College Football’s Week Eight:

DG’s “Pick Six” Includes FSU’s Visit To Duke,
Plus Pack, Pirates, Deacons As Road Underdogs


By David Glenn
North Carolina Sports Network

Each week during college football season, we offer a “Pick Six” package of intriguing matchups — three “local” games that include one or more North Carolina-based team and three “national” contests that involve the Atlantic Coast Conference and/or the most prominent intersectional games.

Week Eight: Top “Local” Games

Game Four
NC State (3-4) at California (3-3), Sat., 3:30 pm (ACCN)
Latest Betting Line
: Bears a 10-point favorite

This is a matchup between two head coaches who have been at their schools for a long time now and currently are facing significant criticism from their own fan bases.

Justin Wilcox is in his eighth year at Cal, and he’s under pressure because he’s never had a single winning record in conference play, never had more than eight wins in a single season, and now he’s off to an 0-3 start here in the ACC, although all three of those losses — at Florida State (14-9), at home against Miami (39-38) with ESPN’s College GameDay in Berkeley, and most recently at an undefeated Pitt team (17-15) — were by very slim margins.

NC State coach Dave Doeren, of course, is in his 12th year with the Wolfpack, and he’s under pressure because — despite leading the Pack to nine bowl invitations in the last 10 years and becoming the winningest football coach in NC State history — he’s never posted a 10-win season, he still has a losing record in conference play during his lengthy tenure, and he’s off to an 0-3 start in the ACC this year.

The Wolfpack’s losses were to Clemson (59-35), Wake Forest (34-30) and Syracuse (24-17), with the latter two league defeats coming at Carter-Finley Stadium in Raleigh. Meanwhile, according to ESPN’s analytics, NC State right now is the worst offensive team in the ACC and the third-worst defensive team in the ACC, ahead of only UNC and Wake Forest, which sometimes has made the Wolfpack particularly hard to watch.

The biggest difference in these teams so far this season is that Cal has found at least One Thing it does really well most weeks: play really high-level defense. The Bears are giving up only 17.8 points per game, which ranks third in the ACC, and they’ve posted 13 interceptions, which is tied for the most in the entire country this season.

Cal plays an unusual 2-4-5 defense, essentially with two tackles, four linebackers and five d-backs, and the Bears really like their two inside linebackers a lot — Teddye Buchanan, a fifth-year senior transfer who spent the past four years at the FCS level, and sophomore Cade Uluave (ooh-luh-WAH-vay), who was the Pac-12’s Defensive Freshman of the Year last season.

Meanwhile, NC State has not found that One Thing it can hang its hat on yet, thanks in part to the repeated injuries to starting quarterback Grayson McCall, in part to linebacker Payton Wilson’s departure to the NFL, and in part — and maybe most importantly — because the Pack simply isn’t very good this year at the line of scrimmage.

Toughness in the trenches typically has been one of the positive trademarks of Doeren’s tenure in Raleigh, but the Wolfpack simply hasn’t been very effective on either line this season. In ACC play, State and Carolina are the only two teams giving up more than five yards per rushing attempt, and you just can’t win consistently when that happens.

This is Cal’s homecoming game, which should add some extra fuel to the Wolfpack’s fire, although it’s fair to wonder how the Pack — a team that hasn’t had an open week yet this season — will respond to a 2,400-mile trip to the West Coast.

The Bears also have a solid if unspectacular quarterback in redshirt sophomore Fernando Mendoza, who’s third in the ACC with almost 290 passing yards per game. Meanwhile, the Wolfpack will have to rely on its true freshman, CJ Bailey, against that confident and efficient Cal defense.

One of these teams will become the first to drop to 0-4 in the ACC this season, and that team seems most likely to be the Pack.


Game Five
Florida State (1-5) at Duke (5-1), Fri., 7 pm (ESPN2)
Latest Betting Line
: Blue Devils a three-point favorite

Seeing Duke as a favorite — over Florida State, in the sport of football — inspires a completely natural double-take for many college football fans.

Why? Well, these two programs have played each other on the gridiron 22 times, and all 22 times the Seminoles have emerged with the victory.

This also is one of those rare situations where the entirety of the rivalry has come over the last three decades or so, since the Seminoles joined the ACC in the early 1990s.

As someone who has interviewed every Duke head coach and every Florida State head coach over these last 30-plus years, I have been “on the beat,” so to speak, for all 22 of these head-to-head matchups. Because of that, I can offer this next observation from first-hand experience: Not only has FSU won all 22 games, the Seminoles absolutely dominated the Blue Devils in 21 of those 22 contests.

The only exception, across more than three decades now, came in 2017. That year, coach David Cutcliffe had a bowl-caliber team at Duke, coach Jimbo Fisher was struggling through a 7-6 campaign at FSU in his last season before jumping to Texas A&M, and the game was played at Duke’s Wallace Wade Stadium. The Seminoles still won that game, of course, but it was a 17-10 nail-biter, whereas the other 21 FSU victories in this rivalry were all by double-digits, and many were by 30 points or more.

This year, obviously, Duke is favored because the Blue Devils are 5-1 and playing very good defense under first-year coach Manny Diaz, whereas Florida State is 1-5 and playing some of the worst offense in the history of FSU football.

