NC State lost 28-26 in Atlanta on Thursday night. Here is a look at who played and how productive they were, along with some updated tracking of the way this team is trending in terms of youth.

BIG PICTURE

Injuries

One of the big stories of the year is the number of injuries this Wolfpack team has had to deal with. I took a look at how many games have been missed specifically by the projected Week 1 starters (the actual Week 1 starters with Tyrone Riley instead of McGirt). Those projected Week 1 starters have missed 64 of the 242 total player games available (22 players * 11 games) due to injury. In ACC play, the percentage of games missed has gotten worse, with the projected Week 1 starters having missed 49 of the 154 player games available. Five of those projected starters have played one or less ACC games.

Youth

This team was always going to be a younger team with a lack of senior leadership. The injury situation, though, has caused the team to trend even younger than expected. Here are the percentage of non-special teams snaps played by each class for the season:
Fr/R-Fr: 24.3%
So/R-So: 31.3%
Jr/R-Jr: 27.2%
Sr/Gr: 17.1%

For the Georgia Tech game:
Fr/R-Fr: 30.8%
So/R-So: 31.5%
Jr/R-Jr: 24.8%
Sr/Gr: 12.8%

Against GT, 61.8% of all non-special teams player snaps taken were by underclassmen.

OFFENSE

QB

• Devin Leary’s numbers have progressively gotten better as he has gained some experience and the schedule has gotten softer.
• On the bright side, Leary’s completion percentage has gone up in every start this season. The past two games have been over 50% and he completed 61.3% of his passes against GT.

RB

• Bam Knight had his third 100+ yard rushing game of the season against Georgia Tech.
• Bam and Houston are looking like a really strong one-two punch for the foreseeable future. If Ricky Person can get back to at least looking like the 80-90% healthy Person of last season, that’s a really scary backfield.
• Delbert Mimms played in his first game in a Wolfpack uniform.

WR

• One week after looking like the receiver we expect him to be, Emezie took another step back with only 3 catches for 7 yards.
• On the flip side, one week after only playing 4 snaps, Tabari Hines led all Wolfpack receivers with 4 catches for 88 yards.

TE

• Cary Angeline has 5 receiving TDs on season, which is almost as many as all of the WRs combined (6).
• Dylan Parham missed his fourth straight game with an injury, continuing to leave Angeline as the only tight end available who arrived on campus with a scholarship.

OL

• Gibson, Sculthorpe, Fedd-Jackson, and Ekwonu continue to get every offensive snap available.
• McGirt played a season-low 6 snaps against GT.
• Based on Doeren’s Monday press conference, Eason’s snaps may have been at TE as an extra blocker.
• It looks like Tyrone Riley is not participating in Senior Night activities so assuming he returns next season, that’ll help the tackle depth that has been such a problem this year.

DEFENSE

DL

• Stats-wise, Ibrahim Kante had his best game in a Wolfpack uniform with 5 tackles and 1.5 TFLs.
• Georgia Tech rushed for 266 yards on Thursday, which is the second highest rushing total the Pack have given up this season. NC State has given up 150+ yards rushing in 4 games this year. James Smith-Williams was out for 3 of those games (Clemson was the other team). Ball State is the only team that hasn’t rushed for 150+ yards when Smith-Williams is out.
  When JSW plays: NC State gives up an average of 84 rushing yards per game and 96.8 rushing yards per game against FBS competition.
  When JSW does not play: NC State gives up an average of 238 yards per game.

LB

• Louis Acceus has missed his third straight game with injury. He was the Pack’s second leading tackler when he went down.
• Payton Wilson has taken over as the team’s second leading tackler.
• There is a lot to be excited about for the future with this group of young LBs between Wilson, Drake Thomas, C.J. Hart, Vi Jones coming in next year, and a couple of talented guys committed.

Nickel

• Based on the snap counts for the past two weeks, Tyler Baker-Williams has officially taken over as the full-time player at nickel.

Safety

• Tanner Ingle is the team’s leading tackler this season.

CB

• One of the bright spots of the injury situation at CB has been Malik Dunlap. Yes, he has struggled at times, but he has almost double the number of pass break-ups of anyone else on the team with far less playing time. At the very least, he should be a capable backup moving forward.

REDSHIRT WATCH

Jaylon Scott has become the tenth Wolfpack true freshman to burn their redshirt. After playing a couple of games early on special teams, Scott entered the LB rotation when Louis Acceus was lost to injury. With just one game left in the season, I really hope we don’t see Harris or McMahon on Saturday.

* All stats were taken from GoPack.com