Demon Deacons had good tune-up for Clemson
Wake Forest had seemed in disarray, so a convincing victory against Rice was just what the Demon Deacons ordered.
But there’s no time to gloat about that with undefeated Clemson arriving for Saturday’s Atlantic Coast Conference game.
Evaluating the defense tends to be the priority. The Demon Deacons were more pleased with how things played out in the first game since the dismissal of defensive coordinator Jay Sawvel.
“I’ll be the first to admit it, Rice isn’t Notre Dame, so there should have been improvement because we played a young team with a coaching staff that’s building,” Wake Forest coach Dave Clawson said.
“When we gave up plays, it was a physical mistake, not a mental mistake. If we missed a tackle, we missed a tackle. If we didn’t cover something, we didn’t cover something. It wasn’t because we weren’t in the right coverage or the right alignment. There were a lot less of those mistakes.”
It’s more of a defense by committee among the Wake Forest coaching staff. It’s a work in progress, to be sure.
“I think we handled it really well,” safety Luke Masterson said. “We had three really good days of practice and we showed it.”
Linebacker DJ Taylor said it was a matter of trusting the assignments on defense.
“We focused a lot on next play, and next man up so that’s how we looked at it,” Taylor said.
It will be a much bigger test against Clemson, which leads the ACC in total offense with 497.6 yards per game.
“We made progress and with Clemson coming to town we’ve got to continue that progress,” Clawson said.
The 56-24 victory against Rice was good for morale.
“We needed to get this one after the last two weeks,” Clawson said. “We just needed to come out and we needed to play. … We’re very aware that as we head down the stretch here, with seven ACC games coming up, we have to get better.”
The game against Clemson wraps up a five-game homestand for the Demon Deacons, who are 2-2 in those games so far.
Wake Forest hasn’t defeated the Tigers since a 2008 home game. Four days after that, Dabo Swinney was named Clemson’s interim coach.