NC State linebacker Payton Wilson deals one final rivalry blow as Wolfpack thumps UNC
Drake Maye limped off with nine minutes to go, after the umpteenth big play by Payton Wilson, who dragged the North Carolina quarterback down from behind for a sack. Maye stayed down for a bit, grabbing at his left ankle, then watched the next few plays from the sidelines, his uniform covered in mud from all the time he spent on the turf.
There wasn’t much left he could do anyway. Wilson won that battle, N.C. State the war.
Maye and Wilson. Wilson and Maye. Each on their own side of the ball, they have dragged their teams along this season, Maye at the beginning as the Tar Heels jumped out to a 6-0 start, Wilson the rock at the heart of an N.C. State defense that never wavered even when the Wolfpack was left for dead after an abysmal loss at Duke.
They both left everything on the field in their final ACC games, but there was only one incandescent star at Carter-Finley Stadium on Saturday, and it wasn’t the one who started the season as a Heisman contender. It was the ageless N.C. State linebacker – it just seems like Wilson arrived on campus with Philip Rivers – in his final home game, dealing one final, devastating rivalry blow.
“If you want to have culture, come to Raleigh,” Wilson said immediately afterward. “Them boys in blue don’t know about it.”
It took N.C. State two months, seven games and two quarterbacks to figure it out, but the Wolfpack is streaking to the finish, Saturday’s 39-20 thumping of North Carolina a fifth straight win for N.C. State, while the Tar Heels had everything in front of them only to finish 2-4 thanks in large part to inexplicable losses to Georgia Tech and Virginia.
Saturday’s UNC performance was inexplicable in its own way, a complete no-show in the first half that posed very few questions of its fired-up opponent. Then again, the Wolfpack had all the answers, right from the start.
“We were awful in the first half,” North Carolina coach Mack Brown said, “as bad as I’ve ever seen us.”
This game, every bit as much as the second half of this season, was a tribute to the culture of N.C. State’s program and the apex of what might have been Dave Doeren’s best coaching job in Raleigh. There was every excuse to fold up the tent after that Duke loss, and again when M.J. Morris – who had replaced Brennan Armstrong at quarterback to trigger the turnaround – pulled the chute on the season by electing to redshirt.
But Armstrong returned to the starting role with new purpose and no hard feelings just as Doeren and offensive coordinator Robert Anae figured out that getting the ball to freshman K.C. Concepcion was the Wolfpack’s best – and sometimes only – option. Suddenly, the Wolfpack offense was carrying at least some of the weight the defense had labored under all season to that point.
At midseason, the Wolfpack went through the kind of on-the-fly reassessment that usually happens in February and came out the other side a new team.
“It’s been a crazy year. I need some time off,” Doeren said. “Been a crazy year. But I couldn’t be more proud of what happened tonight.”
When the time came for the last and biggest game of the regular season, Armstrong and Concepcion were a near-unstoppable combination, even with Armstrong playing through a broken rib that kept him from throwing all week. The defense was a near-unstoppable force, with Wilson the tip of the spear. Saturday, Wilson had an interception, a forced fumble, a sack and 15 tackles, and that still didn’t capture his everywhere-at-once impact.
But it wasn’t merely Wilson. N.C. State’s secondary held Tez Walker to two catches on 11 targets and hit him so hard so many times he might have wished he were ineligible again. In what might have been the game’s key play, early in the fourth quarter when UNC was showing signs of life, Aydan White knocked the ball loose from Walker and Wilson dove to grab it out of midair.
The Wolfpack made something out of nothing on that play, just as it did over the second half of the season. With no shot at Charlotte, Florida State and Louisville having claimed those spots long ago, this was the last rung to climb.
“We’re going to have some damn fun tonight in Raleighwood, I’ll tell you that,” Doeren said, and there was no question he and his team had earned it.
A win like this, by any means, will taste no less sweet. But given the circumstances, and the grand arc of the Wolfpack’s season, it’s hard to imagine it being any sweeter.
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This story was originally published November 25, 2023 at 11:51 PM with the headline "NC State linebacker Payton Wilson deals one final rivalry blow as Wolfpack thumps UNC."
