Robert Anae is a free agent.
The long-time college football coach — who has been an offensive coordinator since 2013 — was fired Monday by NC State.
The Wolfpack will replace Anae with quarterbacks coach Kurt Roper.
NC State head coach Dave Doeren saying in a statement: “Kurt has done a great job for us and knows what we need to do to take the next step forward as a program.”
Anae had recently — as in January of this year — signed a contract extension with NC State and will be owed $900,000, per On3 Sports. That sum is expected to be paid out in monthly installments.
Anae spent two seasons with the Wolfpack, his third stint at a Power conference school in the last five years.
His firing is something of a mild surprise. Given the extension and the fact that although NC State was hit-and-miss offensively under Anae, the offense did improve across his two seasons in Raleigh.
This past season, the Wolfpack ranked No. 77 in the country in total offense and came in at No. 64 overall in scoring offense — averaging a little more than 28 points per game.
The Wolfpack were a pretty middle-of-the-road team offensively, all things considered, with the No. 59 passing offense and No. 83 rushing offense in the FBS.
The 2024 season was a step forward for NC State, though, as the team rated No. 74 in scoring offense and No. 91 in total offense in 2023.
It was clearly not significant enough of an improvement, however, especially after Anae was brought in to revitalize things on that side of the ball. The Anae that coached at BYU, Virginia and Syracuse never really emerged for NC State.
Inconsistency was the biggest issue, according to Connor VanDerMark of The Technician, who wrote in October, “it’s time to call the Robert Anae experiment at NC State a massive failure.”
“The offense looks the most inconsistent it has in years,” VanDerMark added, going on to put the blame for NC State’s struggles offensively squarely on Anae’s play calling. “The offense was hyped up to be one of the best units in the conference, but sputtered out before the season fully began.”
Anae is largely known for his time at BYU, first as a player in the 1980s, and then as a coach under now-Utah State head coach Bronco Mendenhall.
While the offensive coordinator at BYU in the mid-2010s, Anae’s offenses were elite on the ground. The three most productive running backs in BYU history (Jamal Williams, Harvey Unga and Curtis Brown) all played for Anae.
His stint at Virginia, from 2016 to 2021, again under Mendenhall, may have been even more successful, though.
A pass-first Cavaliers attack coordinated by Anae ranked third in the country in total offense in 2021. That Virginia team was one of only five programs at the FBS level to average over 500 yards of total offense and much of that production came through the air as UVA averaged a program record 396 passing yards per game that season.
Not coincidentally, Virginia quarterback Brennan Armstrong broke the single-season school records for touchdown passes (31), passing yards (4,449) and total offense (4,700) that season.
Following Mendenhall’s abrupt retirement from coaching at Virginia, Anae moved to Syrcause and went back to the ground game-focused approach. In his one season in New York (2022) running back Sean Tucker finished second in the ACC in rushing yards.
The success Anae had at BYU, Virginia and Syracuse never materialized at NC State, however, and now Anae is out.