Duke’s defense is giving up only 17.5 points per game, which is second-best in the ACC. FSU’s offense is averaging only 14.8 points per game, which is by far the worst number in the conference. The Seminoles are averaging an absolutely anemic 2.2 yards per rushing attempt and only 58 rushing yards per game.

Last week against Clemson, FSU finally made a switch at quarterback, with Oregon State transfer DJ Uiagalelei out with a finger injury. Backup QB Brock Glenn (no relation), a redshirt freshman, threw for 228 yards, two touchdowns and one interception for the Seminoles in their 29-13 loss to the Tigers, and he’s expected to start against the Blue Devils.

Glenn did start the Seminoles’ ACC championship game victory last year, as well as their disastrous bowl game against Georgia, so he’s certainly been in the spotlight, but he’s going from a very difficult task against Clemson to another one against Duke’s defense, which has been even better against the pass than against the run so far this year.

The bottom line: If Duke is ever going to beat FSU in football, this is the year to do it.


Game Six
East Carolina (3-3) at #23 Army (6-0), Sat., noon (ESPN2)
Latest Betting Line: Black Knights a 15-point favorite

This game is intriguing for several reasons.

First, ECU coach Mike Houston is coming off a horrific 2-10 season, his team just lost to the Charlotte 49ers, a newcomer to the American Athletic Conference, for the second year in a row, and his players are smart enough to know that he’s probably fighting for his job right now.

Second, the Pirates just had an off week at the best possible time, heading into a game against a team that runs the triple option, which is difficult to prepare for under any circumstances, but at least they had two full weeks to study the Black Knights’ unique offensive scheme in this case.

Third, this is a national television game on Saturday afternoon against a nationally ranked Army team that’s 6-0 and a two-touchdown favorite, but — with all due respect to the Knights — they haven’t beaten a single quality football team so far this year. Their five FBS victims — Florida Atlantic, Rice, Temple, Tulsa and UAB — have a combined record of 8-22. Basically, to this point, Army has beaten up on the bottom half of the AAC.

This is the Pirates’ chance to prove that they’re better than those other teams, that they’re not cellar-dwellers themselves.

It’s still hard to believe that, two weeks ago, ECU gave up that many points in a 55-24 loss at Charlotte, because the Pirates have solid personnel on the defensive side of the ball. It also was disappointing when Katin Houser, a Michigan State transfer, finally got his chance at quarterback against the 49ers and played very, very poorly.

When Houston was asked this week about the starting quarterback against Army, and whether it would be Houser or the season-long starter Jake Garcia, he simply answered “whoever gives us the better chance to win.” The best guess there is probably Garcia, formerly of Miami and Missouri, who is extremely turnover-prone but also has shown an ability to throw the ball around and make big plays.

Regardless, ECU’s defense will have to be the starting point if there’s going to be an upset here, because Army — led by senior quarterback Bryson Daily, a 225-pounder who’s very tough to tackle and ranks eighth nationally with 123 rushing yards per game — has delivered one of the most efficient offenses in the entire country this season.

The Black Knights rarely throw the ball, but they’re averaging a national-best 370 rushing yards per game and almost 40 points per game. The way they run their triple-option offense, it takes only one missed assignment or one slip-up by a defensive player for Army to make a big play or break a long run for a touchdown.

The bottom line: This would be a very tough matchup for anybody, but if that ECU defense can take advantage of the extra week of preparation and limit Army’s big plays, the Pirates will have at least a chance to shock the world in this one, because the Black Knights are not a particularly strong team on defense.


Week Eight Bonus Games!

Wake Forest (2-4) at UConn (4-2), Sat., noon (CBSSN)
Latest Betting Line: Huskies a two-point favorite

These teams’ records might suggest that the Huskies are significantly better than the Demon Deacons this season, but that’s simply not the case.

UConn has played only two games against Power Four opponents in 2024, and it lost both. The Huskies were annihilated by Maryland in their season opener, 50-7, and they later fell 26-21 at Duke.

This a great opportunity for the 2-4 Demon Deacons to put up a big number with their very talented crew offensively (QB Hank Bachmeier, RB Demond Claiborne, WR Taylor Morin, etc.) and take one more step toward possible bowl eligibility.

Wake’s defense is giving up an ACC-worst 34 points per game, and that continues to be a major concern (with no easy answers) for coach Dave Clawson, so there’s a good possibility of a wild shootout in this one.

Charlotte (3-3) at #25 Navy (6-0), Sat., 3:30 pm (CBSSN)
Latest Betting Line: Midshipmen a 17-point favorite

The 49ers are understandably a massive underdog in this game. Navy is the top-scoring team in the AAC, at 43.6 points per game, and has beaten all five of its previous opponents by double-digit margins.

However, the undefeated Midshipmen do not play great defense, so if there is a path to an upset for Charlotte, it’s building on that 55-point output the 49ers had in their dominating win over ECU two weeks ago.

True freshman quarterback Deshawn Purdie (in for injured starter Max Brown) threw for more than 200 yards for the first time at the college level against the Pirates, and redshirt junior running back Hahsaun Wilson had one of the biggest games of his career, with 15 carries for 164 yards and three touchdowns.

NOTE: For the complete Week Eight schedule (including television/streaming options) for all ACC and state of North Carolina teams, please click HERE.