It’s just January and NC State is going to be fine so just relax over there, okay, bub

It shouldn’t surprise me anymore but still manages to sneak up on me every time NC State has a poor performance that leads to people melting down all over the place and overreacting. Could be that’s part of the coping mechanism for some folks.

But NC State has an established tradition of going to Clemson and appearing as a loosely-affiliated collection of lifeless sacks of crap—the coaches and players change, but this truth, apparently, cannot. It doesn’t have to be about anything more than one single performance that was garbage and sucked that we all hated.

I know it’s easy to get antsy—it ain’t like I’m immune—but I hate seeing results start to become a referendum on a coach when it’s the first week of January, like there isn’t a ton left to be decided this year, like hiccups don’t happen to anybody on the road, like State didn’t play without CJ Bryce.

It’s too soon for this brand of doom-gloomery! And what fun is that, anyway? We’ve been relentlessly conditioned to expect the worst so I understand the inclination to go ahead and skip steps one through seventy-two and head straight to DOOMED but, my friends, please, this is all premature.

The team has things to sort out but I think it’ll be fine. In any case it’s too early to go burying them.