Cincinnati Vs. North Carolina State: Wolfpack Negate The Bearcats 30-19

Let’s start with positives. Russell Wilson rebounded from a bad outing versus UCF last week with a 26/40 performance for 333 yards and 3 TDs. The Wolfpack controlled the line of scrimmage, smothered pass routes, and hounded Zach Collaros into a miserable nub of the quarterback he was last year by sacking him five times. Mustafa Green helped them run out the clock with firm running, and NC State checks out of an uneventful second half with a clean 30-19 win that was nowhere near as close as the score indicates.

Now the negatives, which encompass the entire Cincinnati football team and everything they did tonight. They gave up three sacks on one drive. They called a timeout only to successfully have a punt blocked. They fumbled four times and lost four. They scored their final TD in garbage time, went for a nonsensical two-point conversion, and then scored and went for it a dubious second time. They were uniformly ineffective for the bulk of the game’s sixty minutes.

Obviously haven’t watched enough NC State football lately, since I wasn’t aware there was a theme park ride inside the stadium. Dibs on the log flume ride in the locker room! Goodness, that’s a lot of truck stop t-shirt Americana in one picture: football, a huge American flag, smoke machine fog, and a wolf. Or angry sheep. Or whatever that’s supposed to be right there.

(Via our new Cincy Blog Down the Drive.)

SB Nation’s Backing The Pack takes a hard look at the questions facing NC State leading up to Thursday night’s game against Cincinnati, and finds problems that start right at the top: