Like a funhouse with smoke and mirrors around every corner, what you see isn’t always what you get.

“This new offense is really … weird,” receiver Dominic Gicinto said. “There’s a lot of things that you wouldn’t see from our last offense, more I would say complex than the last offense, with the motions, the tight alignments, all of those type of things, different route concepts that we probably wouldn’t have ran last year.”

“It’s just smashmouth football,” running back Tyler Badie said. “A lot of motions, a lot of different movements so we can read the defense easier.”

Starting with Auburn’s 2010 national championship team, Drinkwitz has worked on 10 college staffs and never experienced a losing season, but it was in a defeat three years ago where his innovative attack took center stage and had its bells clanging and whistles screeching at max volume.

On Nov. 4, 2017, his North Carolina State team put up 491 yards on powerhouse Clemson in a 38-31 loss, the most points any team scored on the ACC champions that season. Wolfpack quarterback Ryan Finley outplayed Clemson’s Kelly Bryant — remember him? — and threw for 338 yards and three touchdowns. Two plays from the first half that day illustrated the Drinkwitz system in peak form:

Second and 4 from Clemson’s 30-yard line, 4:42 left in the first quarter