calls by the ACC crew, one gave State the 1st down, and the 2nd took away a sure INT by the Irish. But we get the ball back with 40 secs and get into FG range and make the kick, and it wasn't a pretty kick but the guy hasn't kicked a FG in several games due to injury. 10-7 at the half.
Good 3rd qtr by the Irish, get 14 points and hold NC State to ZERO. Some good runs by Love and CJ Carr throwing the ball really well.
Get a safety and then a score and we're up 36-7. Eli Rairdon has had a great game as have all the WR's.
Crushed them in the 2nd half, big game by CJ Carr and the Irish defense held the nations 2nd leading rusher to a poor game, and CJ Bailey who had a lot of yards and ahd a high % of completions threw a bunch of picks. 36-7 Irish fans in general still don't like Chris Ash and Mike Denbrock.
With the benefit of hindsight and a solid 2nd half, I hope I can put to rest my concern about the coach-think inside the red zone in the 1st half. I have no idea why, 1) we got cute on on 4th down and rolled out instead of powering it forward -OR- we didn't just kick a FG that early in the game, and 2) we didn't kick a FG on 4th and 3 or 4. I sure hope those failures were the cure for what I call coaching hubris. Defensively, I liked our tackling and pressure on the QB. Our front 7 continues to show improvement. Our DBs as a group also are improving with 3 interceptions today and generally solid coverage.