Demon Deacons look to regain edge
Wake Forest certainly needed the extra time before facing a road trip to Florida State.
The Demon Deacons are coming off a 63-3 humiliation at home to undefeated Clemson.
The assignment two weeks later is at Florida State.
“There’s no other choice. We’ve got to get better,” coach Dave Clawson said. “We’ve got six ACC games left.”
Wake Forest (3-3, 0-2 Atlantic Coast Conference) hasn’t played a road game since opening the season Aug. 30 with an overtime victory at Tulane.
Yet the five-game homestand yielded only a 2-3 mark and the Demon Deacons were exposed at times on offense and defense.
There’s a chance to fix the snags, but it’s going to take quite a bit of repair. That comes in part, Clawson said, because of the need to move players to unfamiliar and enhanced roles based on injuries, particularly on defense.
Clawson said the beating from Clemson was so thorough that learning from that can be difficult.
“Right now, we’re hanging on by a string,” he said. “You find out a lot about your football team and coaching staff in games like this.”
But now is the time to make up for the past glitches and put together a strong push in the second half of the season.
“Kind of gut-check time for us in the season,” cornerback Essang Bassey said. “We just have to figure out who we are, redefine our culture and make a conscious effort to make the second half of our season go the way we want it.”
Clemson’s production resulted in the most points Wake Forest has ever allowed in a home game at BB&T Field.
It became apparent that dealing with rough patches wasn’t a strength for the Demon Deacons.
“How to respond when get hit,” Bassey said. “We didn’t do a good job with that.”
It also will be worth monitoring how true freshman quarterback Sam Hartman responds. The offense had done good things even in the other two losses (to Boston College and to undefeated Notre Dame). But this becomes new territory for Hartman as he tries to bounce back from a beating of this nature.
Plus, with former starting quarterback Kendall Hinton, who has lined up in some wideout spots in recent games, available after sitting out the start of the season on a three-game suspension the Demon Deacons might have other options. With the extra time between games, there’s a bigger opportunity to implement a variety of changes.
In the six consecutive losses to Florida State, last year’s 26-19 defeat marked the most points scored by Wake Forest during that streak.