#Maybe he will this year because it's Rob's 35th!!

[tampatom12]

EVERYONE, GO WISH ROB A HAPPY BIRTHDAY TODAY!!!! :D

He is now 35 🥺🥹🤧🤩🥳

🔥💯🌟💓💞🙌🏻

🎉🎇🎂🎁🎈🎊🎆🕺🏻🪩

[rainbow-filmnerd]

Big Things are Coming!

Hey Guys! I have several things to talk about in terms of the next few months, and a lot of them are gonna be big!

This week is my last week of my final semester at Manchester Community College (a few weeks ago, I am just done with that place) and on this coming Wednesday, I will have my last day on campus before I have to complete a couple assignments by either Thursday and Saturday (my goal is to finish before I go to work on Friday evening! I will explain more later.). I have two final exams to take; Biology (which I will constantly study for before taking the exam on Tuesday. Gotta get it done before Creative Writing starts. RIP) and US History, which is a take-home exam, and as mentioned previously, I will have to finish it before I go to work on Friday.

On this coming Saturday, my older brother is graduating from college, and my parents and I are going over to Keene for the ceremony. I'm just glad I got the day off at work, because Keene is nearly two hours away from home, and that's just the second reason on why I won't make it in. Next week, the four of us will be headed to New York City from Monday to Thursday (I told my manager that I can't come in on Sunday because I'll be out of town, but she doesn't have to know that I'm leaving on Monday. I'm just hoping I don't have to come in on the 12th. LOL). And due to that, I will not be online on here, Instagram, Tumblr or Twitter, because I don't know if there'll be WiFi at the hotel we're staying at. I will explain more about my NYC trip when I get home.

Aside from work, I have some summer activities in the coming (I will explain more about FanExpo Boston in the next paragraph), such as family trips, the movies (I have to see Endgame. Social media is a freaking minefield when it comes to the movie's spoilers!), maybe Canobie Lake Park, and a Fisher Cats game. On June 21st, my Dad, older brother and I will be attending their "Comic Con Night", and I'll be dressed for the occasion. I decided to dress up as Rebel Eleven from Stranger Things, as seen in the last few episodes of the second season. Overall, I wanted to do a easier cosplay and save the hard work for FanExpo Boston. Plus, Season 3 is premiering on the Fourth of July, not long after the Fisher Cats game, so that should bring some ST hype.

You guys probably know about this by now, but I have plans in going to FanExpo Boston yet again for 2019. I have decided that I'm dressing up as Wirt from Over the Garden Wall, mainly because he was the only idea I had for a cosplay this year at the convention, and I watched the series a few months ago. I do not know if my Dad and I are going on Saturday or Sunday, because as of May 5th, there isn't any announcements of certain panels. And in terms of celebrity meetings, I am heavily considering meeting one this year, and that is FREAKING Sean Astin! I may be meeting 2012!Raphael and Bob Newby himself! There has been some other celebrity announcements, but none of them really got me thinking of meeting them (except maybe David Harbour, who portrays Jim Hopper on ST, but that depends if I still want to meet him and if I'm going on Sunday). I will be working hard on my Wirt cosplay because I have to sew his hat and cape. I did find a tutorial of both by the same person on YouTube, and I'll have to give her a shoutout once I'm happy with the costume pieces' execution.

Lastly, in late August, since I finished two years of MCC, I will be transferring to another school to get my associate's degree. Since I have my heart set on majoring in Film Studies, the closest school for that is in Keene State College. In early March, I was finally admitted as a student and will start my classes in the Fall (I just got them a few days ago, and I'm really excited!). Some KSC stuff will be happening in the summer, mainly preparations and an orientation for transfer students sometime next month.

As a little bonus, and I mentioned it previously, but in honor of TMNT's 35th Anniversary (which was yesterday BTW), Granite State Comic Con is having Kevin Eastman and the four original voice actors of the Turtles (including Rob Paulsen, whom I met last year) as guests at the convention. I am debating whether or not to go, because I don't know who else is set to show up at FanExpo Boston, it is on a weekend while I'm at school (luckily, my class schedule doesn't interfere, but it'll depend on what schoolwork I'll have to get done), and tickets are $10-15 cheaper than the ones at FanExpo Boston (which is $35 per ticket for just one day). If I do decide to go, I'll come home for that weekend (with no plans to dress up!) and meet Kevin Eastman and maybe say hello to Rob again, because I wanna tell him how awesome of a job he's doing as RotTMNT's voice director.

Well, that's all I'm sharing with you guys for now. I apologize if this journal was long, but I have a lot of stuff bond to happen in this short amount of time, and I really wanted to share it with you guys. Also, I have a goal to finish "Beauty and Dangerous", my TMNT fanfiction, before I got to school on Sunday. I will try to post Chapter 11 before the end of the month.

I'll talk to you all later!

[yahoo-puck-daddy-blog]

What We Learned: Who could have bounce-backs, setbacks in goal-scoring

Every year, there are guys who go on scoring runs they’ve never seen in their careers before, while other players take huge steps back for seemingly no reason.

People don’t like to be told that “luck” is often a big reason why this happens, but it has to be said that oftentimes, that plays a huge role. With all the preseason standings predictions now coming out, I was thinking about this in the context of the Washington Capitals overall, because they’re a team that had the highest shooting percentage in the league to go along with the highest save percentage.

Some of that is obviously skill-driven, because the Capitals have long scored more goals than it appeared they “should have” thanks to their talent level, but the extent to which it happened last year should be worrying, especially given how much the team lost this summer at both the forward and defensive positions.

