By By BRIAN HAINES, Brian@wdnweb.com, Sports Writer
GREENVILLE — It’s one of the many high risk, high reward plays in football, but no matter how it plays out the blitz is always exciting.
During the offseason, N.C. State hired linebacker’s coach Jon Tenuta, whose resume includes stops at NCAA elites such as Notre Dame and Georgia Tech. Together, Tenuta and defensive coordinator Mike Archer have revamped the Wolfpack’s defense, adding more aggressive, blitz-heavy schemes that have helped the team tally the second-most sacks in the ACC, while giving up a fifth-best 21.2 points per game.
The Wolfpack (5-1, 2-1) enters Saturday’s clash with the Pirates (3-2, 3-0) having tallied 20 sacks in six games, and on Monday East Carolina coach Ruffin McNeill estimated that N.C. State blitzes roughly 40 percent of the time.
Pirates first-year offensive coordinator Lincoln Riley agreed.
“Yeah, that’s basically what you will see. It’s a little higher or lower depending on the situation but they’re going to come after us,” Riley said. “Going into this it looks like they’ll blitz us more than any team we have seen up to this point.”
McNeill said the Wolfpack will come after quarterback Dominique Davis using a lot of zone blitzes, which is an element the junior signal-caller and company have not seen much of this season.
“Everybody does it a little bit, we have seen both man and zone,” Riley said. “But this will probably be the most zone blitzing team we have faced.”
What sets a zone blitzing apart from standard blitzing is that you never know which player in the front seven will be coming and which will be dropping back into coverage, a tactic made popular by Steelers long-time defensive coordinator and pro football hall of famer Dick LeBeau.
“You don’t always know where they droppers are going to be,” Riley said. “They are going to be in different spots and their coaches do a good job of mixing it up. The spots they attack are going to be different with each blitz depending on who drops and what coverage they’re in, so you have to really be in tune to what’s going on.”
That kind of confusion will make it a little more challenging for Davis to make his pre-snap reads.
“Well sometimes you just don’t know before the snap,” Riley said. “We have identified a few tells that we think we can identify but you really don’t know.”
The advantages of zone blitzing is that in can create a lot of confusion for the opposing offensive line and quarterback, but its not without its sacrifices. The scheme calls for defensive linemen to combat against their nature and drop back into pass coverage instead of thrusting forward, which can be tough for a 6-4, 275-pounder.
“They get back there but most of the time in my estimation they just get in the way. How often do you see one get a pick,” Riley said. “But they do get in the way and they can disrupt some timing … (N.C. State) has some really athletic linemen.”
The scheme also banks on the fact that the blitzer or blitzers can get to the quarterback before the he can deliver the ball to an open receiver. However, if the pressure gets picked up by the offensive line it can spell doom for the defense.
“The weakness of a zone blitz is that there are huge hole everywhere,” Riley said. “If you can get the ball to the receivers you can get some big plays.”
Davis said that the team has some measures in place to exploit the Wolfpack blitz.
“We have a lot of hot routes,” Davis said. “That’s pretty much what we want to focus on, just me getting the ball to our great athletes at the receiver position to make plays.”
On the season, the Wolfpack has picked off seven passes which is tied for No. 2 in the ACC with Miami, Clemson and Maryland, and is one behind Boston College and Virginia Tech.
Sophomore free safety Brandon Bishop leads State with four interceptions, while linebackers Audi Cole and Nate Irving lead the team in sacks with four and 3.5 respectively. Irving also has an ACC eighth-best 45 tackles.