Breaking News: MJ Morris has been red shirted

We are going to discuss NC State football. My assertion yesterday and over the weekend after the Wolfpack beat Miami was that I think this possibly is the best back-to-back wins in the entire Dave Doran era. We are going to get to that conversation, but as we bring in Michael Clark from Pack Pride 24-7 Sports, there is some, I think, news that Michael is breaking. He's not a first-time guest in this program.

Mr. Clark. First of all, thank you very much for your time. Secondly, you are saying that NC State will redshirt MJ Morris after all and not play him the last three games of the season. According to our friend Tim Donnelly, the university is refuting that, but I guess we'll find out Saturday.

What can you tell us? Yeah, I think that's where things stand, unfortunately. I just think that it is a fluid situation. I think it's very complicated, is all I can say. I respect everybody involved. Is the timing bad? Again, yes, but it kind of is where we are at this point.

I think that NC State is in a good spot. I know we DM back and forth, Adam. Two massive wins. So, what does it look like from here? I don't know. Alright, Michael Clark is joining us.

You can follow him on Twitter at MichaelClark247. How would you judge MJ over the last four games? I mean, three of them have been wins. The only one that wasn't was the game at Duke, and that was very winnable for the Wolfpack. I mean, Duke's got broken quarterback.

They played Henry Bielen, but that was just a mistake-filled game, probably on both sides, but I think more so early from NC State, and then they got behind. How would you judge MJ Morris' four games? I think he's been average at best, and again, it's tough to really handicap him because of the offense.

You watch it, Adam. They're very limited around him. The offensive line has struggled mightily. You've got one receiver that you really trust right now. The backfield is kind of in flux. You've moved the linebacker there for pass protection purposes, so the supporting cast is rather limited, and that's unfortunate. I just think it is hard, though, but again, a quarterback, I think one of the biggest things is does he elevate the people around him, and I think that is kind of what you have to judge things off of right now. Again, the offense is just a work in progress would be an understatement, but you have to kind of focus, I think, on the defense because that's where the success in this team lies. The defense is great, and Peyton Wilson, I don't know if he's going to be a first-round pick. He's older, so that probably works against him. He's got an injury history, so that works against him, but if he were 22 and didn't have the shoulder issues he's had in the past, he certainly looks like a first-round draft pick to me. You are better at evaluating these types of things. What do you think for him at the next level?

Well, I think that you just hit the nail on the head. If he has a clean bill of health, he's probably, I'll go further than that, he is not on NC State's roster right now. He is playing on Sundays. I made a point to a friend the other day, and I kind of compared it to Thomas Davis who played at Georgia.

He had three knee injuries, I believe, in college, went on the NFL. Is this possibly one of those feel-good things? Probably one of those feel-good stories. You hope so. I do think everybody I've spoken to that I really trust believes he's really helping himself, and that might sound like an obvious statement among the NFL circles, but you know how these things go, Adam. When you go to the combine, they're going to ding you for everything.

So they're going to pick him apart, but I think the tape speaks for itself. I think what he's shown this year that's really caused him to move up among the NFL people is the ability to be that pass-rusher that many teams call it. 64-250 can run, and just as a natural playmaker. I think the bigger thing, too, is he just continued to get better. He's not one of those guys who's plateaued early in his career, was just kind of running around making plays. Now he's under control, a student of the game. I don't know what else you can say about Peyton Wilson, other than he has just been sensational. If there is someone in college football who's playing better on defense, I'd like to see who the person is. I think because of his age, you might even see a team late in the first round, and apparently Michael is very into the wolf pack.

That is a pack right there. But I think you could see a team late in the first round take a flyer on him, simply because at the end of four years, you might be done. Again, age matters to these guys, and it's one of those things they ding. It's like a credit report.

They're going to ding you for something, and they're going to ding him for being older than most guys coming out of college. Let's get back to the initial question. Michael Clark, 247, 247 Sports Pack Pride is joining us here on the Adam Gold Show. Are these the two best back-to-back wins in the Dorn era? I think you could make a strong case. I would say yes, and I think the devil's advocate, obviously the person arguing across from you would say, well, Clemson is down, and Miami has shown a tendency to beat itself.

I would push back on that defensively. NC State has been able to control two really solid football teams. You look at Clemson, what they did last week, Miami has been impressive until late. They've obviously cost themselves a couple games because of some coaching mishaps and all that type of stuff, but I think the bigger thing is, we talked a couple weeks ago, and I was way wrong. I was a homer, and I picked State to beat Duke. I couldn't have been more wrong there. I mean, it won't be the last time. I think I would have said, because there's always a chance, Adam, there's a 1% chance NC State beats Clemson and beats Miami. I think we were probably all sitting there after the Duke game, and look what happened. It's kind of the way college sports is. It's up there.

It's not the most impressive. It's pretty close. It's still Miami and Clemson from a name perspective.

I think that's the bigger thing to keep in mind. Yeah, and I think both of these teams are good. Are they necessarily top 25 teams at best? They're at the very bottom of it, but they're certainly in the next handful of teams after that. The truth is that maybe it's an indictment of what has gone on in the past, but the only thing I could come close to was in 2018, they won at Florida State. It was ranked 12th. Then they beat Syracuse, who wasn't very good, and then they beat Lamar Jackson and Louisville on that Thursday night.

That's the only thing I could come up with that is remotely close to back-to-back wins at home over Clemson and Florida State. Now, I want your take on this because it is election day, Michael. I understand it's not a sexy election day. We're just talking about mayors in Durham and Fayetteville and some county things. But we did some exit polling, and I did a favorable or unfavorable for Dave Doran, and favorable is nearly 53%, meh, undecided, 29%, unfavorable 18%.

What do you make of that? I'm in the camp of favorable. I would say a couple weeks ago I was down, and I've been as critical as anybody during the low points, and the Duke one certainly was that. I think now, and I ask you, is it one of the better coaching jobs? I know this is a crazy thing to say. Two-week stint, getting a team to bounce back off a bye week, I think that is a really encouraging, really good job of coaching how they responded.

I think the bigger question, though, is how do they finish? And there's obviously a lot of things going on over there right now that they've got to get sorted out, but you've got three very winnable games, considering on how you played. And if you were going to tell anybody that you could have a chance at a nine-win season after getting blown out by Duke, they probably would have looked at you crazy and had a good reason to do so.

So, again, I think a lot goes at a finish, but I don't think you could ask more from a head coach and a staff concerning how they've responded to the tough loss at Duke. Real quick, before we let you go, Michael, will it be Brennan Armstrong if it's not MJ Morris, or will it be somebody else? It would be Brennan if it's not MJ, and again, this is just the wild, wild west between the transfer portal and everything else that goes on, it is nonstop. And it's part of the fun part, but at the same time, I think I've been on the phone for, I haven't done anything, I've been on the phone all morning, so it comes with it, but it will be Brennan if not MJ. Is this portal related, or is this just NC State wants to say, hey, you've got three more years to play here, MJ?

Yeah, I don't think this has anything really to do with the transfer portal. I think it would be the latter. Again, it is so hard to quantify the situation, what's going on back and forth, it's just the, but I guess that's kind of the nature of the beast, that's where we are, and unfortunately it's, again, like I said, it's the wild, wild west.

It truly is right now in college football. Michael Clark, I appreciate your time, my friend. We'll do it again. You got it. Michael Clark here on the Adam Gold Show.