But after looking at some things, where a lot of that concern I originally had about the Caps as a whole largely settled with T.J. Oshie. Here’s a guy who scored a career-high 33 goals in just 68 games in his age-30 season. In fact, that scoring rate obliterated his previous career best, at nearly 50 percent more goals per game. Not surprisingly, this was driven by a shooting percentage north of 23. Only seven other guys have cleared 23 percent shooting in 60-plus games since the league instituted the shootout. Like Oshie, they’re mostly skilled guys, but they didn’t shoot for nearly as much volume. And to a man, they all experienced big steps back in goal-scoring rates the next seasons.

T.J. Oshie is due to regress after shooting 23 percent last season.

The stat that best illustrates this issue for Oshie, and several other guys in the league, is the difference between the number of goals they scored at 5-on-5 and the number of goals they mathematically “should have” scored based on the location, type, volume, etc. of their shooting.

Oshie actually led the league in the difference between actual (1.5 goals per 60 at 5-on-5) and expected goals (less than 0.7 per 60). Again, you can attribute some of that to his quality as a player — he has more skill than an average NHL forward, to be sure — but that doesn’t mean you should’t expect a big step back from him in terms of putting the puck in the net.

But certainly, Oshie is not alone in this regard, and there are a few others for whom their scoring last season should be a point of concern. The red dotted lines here are the league averages for expected and actual goals, separated by 0.01 goals per 60. (And here we should all say, “Thank you, Corsica, for coming back to us in our hour of need.”)

(via Corsica)

More worry for the Capitals should come in what newly re-signed Brett Connolly, who outperformed a subpar expected goals per 60 by more than double, brings to the table. His actual goals per 60 was 13th in the league last season among forwards with at least 500 minutes at full strength; expected goals was just 230th.

You also see Rickard Rakell, Jonathan Marchessault and Patrik Laine fill out the rest of the top-five in terms of goals-above-expected. The first two guys here are interesting cases because they’re good players who had breakout years, but whose teams can likewise expect them to take a step back. But you have to be curious about Laine. His skill threshold, I mean, he’s gotta shoot the puck better than any rookie teen since Ovechkin just in terms of pure lethality, and that made up for what was a pretty subpar season in terms of actually shooting the puck in a way that’s normally conducive to goal scoring.

Laine is a guy you can mostly expect to keep outpacing his expected goals. All the greats do, and we know what Laine’s pedigree is. Nonetheless, I think it’s also fair to say he probably doesn’t have “shooting 18 percent forever” talent, and it might be fair to set standards for him a little lower than the 36 he netted last season, even if he takes a step forward in terms of his actual on-ice process. He’s still only 19, and has plenty of room to grow, but this is something worth watching all year.

At the other end of the spectrum there are a handful of guys who had awful years putting the puck in the net — Riley Sheahan, come on down — but who aren’t that great to begin with. Sheahan of course needed to get to the last game of the season to score his only two goals in 82 games, and that’s not something that will happen again. Likewise, Jimmy Hayes, Matt Moulson and Kyle Clifford are three perfectly okay bottom-six players whose goal-scoring went sour this year and who could see more pucks go in for them this time around if they get the opportunity. Not a lot more, of course, but if they get back near the league average for 5-on-5 goals they could be okay contributors once again.

But there are three guys in the chart above who had rotten luck last year by their own fairly high standards who should be highlighted: Zach Hyman, Taylor Hall and most interesting I think, Patrick Sharp.

Hyman was a guy who should have scored a lot more goals than he did just based on what his linemates, Auston Matthews (who led the league in expected 5-on-5 goals per 60 last year) and Willie Nylander, presented to him. He’s not the most skilled guy in the world, of course, but he should have scored more 5-on-5 goals than the six he actually put in the net. In fact, based on expected goals, he should have scored 15. That’s a lot of goals; it’s what Blake Wheeler, Jeff Carter, and John Tavares actually scored last year. Obviously Hyman isn’t at that level of player, but even if he’s not that good, if he’s put in the same position he’s still likely to boost his 5-on-5 scoring significantly, and that would only be good news for the Leafs.

Hall is another guy where you look at what he should have scored (35th in expected goals per hour) versus what he actually did (261st in goals) and say, “Well that’s not gonna last.” Poor Taylor Hall. The kid can’t buy a break.

Finally, maybe the most interesting player in this batch is Patrick Sharp, who returns to Chicago on a cheap contract thanks to one of the worst years of his career. As you can see, he didn’t deserve to only score eight goals in 48 games, but suffered through concussion issues and had hip surgery at the end of the year, both of which are likely to hamper performance, especially for a 35-year-old skill guy. If he’s anything resembling healthy, and Joel Quenneville puts him in a position to get time with skilled players, he could return to form and be a solid bargain. Most recently, he’s been skating with the third line of Ryan Hartman and Artem Anisimov, but if things don’t pan out with Richard Panik for some reason, maybe he gets bumped up to the Saad/Toews line.

As much as people don’t want to hear it, “luck” and a lot of other factors play huge roles in player (and team) production, and it provides observers a basis for what they should be looking for over the course of the full 82.

What We Learned

Anaheim Ducks: Can this team really reach a higher goal than “Western Conference Final” because it doesn’t seem like it.

Arizona Coyotes: As always, this team is going to improve, but improving from being awful still doesn’t get you a lot of wins.

Boston Bruins: You’d probably rather have Matt Grzelcyk than Rob O’Gara, just given their skillsets and what needs to be replaced with Torey Krug out a while, right?

Buffalo Sabres: Nah, probably the defense will.

Calgary Flames: Calgary media very dialed in on credulity as to Mike Smith’s capabilities this season. Doesn’t seem like the right tack to me, but hey, have fun out there.

Carolina Hurricanes: Psst, it’s actually the goaltending.

Chicago Blackhawks: They really gotta hope this stuff is precautionary.

Colorado Avalanche: Weird to remember Joe Colborne and Jonathan Bernier are on the Avs, but here we are.

Columbus Blue Jackets: This is one of those things that’s not gonna go away until the Avs just do something about it. Trade him to Columbus or Nashville or the moon. Whatever.

