Ah, the bye week. A time for reflection. Relax. Explore for yourself what you have done in the field to eliminate some problems that you may have caused yourself. For Robert Anae, I think the mission is simple: please remove half of your playbook. I don't care which half. Choose the middle half. Take every other page.

Alec did a good job after the Syracuse game expressing a lot of what bothered me about this offense, namely that it seems like a weekly exercise in “What does this button do?” It has no particular tendencies, no basic line and, for two thirds of the season, has nothing in its repertoire. This is an appalling failure that is Anae's fault, especially given the improvements in skill talents.

Switching to a freshman quarterback during the season is always going to cause setbacks, but sometimes it feels like CJ Bailey is improving despite the offense; The unit as a whole feels smaller than the sum of its parts.

There's no reason for this offense to be so inconsistent in its personnel usage or game plans, and it's doing the players a disservice. Maybe the base game wouldn't be quite the same combat if it weren't for constantly trying to get a dozen different ideas to work. Maybe the chemistry in the passing game would be better if the wide receiver deck wasn't reshuffled every few quarters.

If NC State wants to make something of the final third of the schedule, it has to start with Anae's approach.