Judgment for NC State football is 51 days away. One game can show us Wolfpack’s progress

There was so much to like on the first day of football practice, from the brisk pace to the unseasonably comfortable weather. If N.C. State looked like a team that knew what it was doing Wednesday morning, it really should at this point.

With just about everyone back, an experienced (if not quite veteran) quarterback, and one of the best linebacking groups in the country, the Wolfpack enters a new season facing new expectations, the likes of which haven’t been seen in Dave Doeren’s entire tenure.

And on Day 1, it was hard not to look ahead to Day 52.

Amid all the good feelings and all the positive vibes, there’s no question Clemson’s early visit Sept. 25 — Week 4 — is sitting out there like a toll booth blocking the Wolfpack’s path.

At some point, for N.C. State to reach the heights N.C. State has yet to reach, it’s going to have to beat Clemson. There’s no way around it. If last year’s successful division-less, Clemson-free season amid extraordinary adversity was a dress rehearsal, it’s now time for the real thing.

“We were 8-4 last year but that was never the goal,” linebacker Isaiah Moore said. “Eight wins is not the goal here.”

So many pieces have fallen into place for N.C. State this season, or are in the process of falling into place, starting with that particular hurdle being in that particular spot on the schedule. Clemson is breaking in a new(ish) quarterback and several new skill players, and while the Tigers may still have more raw talent, the Wolfpack certainly has the edge in experience and perhaps even leadership.

It’s a good season to catch Clemson early, before the Tigers can really get rolling.

Even before that, in the much bigger picture, this was always a season the Wolfpack had circled on the grand calendar, the point where promising recruiting classes were ready to take flight on the field. An NFL team would call this its window to contend, and at that level they last a few years. In college, they come and go quickly, but this is one for the Wolfpack.

“With Drake (Thomas) and Payton (Wilson) and that whole group of guys, I said it a couple years ago, in three years we could be really good,” Doeren said. “And we have a chance to be really good. We just have to go earn it.”

There’s obviously a lot of football to be played even before the Clemson game. The home opener under the lights against South Florida won’t be a pushover, not for a team facing real internal and external expectations for the first time, against a former Clemson assistant — Jeff Scott — who will need no briefing on the strengths and weaknesses of N.C. State’s program.

Then there’s the trip to Mississippi State in Week 2, a belated rematch of the 2015 Belk Bowl won by Dak Prescott and the Bulldogs and precisely the kind of game that has tripped up Doeren’s teams in the past. Mississippi State was picked to finish last in the SEC West but Doeren is 1-4 against SEC teams at State, and the frenzy in Starkville will be a rude awakening for the visitors after a season played in mostly empty stadiums.

The Wolfpack then gets a tune-up against another upstate SC team, Furman, before Clemson arrives in Raleigh for a game with the highest of stakes.

If N.C. State stumbles against South Florida or Mississippi State, it’s a chance for immediate redemption, a wiping clean of the slate. If N.C. State is 3-0, it’s a chance to upend what has become the regular order of not only the Atlantic Division but the entire ACC.

N.C. State worked hard, on the recruiting trail and on the field last season, to put itself in this position to even have a chance to topple the Clemson giant, even if it remains a difficult ask. The schedule-makers met the Wolfpack halfway. And now the real work begins, with that game looming in the distance.

Everything that happened Wednesday, everything that will happen Thursday, everything that will happen in the intervening seven weeks, leads up to that. On Day 1, judgment is only 51 days away.