Dallas Stars: Horrible news about the legend Dave Strader. One of the greats. Peace and love to his family.

Detroit Red Wings: We’re still doing this, huh?

Edmonton Oilers: Ya don’t say.

Florida Panthers: Owen Tippett will get his nine games then go back to the OHL. Let’s not read more into this than we have to.

Los Angeles Kings: Yeah I’d still be concerned about Jonathan Quick, given who the backups are.

Minnesota Wild: Ah yes, “momentum” coming out of the preseason.

Montreal Canadiens: Brendan Gallagher looking to rebound? He should have probably had double the amount of goals he actually scored, and only shot 5.4 percent, so yeah, expect a bounce-back year.

Nashville Predators: “They don’t have a real second-line center and Ryan Ellis is out for four months” sums it up nicely.

New Jersey Devils: Not surprised Jimmy Hayes ended up earning a contract. He’s an okay bottom-six guy.

New York Islanders: That time was about five years ago.

New York Rangers: They’re gonna Keith Yandle poor Kevin Shattenkirk, I just know it.

Ottawa Senators: Oh ya think so?

Philadelphia Flyers: Seems like the answer will probably be “too many.”

Pittsburgh Penguins: Calling the Penguins the best team in the league with the best chance to win a Cup again seems crazy but man, they keep doing it, don’t they?

San Jose Sharks: I love Joe Thornton but this should be seen as a huge point of concern.

St. Louis Blues: Uhhh, congrats?

Tampa Bay Lightning: Everyone is healthy open-parentheses for now close-parentheses.

Toronto Maple Leafs: The Leafs used their last game before the end of preseason to give all the borderline players one last chance to impress. They lost to the Red Wings. Cut ’em all, baby! Vancouver Canucks: This could turn into a weird situation.

Vegas Golden Knights: Is Gerard Gallant actually all that good? I’m still not convinced, and we’re not gonna learn anything with this Vegas team, so … cool?

Washington Capitals: That thing I was saying about the Caps exceeding their expected goals by a crazy amount last year? Yeah.

Winnipeg Jets: They’re gonna hand Mason the No. 1 job. Pretty clear the day they signed him.

Play of the weekend

Carey Price, hello.

Gold Star Award

The regular season starts this week and I am extremely crying.

Perfect HFBoards Trade Proposal of the Year

User “DudeWhereIsMakar” is in midseason form.

To Los Angeles:
 Ryan Nugent-Hopkins
, Kris Russell, 
Ethan Bear

To Edmonton:
 Drew Doughty
, Jeff Carter

Signoff

You got the dud! Hey, he looks just like you, poindexter!

Ryan Lambert is a Puck Daddy columnist. His email is here and his Twitter is here. (All stats via Corsica unless otherwise noted.)

[junker-town]

NC State is improving dramatically, but so is the ACC. Breakthrough in 2017?

Dave Doeren is both doing a strong job overall and appearing on hot-seat lists.

The ACC might have been the best league in the country last year. From the perspective of S&P+ averages, the SEC barely held onto the top spot (which is why this countdown is previewing ACC teams right now and not SEC teams yet), but if you get points for winning the national title, the Heisman, and of course the Piesman, the ACC gets the nod.

Clemson and Florida State have emerged as two of the surest things in the sport, but the strength has been the middle class. In addition to two top-six teams, five ACC teams ranked between 12th and 25th in S&P+.

This is great news for the league. But it’s making it difficult to gauge how teams are actually doing.

For most of last season, I saw vague references to NC State coach Doeren being close to the hot seat. As I sometimes get stuck in my ratings world and forget about records, this had me confused.

Doeren inherited a team that had ranked worse than 75th in S&P+ in three of its last four seasons under Tom O’Brien. The Wolfpack offense fell directionless after Russell Wilson left, and the defense was merely decent. Because of the state of the conference, they were still winning — O’Brien’s last two sub-75 teams went 15-11 — but this was a mediocre program.

The Pack ranked just 78th in Doeren’s first season but improved to 46th in 2014, 41st in 2015, and 25th last fall. The defense has improved for three consecutive years, and the offense regressed by only a bit last season* after improving the previous two years. This was a strong team that finished well, beating UNC in Chapel Hill and trouncing Vanderbilt in the Independence Bowl.

So shy in the world would Doeren be under pressure with such clear improvement? Wins. He doesn’t have a ton of them. He is 25-26 after four seasons, 22-17 if you remove the first-year reset. In O’Brien’s last four years, State was 29-22. Improvement on paper is great, but it only means so much to fans if you’re just improving enough to keep up with the conference’s improvement.

NC State left some wins on the board in 2016. The Wolfpack would’ve beaten Clemson, if not for a missed field goal. They fell to an East Carolina that would succumb to injury and finish 3-9, and they should have been kicked out of the Def. S&P+ top 25 for giving up 21 points to Boston College in an upset loss.

Still, against teams outside of the S&P+ top 15, they went 7-2, and both losses were statistically unlikely. Their postgame win expectancy, based on a game’s key stats, was 82 percent against ECU and 64 percent against BC, meaning there was only about a 6 percent chance of losing both (and a 52 percent chance of winning both).

The major problem: they played four really good teams and lost to all four. They nearly beat Clemson and Florida State but didn’t. They are not only in the best-ever version of the ACC, they were randomly placed in its best division, too. (Divisions: dumb and outdated.)

So how do we judge Doeren then? “They’re better on paper” sounds great, but it’s not reassuring if you keep leaving your stadium bummed out. (State has lost at least three home games in each of Doeren’s seasons.)

Still, using historical precedent, what can State expect? The Wolfpack have only had a handful of teams better than 2016’s since Lou Holtz left in the early 1970s. In fact, per S&P+, there have been just three, in 1979, 2002, and 2003. Only one won more than eight games.

