COLLEGE FOOTBALL WEEK TWO:
NC State, UNC, Louisville, Johnson C Smith
Among DG’s ACC/NC “Fun Facts & Shout-Outs”
By David Glenn
North Carolina Sports Network
(last updated Sept. 8, 2025)
While the focus of our “This Week In College Football” show is forward-looking as often as possible, we always take a glance back at the previous weekend in college football, too, and sometimes we’ll offer some quick mentions to those making impactful headlines on the gridiron, especially in the Atlantic Coast Conference or across North Carolina.
With that in mind, below are our Week Two “Fun Facts and Shout-Outs,” brought to you by our good friends at Jimmy’s bar and King Neptune restaurant in Wrightsville Beach.
Jimmy’s has a full bar, nightly drink specials and live music 365 days a year(!). (It’s a great place to watch a game, too.) Right next door, King Neptune has become one of the best restaurants in the entire greater Wilmington area.
Week Two “Fun Fact #1”
The first of our two “Fun Facts” comes in celebration of this past week’s official return of regular-season action in the National Football League.
First, credit to both UNC and NC State for ranking in the top third of the ACC — and around the top 25 nationally — in terms of the number of players those programs have produced for the NFL here during that league’s 2025 season.
These numbers may surprise many people — you can see all the details and documentation in our recent articles on the ACC and the Old North State (15 schools represented) — but among the 17 ACC programs, only Clemson, Miami and Florida State have more players in the NFL than the Tar Heels do, and the gap isn’t very big at all. The Wolfpack ranks a very close sixth in the 17-team ACC in the same category.
These numbers can change from week to week, as players get signed or waived, but UNC had 30 players on either active NFL 53-man rosters or various NFL reserve lists and practice squads during Week One of the regular season. That’s largely a tribute to master recruiter Mack Brown, who did the same sort of thing in Chapel Hill back in the 1990s, during his first tenure with the Tar Heels.
NC State had 28 players who fit the same category, with all but one of those guys — quarterback Russell Wilson, now with the New York Giants — being a product of the 13-year-long Dave Doeren era in Raleigh.
Those are pretty strong numbers for the two big Power Four public universities in our state.
Week Two “Fun Fact #2”
Fun Fact #2 is a celebration of the fact that, in all, 15 North Carolina-based college football programs had one or more players on NFL rosters, reserve lists or practice squads during that league’s opening week this season.
After the Tar Heels and the Wolfpack, the NFL’s Week One also included 20 products of Wake Forest, 19 from Duke, nine from Appalachian State, five from East Carolina, and four each from the Charlotte 49ers and North Carolina Central, with the Eagles being a highly productive FCS program.
In addition, the FCS programs at Campbell, Elon and North Carolina A&T each had two players in the NFL to start the season, as did the Division Two programs at Fayetteville State and Lenoir-Rhyne. Closing out the list of North Carolina schools this year, Barton and Wingate — two more Division Two programs — each had a single player in the NFL during Week One.
If you want to remind yourself of all the current NFL players who came through our state’s college ranks, again, check out the full lists in the articles linked above.
UNC has Drake Maye starting at quarterback for the New England Patriots, of course, but the Tar Heels also had eight NFL rookies who made the cut this year, led by new LA Chargers running back Omarion Hampton, a first-round draft pick.
At NC State, it’s not just Wilson, of course. It’s also four-time Super Bowl champion and four-time All-Pro offensive lineman Joe Thuney (now with the Chicago Bears) from the early part of Doeren’s tenure or linebacker Peyton Wilson (Pittsburgh Steelers) from more recent Wolfpack teams, among others.
There are also amazing stories such as that of former Lenoir-Rhyne safety Kyle Dugger, a rare example of a Division Two player who became a second-round NFL draft pick. The Patriots selected Dugger that high back in 2020, and he’s now in his sixth season starting at safety for that franchise, although there are recent reports that he may finally be falling out of favor there.
On to some quick shout-outs as we head into Week Three …
#1—Shout-out to Louisville running back Isaac Brown and Louisville wide receiver Chris Bell, two All-ACC-caliber players who came up with huge plays on national TV on Friday, when the Cardinals were having a very hard time against an impressive-looking James Madison squad in what turned out to be a 28-14 Louisville victory.
With the Cardinals trailing JMU 14-6 in the third quarter, Bell caught a simple slant pass and turned it into a 64-yard touchdown. Later, with less than four minutes remaining and the game still in jeopardy, Brown clinched it with a scintillating 78-yard touchdown run on which he just flew past a bunch of would-be tacklers at the line of scrimmage and more down the left sideline.
Those were big-time plays by big-time players in big-time moments, and they made the difference as Louisville improved to 2-0 on the season.
#2—Shout-out to NC State’s Cian Slone, who made the biggest play in NC State’s 35-31 victory over Virginia on Saturday.
On an afternoon when both State’s CJ Bailey and UVa’s Chandler Morris played very well at quarterback, and both UVa’s J’Mari Taylor (an NC Central transfer) and State’s Hollywood Smothers were absolutely sensational at running back, it felt as if the contest might by decided by one huge fourth-quarter play.
Slone made that play — a game-saving interception in the end zone — with about one minute remaining to preserve the Wolfpack’s victory.
Slone is a 6-4, 252-pound Utah State transfer whom the Wolfpack plugged immediately into the starting lineup at what the coaches call their “Jack” position, which is a hybrid between defensive end and linebacker.
On his interception, Slone (at 250-plus pounds) had to cover Taylor, UVa’s speedy back, on a wheel route out of the backfield. That’s not an easy assignment, but Slone ran stride-for-stride with Taylor and maintained inside position the entire time, so that when the pass came, he was in the perfect spot for the game-saving interception.
That key play came on first down, by the way, so if Slone had just batted the ball down, rather than come up with the interception, UVa would have had three more cracks at the end zone from the 12-yard line.
It was one of the biggest Week Two plays in the entire ACC.
#3—Shout-out to Wake Forest senior running back Demond Claiborne, a guy who could have hit the transfer portal after coach Dave Clawson stepped down last year but decided to stay for his senior season with the Demon Deacons instead.
After missing most of Wake’s opener with a rib injury, Claiborne had 10 carries for 193 yards — yes, that’s more than 19 yards per carry — and three touchdowns Saturday in the Deacons’ 42-10 triumph over Western Carolina of the FCS ranks.
Claiborne’s presence and productivity give first-year Wake Forest coach Jake Dickert at least a chance at a solid debut in Winston-Salem.
Last, but certainly not least…
#4—Shout-out, at the Division Two level, to head coach Maurice Flowers, star quarterback Kelvin Durham and the rest of the Johnson C Smith football team.
The Golden Bulls, coming off one of the best seasons in school history last year, hosted #11 Valdosta State on Saturday and posted an impressive comeback victory — 28-16 — on a brutally hot day in Charlotte, during the school’s Hall of Fame Weekend.
One wild aspect of the JCSU story this year is that, even though the Bulls had the returning first-team All-CIAA quarterback, Darius Ocean, who set the school’s single-season record for passing yards in 2024, Flowers went out and recruited another star quarterback, and he’s already reaping the rewards.
Durham had started for the past three seasons on some successful teams at Fort Valley State, after being recruited to that school by … Flowers himself, who was the head coach at FVSU from 2020-21.
Now Flowers and Durham are reunited, and they’re both central figures in what might be a third straight special season for the Johnson C Smith program.
