2026-2027 Preview

shinersfootball@gmail.com (Grant Ashworth) — Mon, 03 Aug 2026 18:42:19 GMT

A Century in the Making: Can Jay Cee Finally Wake the Sleeping Giant in Wilkesboro ?

Carolina State Shiners Season Preview By: Grant Ashworth

BOONE-ADJACENT, N.C. — There is a particular kind of quiet that settles over a football program that hasn't beaten a rival in 40 years. Not the quiet of apathy — Carolina State has never lacked for people who care — but the quiet of a fan base that has learned, generation over generation, not to get its hopes up. Founded in 1928, the Shiners have spent the better part of a century as the answer to a trivia question nobody wants to ask out loud: who hasn't they beaten, and for how long?

That quiet ends this fall, or at least the program is betting everything that it does. Carolina State enters its first season in the Sunbelt Conference with a rebuilt stadium, a new Adidas deal, and a 32-year-old head coach whose last relevant football memory is not coaching — it's playing cornerback down the road at Appalachian State. Jay Cee was hired to be a program-changer. Now comes the hard part.

"We didn't hire Jones to manage decline gracefully," said athletic director Chel Cee — yes, his mother, and yes, she is aware of how that sounds. "We hired him because he refuses to accept that this is just what Carolina State is. I've watched this administration explain away four decades of history. I'm done explaining. I want to start winning."

THE BIG PICTURE

The infrastructure is new. The Stillhouse — the program's shining, freshly built answer to decades of second-tier facilities — will host its first game this season, and it'll do so in Adidas stripes for the first time in school history. EA Sports' program evaluators still tag Carolina State a "Cupcake" — the lowest rung on the prestige ladder — which is a nice way of saying the rest of the country doesn't have to fear them yet. That's the target on Cee's back and the opportunity in front of him simultaneously.

What the coach inherits is a roster in genuine transition: a handful of difference-makers, a wave of underclassmen still finding their footing, and exactly the kind of thin, freshman-heavy depth chart you'd expect from a program that has spent years losing recruiting battles to the schools now on its schedule. The good news? The one true blue-chip talent on this roster might be good enough to make people notice regardless.

OFFENSE: THE BROWNLEE BACKFIELD CARRIES A LINE THAT ISN'T READY YET

If Carolina State is going to steal a game or two it isn't supposed to win, it starts in the backfield — and it starts with a story a screenwriter would reject as too tidy. Junior running back Duke Brownlee (5'11", 207 lbs) is the best player on this roster, full stop — a 82-overall load-bearing back who profiles as a home-run threat behind an offensive line still figuring out who it is. His younger brother Grant Brownlee (6'0", 192 lbs) lines up outside as a 75-overall junior receiver. Both are hometown products out of Wilkesboro, and both were brought in with the explicit hope that they'd become the faces of the turnaround.

"Duke and Grant didn't have to come here," Chel Cee said. "They're Wilkesboro kids, they had options, and they chose to try to build something with us instead of joining something already built. That means something to this program."

Duke won't be doing it alone. This backfield is, improbably, one of the deepest rooms on the roster — Rickie Schumacher (78 overall, sophomore), Jeremiah Melvin (77, sophomore) and Benjamin Kiernan (77, junior) would start for plenty of programs at this level, and instead they're rotational pieces behind Brownlee. Expect offensive coordinator to lean on committee touches to keep Duke Brownlee fresh for the games that matter most.

At receiver, senior Dane Coffey (80 overall) is the most polished route-runner on the roster and gives whoever wins the quarterback job a legitimate first read. Beyond Coffey and Grant Brownlee, freshman Trent O'Donnell (73 overall) has flashed enough in camp to be part of the conversation early.

The quarterback question is real, and it's the single biggest variable on this offense. Senior Max Kearse (74 overall, 6'3", 209 lbs) enters the fall as the presumptive Week 1 starter — a game-manager profile who protects the football and gets it to his playmakers rather than trying to be the story himself. Sophomore T.J. Kowalkowski (69 overall) offers more traditional arm talent and upside but less polish, and if Kearse struggles early against a schedule that offers no easy outs, don't be surprised if Cee turns to him by conference play.

The bad news is up front and at tight end. Carolina State's offensive line has two legitimate anchors in junior guard Scott Scukanec (75 overall, 329 lbs) and junior tackle Dylan Vardell (74 overall), with senior left tackle Spencer Gunn (71 overall) providing experience. After that, it thins out fast — freshman tackles Jeremy Peters (52 overall) and Mitch Shuler (57 overall) are already in the two-deep, which tells you everything about the state of the depth. Tight end is arguably the thinnest position on the entire roster: junior Austin Britt (68 overall) is a serviceable starter, but the drop-off to backup Eli Nielson (45 overall) is the single steepest cliff anywhere on this roster.

Where Cee can move the needle: scheme around the offensive line's weaknesses rather than asking it to win on power alone. Get Duke Brownlee into space on outside zone and screens, keep Kearse's drop-backs quick, and use the backfield depth to manage down-and-distance rather than grinding out long, sustained drives that ask a young, thin line to sustain blocks it isn't ready to sustain yet.