NC State has mastered the art of being competitive and coming up short. (As a Missouri fan, I can say such a thing.) Over the last 29 seasons, they have been to 20 bowls but have won double-digit games or finished in the AP top 15 just once. State’s history has been of brief brilliance and the funks that follow.

Don’t expect much to change in 2017. State plays four teams projected 17th or better, seven in the top 40. The Pack are projected to again rank in the top 30 and again win about seven games.

There are worse fates, but the problem for Doeren is that there are better ones, too.

* That’s including the Notre Dame game in the ratings, and as that game was played in an outright monsoon, there’s a case for removing it. It probably bumped State’s defensive ranking up by 10 spots and bumped the offense down an equal amount.

Jeremy Brevard-USA TODAY Sports

2016 in review

2016 NC State statistical profile.

A quick glance at NC State’s 2016 results suggests a narrative: the Pack started 4-1, lost four in a row, then won three of four. So they fell victim to a midseason funk? Not necessarily; they fell victim to playing three elite teams (Clemson, Louisville, FSU) in four weeks, two on the road.

Even taking the unlikely losses to ECU and BC into account, State was tremendous against less-than-tremendous teams.

NC State vs. S&P+ top 15 (0-4): Avg. percentile performance: 52% (~top 60) | Avg. yards per play: Opp 6.1, NC State 5.0 (minus-1.1) | Avg. score: Opp 32, NC State 16 (minus-16)

NC State vs. everyone else (7-2): Avg. percentile performance: 83% (~top 20) | Avg. yards per play: NC State 6.1, Opp 4.6 (plus-1.5) | Avg. score: NC State 32, Opp 19 (plus-13)

The offense was problematic in games against good competition. The Pack scored 17, 13, 20, and 13 points in top-15 games, getting truly thumped only once (54-13 to Louisville) but otherwise remaining competitive enough to lose in frustrating fashion.

Will the experienced offense find another gear?

Offense

Full advanced stats glossary.

Last winter, Matt Canada became one of the hottest assistant coaches in college football. His Pitt offense ranked fourth in Off. S&P+, and it got him hired by LSU.

A year earlier, Canada was getting pushed out of Raleigh by Doeren. Maybe the two didn’t see eye-to-eye, but in two years, Canada had improved the State offense from 90th in Off. S&P+ to 35th. It was a confusing move.

Eliah Drinkwitz’s first NC State offense was, considering the circumstances, fine. It was good against lesser teams — the Wolfpack did score 33 on Mike Elko’s excellent Wake Forest defense and put up 41 against Vanderbilt — and some of the regression could be explained by a quarterback change and the loss of three excellent linemen.

Drinkwitz is a Gus Malzahn disciple, and his tactical flexibility was fascinating. He basically created a brand new, H-Backish position for Jaylen Samuels and gave him 81 pass targets and 33 carries. (I followed Backing The Pack’s lead and listed his position as JAYLEN in the spreadsheet at the bottom of this preview.) He gave slot receiver Nyheim Hines 60 targets and 13 carries. He gave running back Matthew Dayes 249 carries and 41 targets.

Rob Kinnan-USA TODAY Sports

Nyheim Hines

The Drinkwitz offense identifies top play-makers and gets them the ball in as many ways as possible. With Samuels and Hines back, that should continue. But Dayes’ departure opens up the backfield. That might not be the end of the world, as the run game wasn’t very effective. Drinkwitz attempted balance on standard downs, calling run plays 61 percent of the time, but State ranked 78th in standard-downs success rate.

State got away with falling behind the chains because quarterback Ryan Finley was so good at catching back up. Finley’s passer rating was at its best on second down — he completed 68 percent then, with a 148 passer rating — which suggests good decision-making from Finley and strong play-calling from Drinkwitz. State ranked 16th in passing-downs success rate and created third-and-manageables.

Be it Hines, Samuels, senior Dakwa Nichols, or junior Reggie Gallaspy II, a reliable ball carrier needs to emerge. The return of four line starters (including senior all-conference guard Tony Adams) should help. State’s line will likely start Adams and four juniors, so it should improve this year and again in 2018.

Rich Barnes-USA TODAY Sports

Ryan Finley

If the run game can bring a little more efficiency, that could create more dam-busters. State was so busy catching up to the chains that big-play opportunities were a rarity. Non-QBs averaged just 4.7 yards per carry, and while Samuels and Hines combined for 98 receptions, they only averaged 11.1 yards per catch.

There was an emphasis on efficiency and horizontal passing that did occasionally open up big plays. Wideouts Stephen Louis, Bra’Lon Cherry, Kelvin Harmon, and Maurice Trowell did catch a combined 101 balls for 1,723 yards (17.1 per catch). But Finley averaged only 12.1 yards per completion against top-15 teams, when Dayes averaged just 4.3 yards per carry. There was no pop.

Continuity is a major plus. Louis, Harmon, and Trowell return (as does 2015 contributor JuMichael Ramos), and Finley and Drinkwitz are both in their second seasons in major roles. There’s potential for both efficiency and explosiveness; the task is to have both against really good defenses.

Defense

I noted in last year’s preview that letting Canada go but keeping defensive coordinator Dave Huxtable was confusing. The Wolfpack defense had improved for two straight years, but it was lagging behind the offense.

That changed in 2016. The Wolfpack would have had a top-30 defense even without the hurricane game against Notre Dame, and they had one of the most punishing run defenses in the country.

That’s not going to change in 2017, not with the top five linemen and top three linebackers back. The defense was lucky from an injury perspective — of the 20 defenders to average at least 0.8 tackles per game, 13 played in every game, and only one missed more than three games — and that probably won’t continue, but for the front six at least, depth means it probably won’t matter.

