Wake Forest

As we potentially close another chapter of our ACC road destinations, for those of you who may not have made the trip, maybe I can add a little color. First of all, to travel to North Carolina in late October is a delight with the trees ablaze and postcards at every turn. The tremendous timber that are featured on top of their open end zone - Snuggie Hill - and in the opposite corners are seemingly cued up every October 1, and the ridiculous gorgeous leaves are not allowed to drop until the last Baptist leaves the stadium in mid November. As a visitor, you are directed to park directly across the street from the stadium (maybe 100 yards away from the gates) and you can arrive at this lot as late as 30 minutes prior to kick with plenty of spaces available - all for $20. At home, we often wait an hour or two to allow traffic to clear the Doak lots. Not here in friendly Winston Salem. They don't even employ post game police. Nope, you are good to rocket out of there and get home before the coach is on the air doing his press conference. Inside this massive thirty one thousand seat facility, there are more craft beer and exotic food trucks than a New Orleans reggae festival. Wake literally has more cheerleaders and dance girls than band members. The Marching Deacs are 54 strong, and all 4 drummers are very talented. The aforementioned cheer and dance squads are stationed all around the facility on a "ledge" that is halfway between the field and the first row. For no rationale reason, they put their nonsensical mascot on the loudest motorcycle on the planet to lead the team on the field. Then, this canned Harley noise is used on the PA system every third down to make up for the fact that there are only 15 thousand fans cheering for the home team and most of them have a slightly chilled cab in their paws and can't clap. The actual university is the smallest in the Power 5, and very beautiful but roughly the size of Landis Green. There are 5,400 undergrad students and I would not be surprised if every one of them was there at noon on Saturday. At halftime, their studies became suddenly way more important and 5,300 headed out to hit the books. Win or lose, these football Deac fans just don't care enough to taunt or be taunted. They are heading back to the club to see if their afternoon croquet or canasta games are still in session. It is certainly unique.

Having said all of the above, no one on the good guys sideline other than Odell and Ron Dugans had ever won in Winston-Salem. They had the second longest ACC streak against the Noles behind only Clemson. Yeesh. Well, now both of these messes are in the closet. This was never really a contest, even with some yeoman efforts from the zebras in the first half, it was a blitzkrieg of talent disproportion that no one could stop. Without the long breakout run, Wake only had 21 yards of first half offense. The infamous mesh was more of a mess, as the backfield was a quorum of Noles on almost every down. Jared Verse's first sack was a chip by the TE and a solid effort by the left tackle before he ate the QB. Patrick Payton is growing up in front of us also was the recipient of a half dozen whiff blocks by his poor tackle. One key third down pass literally every FSU defensive lineman destroyed their man and all four collapsed on the poor thrower. I have never seen a quarter sack stat, but what else could you employ here? The coaches continue to play the long game here and substitute more than we fans expect, but the relative health of the line is testament to the wisdom.  It feels like we are especially holding back Lovett's reps, with the beneficiaries being Farmer and Ray, but don't forget that Dennis Briggs is also still being rested. We are unleashing the Kraken on the Cane's. If we can get there with the same number of losses as we have now, it will all have been worth it. 

The Wake passing game is almost nonexistent, so it is tough to evaluate our defensive backs in this one, but they did get in some tremendous wind sprint practice. I am not sure the Wake qb's could throw it more than 25 yards, but Cypress and Green had their apple watches asking them both to just sit down after all that exercise. With Lundy and Bethune a little banged up, it was nice to see youngsters Graham with a sack and Nichelson with a couple nice sticks in the hole. Every game we get these two in will be huge for us next year.

Well, that Travis kid put himself back in the late December NYC discussion. Tough to imagine a quarterback playing for an undefeated squad who has his stats not getting a Heisman invite. As the season moves towards the finish line, you see the legs more in play and that should change the slants that opposing lineman are taking now. This week, we used 7 tight ends and 6 wideouts. Is there another division one team outside of a military academy that has this many pseudo lineman on the travel roster? Well, a couple of these TE's are freaks and Bell is an absolute cheat code. Jordan threw two phone booth dimes downfield to Jaheim and Morlock for huge gains. I don't know if anyone has noticed, but Keon Coleman might have a future in this game. If teams are going to choose to single cover him, he is going to continue to end up on SportsCenter. Apparently, catching a football with one hand while a person who dislikes him is draped on his other side is his specialty. I am here for it. 

Trey Benson again justified his field presence with another jaw dropping long distance sprint where at least two defensive backs thought they had an angle on this train and they ended up eating track. That 80 yard play was Tate Rodemaker's favorite of the game as the FSU Hat Coach (with 30 "advisors", you know we got one) got to fire up Jordan's and ushered in the entire second offensive unit. It seems crazy with all the experience we have up front, but the coaches really believe that the youngsters we have taking up an extraordinary amount of the bench in Armella, Early, Schrader and Estes have a much higher ceiling than the group getting all the reps right now. Let's hope that we get to see them even more than in the North Alabama game...

Our special teams specialists chose the right game for a strugglefest. The Aussie had maybe his worst three punts of the season in this library of an atmosphere, and Fitz nailed a 47 yarder, then chunked a chip shot (at least it was wide left old Hurricane hating Noles!). Deuce decided to bring a ball out from 3 yards deep in the endzone and somehow blew through 5 arm tackles to get to the 45. Then in a spate of arrogance, tried again and got relatively nowhere and then a hold put us inside of the 10. Oh well, you might be burying the lead if you are bitching about the pickles in a Chick-Fil-A sandwich. 

Snuggie Hill is back in Garnet and Gold hands and not just because the leaves on those gorgeous trees were cheating with our colors before we walked in. Order in the conference and the universe is restored with Wake being blown out. Your Noles are two thirds through the season and the complaint jar is empty. 

Let's head to Pittsburgh and nail down a trip to Charlotte in December!