The Wolfpacker: An Independent Magazine Covering NC State Sports
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/1266731
JULY/AUGUST 2020 ■ 29 COVID-19, but Leary hopes the lessons learned last year included not letting one mistake snowball into more. "No matter what happens, even if we get a little bump in the road, we have to bounce back because there's no other option," Leary said. Although he grew far more comfortable with each start, and he points to the second half of the loss at Georgia Tech as a moment where he really felt things clicking, the bot- tom line is that he is still waiting for that first victory as a starter. As his head coach noted, the true next step in Leary's progress is winning games. "But the process to winning games is be- ing consistent knowing where to go with the football," Doeren added. Beck believes that Leary understands that. "I was really impressed with Devin," Beck noted. "I thought he was picking up things quickly. He saw the big picture. "He's got a really strong arm, good de- livery. When he knows, 'This is what I need to do and where to go,' he's good with it." Leary's desire is to prove that he can be that winning quarterback on the field. "No game were we walking off the field patting ourselves on the back like, 'Although we didn't win, we still kept growing,'" Leary explained. "That's not how we really looked at it. That's not really how I looked at it." That might explain why Leary was on that field in his hometown trying to get whatever rep he could, within the limits the authorities placed. ■ Leary started the last five games of the 2019 season — becoming the first redshirt freshman to start at quarterback for NC State since Russell Wilson in 2008 — and threw for 1,219 yards with eight touchdowns and five interceptions. PHOTO BY KEN MARTIN