Rob Kinnan-USA TODAY Sports

Bradley Chubb (9) and Justin Jones (27)

The tackle trio of Justin Jones, B.J. Hill, and Eurndraus Bryant was immovable, which freed up play-makers in every direction. End Bradley Chubb had 21.5 tackles for loss (sixth in FBS), 10 sacks, and three forced fumbles last year, while fellow ends Kentavius Street and Darian Roseboro combined for 21 and 12.5, respectively. Primary linebackers Airius Moore and Jerod Fernandez added 18 TFLs, 2.5 sacks, and nine passes defensed.

State disrupted the run as well as anyone, ranking seventh in rushing success rate, 21st in power success rate, and 26th in stuff rate. Adjust for opponent, and you’ve got a defense that ranked 12th in Rushing S&P+. It would almost be disappointing if the Pack didn’t move into that top 10 this year.

Photo by Grant Halverson/Getty Images

Airius Moore and friends

Of course, opponents figured out that they shouldn’t run — State faced runs just 47 percent of the time on standard downs, 125th in FBS — and found more luck throwing. That will continue. State ranked 39th in passing success rate, and while big-play prevention was a strength, a quick passing game was a good antidote for State’s awesome run defense and aggressive pass rush.

This is problematic, considering the Pack have to replace three of their top four safeties (second-round draft pick Josh Jones and nickels Dravious Wright and Niles Clark) and corner Jack Tocho.

There is a senior presence with the return of safety Shawn Boone and corner Mike Stevens, but State will have to rely on less proven pieces in the back. Either sophomore Nick McCloud, redshirt freshman James Valdez, or converted receiver Johnathan Alston will likely start opposite Stevens at corner, while the other safety roles will go to some combination of unproven juniors (Dexter Wright, Freddie Phillips Jr.) and sophomores (Jarius Morehead, Trae Meadows, Tim Kidd-Glass).

A drop-off is inevitable, and the magnitude will determine how much State gets to take advantage of this run defense.

Special Teams

If you remember one play from NC State’s 2016, it is probably a missed field goal. With two seconds remaining in Death Valley, freshman kicker Kyle Bambard had a 33-yard kick to beat eventual national champion Clemson but pushed it wide. State lost in OT.

That was just one kick, but it was a strong indicator. State ranked 116th in Special Teams S&P+ last season, thanks mostly to miserable production from the legs. Bambard missed four field goals under 40 yards and three PATs, and only 22 percent of his kickoffs reached the end zone. Punter A.J. Cole III fared better, averaging 41.3 yards, but State still ranked just 77th punt efficiency.

Nyheim Hines is an excellent kick returner. I just listed all of State’s known special teams strengths.

2017 outlook

2017 Schedule & Projection Factors

Date Opponent Proj. S&P+ Rk Proj. Margin Win Probability 2-Sep vs. South Carolina 36 2.7 56% 9-Sep Marshall 101 21.3 89% 16-Sep Furman NR 31.6 97% 23-Sep at Florida State 3 -18.8 14% 30-Sep Syracuse 60 8.9 70% 5-Oct Louisville 14 -6.1 36% 14-Oct at Pittsburgh 33 -0.9 48% 28-Oct at Notre Dame 17 -7.8 33% 4-Nov Clemson 6 -10.3 28% 11-Nov at Boston College 76 9.4 71% 18-Nov at Wake Forest 64 4.5 60% 25-Nov North Carolina 38 5.4 62%

Projected S&P+ Rk 27 Proj. Off. / Def. Rk 51 / 27 Projected wins 6.6 Five-Year S&P+ Rk 3.8 (50) 2- and 5-Year Recruiting Rk 46 / 40 2016 TO Margin / Adj. TO Margin* 2 / 2.8 2016 TO Luck/Game -0.3 Returning Production (Off. / Def.) 71% (83%, 58%) 2016 Second-order wins (difference) 8.5 (-1.5)

Every fan base deserves that feeling of breakthrough occasionally, and that makes the NC State job a tricky one. The Wolfpack are consistently good but never experience true success, and because Doeren hasn’t changed that, either overall or in single-game upsets — at NCSU, he’s 0-15 against P5 teams that finished with at least nine wins and 25-11 against everybody else — he is facing more pressure than his performance warrants.

Fair or unfair, though, it’s not going to change. Odds are in favor of State having another of its better teams and again finishing with seven or eight wins.

Is there a chance for a breakthrough? Absolutely. Few teams can boast this level of experience, and the combination of Drinkwitz’s positionless offense with a dynamite front seven gives the Wolfpack a combination of uniqueness and proven quality. They nearly beat the two best teams on this year’s schedule last year, and they get a revenge opportunity against Louisville.

Experience creates extra pressure, though: this team will have to rebuild its offense and replace Samuels next year. Win now, or start over again.

Team preview stats

All power conference preview data to date.

[yes-dal456]

Can I Blame My Mental Illness For My Lousy Behavior?

Content Notice: eating disorder

Seven-and-a-half years ago, on the night of my 35th birthday, I told my husband that I wanted a divorce.

It was 2 AM. Maybe we’d been arguing, I can’t remember. I can’t remember a lot from that period, except the embarrassment. I remember the embarrassment with incredible accuracy.

Earlier that evening, we’d gone to dinner with my grandparents to a local Italian place. I can’t remember the name of the place; it’s not there anymore. It was replaced first by a Japanese place that served sushi that was only barely decent. Then by a Chinese place. Then a place that served Pho. Now I think it’s a Mexican food place.

I had Carbonara, which I also remember. It was surprisingly good for a place that would be out of business in 6 months. We had a bottle of red wine, probably Cabernet. I didn’t love wine yet, but I drank it because it seemed like the grown-up adult thing to do when you’re 35.

We went home and put the kids to bed; they were 14, 11 and nine then.

And at 2 AM, when he asked what was wrong with me, I told him I wanted a divorce.