DEFENSE: A LEADER IN THE MIDDLE, A HOLE UP FRONT

Carolina State's defense has one player who looks like he belongs on a Sunbelt all-conference ballot: senior middle linebacker Kris Matlock (77 overall, 241 lbs), the unquestioned leader of this unit and the closest thing the Shiners have to a proven veteran anchor on either side of the ball. In the secondary, senior corner Jimmy Kearse (75 overall) gives Carolina State a legitimate lockdown option on the outside, flanked by junior Erick Arora (71 overall) and junior safety-turned-centerpiece Johnny Shelby (70 overall).

Off the edge, junior Jayden Boyce (71 overall, 252 lbs) is the closest thing to a pass-rushing difference-maker on the roster, with junior Kerry Vogt (71 overall) providing a second disruptive presence at SAM linebacker. Behind Matlock at linebacker, junior Collin Clinton (69 overall) and senior Jeremy Kendricks (67 overall) round out a group that, unlike the offensive line, actually has some experience to lean on.

The problem is up front. Defensive tackle is a genuine void: senior Simon Kidder (71 overall) is a legitimate space-eater, but behind him the dropoff is severe — Larry Bernstein (63), James Godwin (60), Taylor Welsh (59) and Scottie McClover (58) round out a rotation that will get worn down by Sunbelt run games over the course of four quarters, let alone twelve games. Freshman Cam Shorter (51 overall) being in the mix at all is a sign of how thin the cupboard is at the position.

"Our front seven has a captain in Kris Matlock and it has a lot of guys who are about to find out what college football actually feels like," Chel Cee said. "That's the honest version. We're not hiding from it."

Where Cee can move the needle: scheme discipline over raw talent up front. A 4-3 Man Pressure look that disguises blitzes and gets extra bodies to the ball can mask a defensive tackle rotation that won't win many one-on-one reps. Matlock and the linebacker corps need to be aggressive downhill fillers rather than asking undersized, inexperienced tackles to hold the point of attack for four quarters.

THE MANDATE FROM THE TOP: BEAT THE RIVALS FIRST

Chel Cee's expectations for her son's program aren't vague, and they aren't ranked by accident. As athletic director, she's set the program's demeanor as "Balanced" — but her stated priority order is anything but neutral: rivals first, recruiting second, on-field achievement third.

"You can point to standings or bowl banners later," Cee said. "Right now my number one measure of whether Jones is doing his job is rivals. Beat the teams that have owned this program for forty years, and the recruiting and the hardware start taking care of themselves. I didn't bury that priority — I put it first on purpose."

That ordering puts real weight behind the North Carolina opener and the trip to Duke. Beating either would matter more to this administration, in real terms, than piling up wins against a soft November slate ever could.

The recruiting board reflects the same regional logic. Cee's staff has built its pipeline strategy around four footprints: North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and the Tidewater region of Virginia — a map built for exactly the kind of player the Brownlee brothers represent. It's a bet that Carolina State can't yet out-recruit the sport's blue bloods nationally, but can win the arguments closer to home, in living rooms where a coach who played cornerback an hour up the road still means something.

"We're not competing nationally yet, and I won't pretend we are," Cee said. "But if we win the Carolinas, win Tennessee, win Tidewater — that's a roster that competes in this league. Duke Brownlee didn't leave Wilkesboro for a blue blood. That's the proof of concept. Now we need forty more of him."

THE SCHEDULE: NO WARM-UP LAPS

There is no easing into this. Carolina State opens the season at home in the brand-new Stillhouse against archrival North Carolina — the kind of opener most first-year Sunbelt programs would beg to avoid, and the kind of opener that will tell the whole fan base within sixty minutes whether this era feels different. From there, it's on the road to Duke, another of the program's four active rivalries, before a trip to face NC State to round out the non-conference slate. Only after that gauntlet does Carolina State get its first look at Sunbelt Conference play.

There's a quiet irony buried in the rivalry list, too: Appalachian State — Jay Cee's alma mater, where he played out his college career — sits on Carolina State's rivalry board as well. At some point, likely down the line, the son will coach against the school that made him. Nobody in the building is talking about that game yet. Everybody is thinking about it.

"Three rivalry-caliber opponents before we've played a single conference snap," Chel Cee said. "I won't lie to our fans and tell them that's fair. It's not. But if Jones is going to build something real here, it needs a foundation that can take a hit. This schedule is that test."

THE BOTTOM LINE

Carolina State is not going to erase four decades of rivalry futility in one September, and pretending otherwise would be its own kind of disrespect to how deep that history runs. But this is a roster with a genuine star in Duke Brownlee, a legitimate secondary weapon in his brother Grant, a defensive leader in Kris Matlock, and a head coach who has every incentive in the world — professional and deeply personal — to make this rebuild move faster than anyone outside the family expects.

The offensive line and the defensive tackle rotation will decide how many games are competitive. The Brownlee brothers and Kris Matlock will decide how many are actually winnable. And the opener against North Carolina, in a stadium that didn't exist a year ago, will be the first real data point in whether Jay Cee was hired to manage a proud, faded name — or to finally change what that name means.

"I didn't take this job to lose respectably," Cee said, in the closest thing to a mission statement the program has offered publicly. "Everybody in this building — my mother included — is out of patience for that."

The Stillhouse opens its doors this fall. Whether it opens a new era remains the only question that matters.

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