He asked me to reconsider, pleaded the way only someone who has known you 20 years, who has seen you through every awful thing that has happened to you since you were 14, can.

I didn’t reconsider.

I feel the deepest level of shame, shame to my very core, that I walked away from my children. That 2 AM seemed like a good time to leave my kids and the only family they’d even known, to create a new family that they never asked for. I have bipolar disorder. And this is what unmedicated mental illness looks like for me.

The next day, we sent the kids to school and decided how to tell them. Maybe it was me who thought it would be a good idea to take them to pizza after telling them their lives were about to be ripped apart. Another poor choice in a long list of poor choices.

He told me if I wanted to split up our family, I’d have to leave. So I left.

I left my children there, the people I made in my body. The people who meant more to me than anything, I left at home.

Before I left, my 14-year-old gave me something she’d made with Perler beads, a little boy playing soccer. I kept him in the bag I took when I left, right up until last week.

When I took the figure out of the overnight bag, the black one with cherries on it, that I still use and still hate, I broke his foot off, and I cried. The foot can probably be ironed back on, but that’s not the point.

The point is, I broke him, and them.   

In the year before I left my family, I left myself.

My body wasted, worn down and broken from an eating disorder I denied. I stocked and stashed laxatives around the house. I ran until I fractured my leg and then ran on it still, even though it was excruciating until I broke it all the way.

And even then, I went to the gym and spent an hour a day on the elliptical on the broken leg. The elliptical is a low impact machine, or that’s what I told myself. In my broken brain, it seemed like a perfectly reasonable alternative to running on the road.

I lost ⅔ of my body weight in six months.

I bought handbags costly enough to feed a small nation, a drawer full of yoga pants from Lululemon, running shorts, dozens of new bras, thousands of dollars of new clothes. Every pound I lost deserved a reward, and I gave them to myself.

Despite barely hanging on to our ballooned mortgage, I shopped. At J. Crew, Gap, Macy’s. Nowhere too expensive. I must have figured no one would notice. Until the debt piled up and refused to be hidden.

The day after I told my husband I wanted a divorce, I packed my bag with my Perler-bead boy, two pairs of overpriced Lulu shorts, two sports bras, underwear, two sundresses, two bras with matching panties that I’d bought the week before, and my toothbrush. I went to my grandparent’s house.

I went there — I guess because it was the closest place, three blocks from my house, in a tiny town where everyone lives no more than a few miles away from each other. My grandmother gave me a room with a giant bed covered in an equally giant comforter which was in turn covered with roses. That night I drove around, with regret, but also a bizarre mix of conviction and pride, sure I’d made the right choice.

One day after that, I left my grandparents’ house to visit my sister three hours away. Fourteen years younger than me, she was in college at the time, pursuing the degree I never got, but she was away for the weekend. Instead of waiting for her, I bypassed the campus and drove to the Bay Area where I met my (now) husband.

We spent two nights and days together.

I’ve never written this. I’ve scarcely repeated this story to anyone outside a very tight-knit circle.

I am ashamed.

I’m not ashamed about the love I feel for my husband and the two babies we went on to make. I’m not embarrassed by the strength and struggle of what most would call a rebound marriage and the blended family, both beautiful and disastrous, that goes with it.

I feel the deepest level of shame, shame to my very core, that I walked away from my children. That 2 AM seemed like a good time to leave my kids and the only family they’d even known, to create a new family that they never asked for.

I have bipolar disorder. And this is what unmedicated mental illness looks like for me.

When the fog of a long season of depression lifts, and the manic energy arrives, bringing with it a bunch of irrational decisions, it’s easy to flush your meds — which is exactly what I did — right down the 50-year-old pink toilet, in the first house I ever owned.

I quite literally flushed all my meds because exercise and diet had restored my sanity. Or at least fooled me into thinking my sanity had been restored.

And with that “cure” came insurmountable debt, an eating disorder that leached the calcium from my bones, a delinquent mortgage, and a black overnight bag with cherries on it, filled with two days of clothes, a toothbrush, and a tiny beaded figure that my 14-year-old thought would give me comfort while I was gone.

My grandmother came into the spare bathroom situated across from the spare bedroom I was sleeping, but not really ever sleeping in, without knocking. The sight of my wasted body, the protruding collar bones, the sagging skin, must have alarmed her.

I was too busy thinking about the 10 more pounds I needed to lose to notice or acknowledge her reaction or when she said she was going to the kitchen to make me the mashed potatoes and gravy I’d take two bites of and then rinse into the sink.

When I came back from the Bay Area and the two days that I had sought to make me forget the mess I had left, I borrowed $1,200 from my grandparents and rented a tiny two-bedroom apartment.

In that apartment, I’d make spaghetti for my kids, and we’d eat it off of a wicker patio table that had, the week before, been next to my grandmother’s pool. They would go to sleep on small twin-size air mattresses I bought at Target. I would lay awake on the queen size version. Because I wasn’t sure what I was doing, and also because mania robs you of sleep, making you believe two hours is sufficient.

I had only a few things my ex let me have, a few things that I had charged on a credit card that wasn’t entirely maxed out, a fluffy floral sofa and a patio table that my grandmother gave me. And my mania and my shame.

I listened to the song “Lucky” on repeat, singing along, crying and learning the chords so I could play it on the acoustic guitar my dad had given me on the birthday I celebrated before I left everything behind for a new life.

I was so lucky to have a new life and a new person to love, who loved me.

And I was on a manic cloud that made it all seem so perfectly idyllic.

That’s what mania did to me.

But I can’t blame it. Not because it wasn’t there, but because that’s a bullshit excuse. I wish I could say that every mistake I’ve made, every lousy decision, is all a manifestation of my faulty brain chemistry.

But the truth is, even if it was the mania, I still have to sleep with the image of my kids crying over pizza the night I told them that I’d never share that house, the first one we’d bought, scrimped and saved for, again.

Four years after the wicker patio table and that hideous sofa, I saw the psychiatrist who would finally officially diagnose me over a bag of Sunchips and a Starbucks latte. The man that would medicate me, adjusting formulations over and over, until a year after that, I was at last, after 20 years, stable.

I haven’t had a single suicidal thought in nine months. I haven’t had a manic episode in much longer than that. I can’t remember a lot of words or phone numbers and addresses I had memorized for 20 years — because that’s what Lamictal does while it keeps me from buying useless shit instead of paying my mortgage.

My mouth is dry, and I gained 15 pounds — because that’s what Zoloft does while it keeps my OCD and eating disorder at an arm’s distance and my depression suffocated.

For a while, I was on one medication that made me fall asleep sitting up. I can’t remember what it’s called because I was asleep, and also because of Lamictal stealing my words.

But I take them every day, eight of them, along with a colorful handful of supplemental horse pills that I hope do something to counteract what the pharmaceuticals are doing to my liver. Every morning with breakfast, over coffee with the man I adore. Every night at the bathroom sink, right before I shea butter my hands and spoon to sleep with that same guy.

And I sleep. Mostly restful. At least five hours usually, always striving for seven. Our two littles sneak into our king-size bed and kick me in the face. Sometimes I end up on the bottom 5 percent of that giant mattress. And it makes me angry because no one likes to get kicked in the face by a six-year-old, but then I wake up, and I love them even more than the day before.

I am still ashamed. But despite that, or in spite of that, my life is beautiful.

I have all I need and most of what I want. When I can’t sleep, I can write at 1 AM, and in the morning I will have coffee that is made just how I like it, by a man who is my match, paired with my pharmacy of meds, and probably two fried eggs that we collected from our backyard hens the day before.

My big kids, two of whom are adults now, are fantastic. The two kids Matt and I made, that united our family around a common love, are people I can’t imagine living without. My life is as perfect as I could ever ask for or deserve.

And the Perler bead soccer guy is on my dresser. A reminder of why I swallow a dozen pills every day.

This article first appeared on ravishly.com. Read more from Joni here.

Also at ravishly:

Why Do You Hate Your Body?

13 Things My 4-Year-Old Needs To Discuss at 4 A.M.

Follow Joni on instagram and Facebook.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

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Can I Blame My Mental Illness For My Lousy Behavior?

Content Notice: eating disorder

Seven-and-a-half years ago, on the night of my 35th birthday, I told my husband that I wanted a divorce.

It was 2 AM. Maybe we’d been arguing, I can’t remember. I can’t remember a lot from that period, except the embarrassment. I remember the embarrassment with incredible accuracy.

Earlier that evening, we’d gone to dinner with my grandparents to a local Italian place. I can’t remember the name of the place; it’s not there anymore. It was replaced first by a Japanese place that served sushi that was only barely decent. Then by a Chinese place. Then a place that served Pho. Now I think it’s a Mexican food place.

I had Carbonara, which I also remember. It was surprisingly good for a place that would be out of business in 6 months. We had a bottle of red wine, probably Cabernet. I didn’t love wine yet, but I drank it because it seemed like the grown-up adult thing to do when you’re 35.

We went home and put the kids to bed; they were 14, 11 and nine then.

And at 2 AM, when he asked what was wrong with me, I told him I wanted a divorce.

He asked me to reconsider, pleaded the way only someone who has known you 20 years, who has seen you through every awful thing that has happened to you since you were 14, can.

I didn’t reconsider.

I feel the deepest level of shame, shame to my very core, that I walked away from my children. That 2 AM seemed like a good time to leave my kids and the only family they’d even known, to create a new family that they never asked for. I have bipolar disorder. And this is what unmedicated mental illness looks like for me.

The next day, we sent the kids to school and decided how to tell them. Maybe it was me who thought it would be a good idea to take them to pizza after telling them their lives were about to be ripped apart. Another poor choice in a long list of poor choices.

He told me if I wanted to split up our family, I’d have to leave. So I left.

I left my children there, the people I made in my body. The people who meant more to me than anything, I left at home.

Before I left, my 14-year-old gave me something she’d made with Perler beads, a little boy playing soccer. I kept him in the bag I took when I left, right up until last week.

When I took the figure out of the overnight bag, the black one with cherries on it, that I still use and still hate, I broke his foot off, and I cried. The foot can probably be ironed back on, but that’s not the point.

The point is, I broke him, and them.   

In the year before I left my family, I left myself.

My body wasted, worn down and broken from an eating disorder I denied. I stocked and stashed laxatives around the house. I ran until I fractured my leg and then ran on it still, even though it was excruciating until I broke it all the way.

And even then, I went to the gym and spent an hour a day on the elliptical on the broken leg. The elliptical is a low impact machine, or that’s what I told myself. In my broken brain, it seemed like a perfectly reasonable alternative to running on the road.

I lost ⅔ of my body weight in six months.

I bought handbags costly enough to feed a small nation, a drawer full of yoga pants from Lululemon, running shorts, dozens of new bras, thousands of dollars of new clothes. Every pound I lost deserved a reward, and I gave them to myself.

Despite barely hanging on to our ballooned mortgage, I shopped. At J. Crew, Gap, Macy’s. Nowhere too expensive. I must have figured no one would notice. Until the debt piled up and refused to be hidden.

The day after I told my husband I wanted a divorce, I packed my bag with my Perler-bead boy, two pairs of overpriced Lulu shorts, two sports bras, underwear, two sundresses, two bras with matching panties that I’d bought the week before, and my toothbrush. I went to my grandparent’s house.

I went there — I guess because it was the closest place, three blocks from my house, in a tiny town where everyone lives no more than a few miles away from each other. My grandmother gave me a room with a giant bed covered in an equally giant comforter which was in turn covered with roses. That night I drove around, with regret, but also a bizarre mix of conviction and pride, sure I’d made the right choice.

One day after that, I left my grandparents’ house to visit my sister three hours away. Fourteen years younger than me, she was in college at the time, pursuing the degree I never got, but she was away for the weekend. Instead of waiting for her, I bypassed the campus and drove to the Bay Area where I met my (now) husband.

We spent two nights and days together.

I’ve never written this. I’ve scarcely repeated this story to anyone outside a very tight-knit circle.

I am ashamed.

I’m not ashamed about the love I feel for my husband and the two babies we went on to make. I’m not embarrassed by the strength and struggle of what most would call a rebound marriage and the blended family, both beautiful and disastrous, that goes with it.

I feel the deepest level of shame, shame to my very core, that I walked away from my children. That 2 AM seemed like a good time to leave my kids and the only family they’d even known, to create a new family that they never asked for.

I have bipolar disorder. And this is what unmedicated mental illness looks like for me.

When the fog of a long season of depression lifts, and the manic energy arrives, bringing with it a bunch of irrational decisions, it’s easy to flush your meds — which is exactly what I did — right down the 50-year-old pink toilet, in the first house I ever owned.

I quite literally flushed all my meds because exercise and diet had restored my sanity. Or at least fooled me into thinking my sanity had been restored.

And with that “cure” came insurmountable debt, an eating disorder that leached the calcium from my bones, a delinquent mortgage, and a black overnight bag with cherries on it, filled with two days of clothes, a toothbrush, and a tiny beaded figure that my 14-year-old thought would give me comfort while I was gone.

My grandmother came into the spare bathroom situated across from the spare bedroom I was sleeping, but not really ever sleeping in, without knocking. The sight of my wasted body, the protruding collar bones, the sagging skin, must have alarmed her.

I was too busy thinking about the 10 more pounds I needed to lose to notice or acknowledge her reaction or when she said she was going to the kitchen to make me the mashed potatoes and gravy I’d take two bites of and then rinse into the sink.

When I came back from the Bay Area and the two days that I had sought to make me forget the mess I had left, I borrowed $1,200 from my grandparents and rented a tiny two-bedroom apartment.

In that apartment, I’d make spaghetti for my kids, and we’d eat it off of a wicker patio table that had, the week before, been next to my grandmother’s pool. They would go to sleep on small twin-size air mattresses I bought at Target. I would lay awake on the queen size version. Because I wasn’t sure what I was doing, and also because mania robs you of sleep, making you believe two hours is sufficient.

I had only a few things my ex let me have, a few things that I had charged on a credit card that wasn’t entirely maxed out, a fluffy floral sofa and a patio table that my grandmother gave me. And my mania and my shame.

I listened to the song “Lucky” on repeat, singing along, crying and learning the chords so I could play it on the acoustic guitar my dad had given me on the birthday I celebrated before I left everything behind for a new life.

I was so lucky to have a new life and a new person to love, who loved me.

And I was on a manic cloud that made it all seem so perfectly idyllic.

That’s what mania did to me.

But I can’t blame it. Not because it wasn’t there, but because that’s a bullshit excuse. I wish I could say that every mistake I’ve made, every lousy decision, is all a manifestation of my faulty brain chemistry.

But the truth is, even if it was the mania, I still have to sleep with the image of my kids crying over pizza the night I told them that I’d never share that house, the first one we’d bought, scrimped and saved for, again.

Four years after the wicker patio table and that hideous sofa, I saw the psychiatrist who would finally officially diagnose me over a bag of Sunchips and a Starbucks latte. The man that would medicate me, adjusting formulations over and over, until a year after that, I was at last, after 20 years, stable.

I haven’t had a single suicidal thought in nine months. I haven’t had a manic episode in much longer than that. I can’t remember a lot of words or phone numbers and addresses I had memorized for 20 years — because that’s what Lamictal does while it keeps me from buying useless shit instead of paying my mortgage.

My mouth is dry, and I gained 15 pounds — because that’s what Zoloft does while it keeps my OCD and eating disorder at an arm’s distance and my depression suffocated.

For a while, I was on one medication that made me fall asleep sitting up. I can’t remember what it’s called because I was asleep, and also because of Lamictal stealing my words.

But I take them every day, eight of them, along with a colorful handful of supplemental horse pills that I hope do something to counteract what the pharmaceuticals are doing to my liver. Every morning with breakfast, over coffee with the man I adore. Every night at the bathroom sink, right before I shea butter my hands and spoon to sleep with that same guy.

And I sleep. Mostly restful. At least five hours usually, always striving for seven. Our two littles sneak into our king-size bed and kick me in the face. Sometimes I end up on the bottom 5 percent of that giant mattress. And it makes me angry because no one likes to get kicked in the face by a six-year-old, but then I wake up, and I love them even more than the day before.

I am still ashamed. But despite that, or in spite of that, my life is beautiful.

I have all I need and most of what I want. When I can’t sleep, I can write at 1 AM, and in the morning I will have coffee that is made just how I like it, by a man who is my match, paired with my pharmacy of meds, and probably two fried eggs that we collected from our backyard hens the day before.

My big kids, two of whom are adults now, are fantastic. The two kids Matt and I made, that united our family around a common love, are people I can’t imagine living without. My life is as perfect as I could ever ask for or deserve.

And the Perler bead soccer guy is on my dresser. A reminder of why I swallow a dozen pills every day.

This article first appeared on ravishly.com. Read more from Joni here.

Also at ravishly:

Why Do You Hate Your Body?

13 Things My 4-Year-Old Needs To Discuss at 4 A.M.

Follow Joni on instagram and Facebook.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

from Healthy Living - The Huffington Post http://huff.to/2kjQuqb