Wake Forest

As many of you know, this past week was our Open Date game where in 2025 we chose to venture to the Pacific Northwest and watch the financially challenged Oregon Ducks (ha!). It is laudable how many football national championships this squad has been able to accumulate when their facilities, NIL and literally over 3,000 uniform combos are such a drag on achieving this success. But, love em or not, their fanbase has by far the best rain gear I have ever seen, and it is really not even close. Anyway, enough quack smack, I bring this up because on our Open Date adventure in 2024 - which was never needed more - we went to Lincoln and watched the Huskers take on a then powerful Colorado team. The night before the game, we were out eating steak and trading doncha knows with the locals when we ran into a gentleman who was a Nittany Lion on his own Open Date pilgrimage to Lincoln as well. He had been to over 60 campuses, but never been to ours. Welp, after a few cocktails, we of course invited him to spend a weekend with us and this summer he and his wife committed to the Wake Forest game. A few weeks into this season, I could not have been more excited about this hosting opportunity, then the iceberg hit the unsinkable SS Norvell. Then, as the survivors were loading lifeboats after Palo Alto, my impending guest reminded me he still was so excited and on his way, panic set in. 

I was genuinely fearful that this couple was about to see the absolute worst case scenario in Tally. No I was not referring to the mortgage payment they shelled out for three nights at a Tally game weekend hotel. After two weeks of social media and message board ridiculousness, it seemed inevitable that Doak would be a steroid infused Boston Tea Party with 60k WASPs acting like recalcitrant Indians. Well, crisis averted in so many ways. Friday night in College Town delivered with a typical raucous environ for them, and Debbie gave them the $10 tour of the prettiest campus in the South first thing Saturday. After hanging at our tailgate that's never lost a home game, we headed into the cathedral still with trepidatious steps. Well, you go Noles!!, because all those keyboard warriors apparently were home on their couch. All the booing was left with the costumes on the floor at midnight, and even the Mike pregame intro was met with applause. The folks who made this trip made their trip. No, it was not a sold out fever dream atmosphere, but it was a solid showing of Noles who support and they made a difference on a November night when the kids and well paid coaches below them really, really badly needed it. I was actually proud on a night when I was scared of being ashamed for one of the first times ever. Phew!

Maybe it was the FOF opening this week and showing these kids what the past 50 years have meant to their reality. Maybe it was that same social media exposure garbage that made them retune into the messaging of their Head Coach who dares anyone to care as much as he does. Or, self aggrandizing, perhaps sensing that this crowd was providing an unexpected tailwind, you could tell before the opening kickoff that the juice was back on the sideline. That juice never wavered. Even in the first quarter when honestly Wake was beating everyone but the zebras. But, one rocket play to Duce down the sideline and the crowd and subs shotgunned a Red Bull with a Celsius chaser. I was so stunned that we got two offensive holding calls on Wake, I just assumed that crimes had been committed to justify them. But, after that, the old fashioned whooping was on and with the Lizards, Canes and Tigers all going down, a Seminole Saturday night was on!

The biggest play of the game for my money was the much maligned Edwin Joseph while being held and dragged to the sideline reaching out and somehow stripping the Deac who was easily on his way to another long third down conversion. Instead, his effort caused a fumble which brought us a 4th and one. The aforementioned Doak faithful stood on their head - including the well heeled and fancy folk in the new club right in front of the play. The cacophony caused a false start and a punt and the Deacons never found their church again all night. Granted, this was not a special Wake offense, and we especially appreciate both the drops and a quarterback that likes to toss balls at the first down markers even when there is not a player there. But, the defense played hard. Jabril Rawls has emerged as the best player on that side of the ball, and I was happy to see the first recovered fumble in over a year ended up in his hands after the worlds worst PI call was endured.  It was also not lost on me that the two hardest working defensive lineman are the Desir twins, and Mandrell ending the first half with a massively important sack was a momentum key. Mike spent quite a bit of time last week talking about self scouting, so I am a little bumfuzzled as to why Elijah Herring is still covering backs, James Williams crashes inside and Blake Nicholson gets caught up in the line while spying. But, maybe we can buy another open date and push back the Clemson game. Let's use some of Phil Knight's Duck money and see what we can do. 

Duce and Danzy are pretty dadgum special. How that left handed miracle grab did not make ESPN's top plays is beyond me. I mean Zero had a dude smashing into him with a helmet in his chin and somehow that condor wing span allowed him to reach around and pin the ball against his opponent before twisting around and establishing dominance over the pigskin before crashing to the earth. And our boy Micahi is just about uncoverable on a fly. The only question is if there is a qb that can outthrow him. You know that Tommy almost blew his rotator cuff on that bomb and Danzy ran under it rather comfortably. That needs to be a standard three times a game play call just to scare the bejesus out of the opposing safeties. One item I did want to point out is that on most of the deep balls, our precocious freshman Ousmane just obliterated a rusher to allow TC time. Gus seems to fall in love with a new back every week, and this game he was dating Sam Singleton - who has been in mothballs all season. But, I argue that with his pass protection skills and ability to catch the ball out of the backfield, Ous needs more reps.

Everyone wants to know what happens now. Well, it appears that the adults in the room made the right decision after the Stanford debacle. If someone out there can tell me the massive advantage that these numerous coachless teams have over us right now, I would love it. We are saving roughly $2.5 million a game every time Coach Norvell and his staff are on the sideline, and I have not seen anything good happening in Gainesville and Baton Rouge other than a wonderful accented stump speech from the Governor. The players on this team have been rather outspoken that they want to play this out and the juice on our sideline was a testimony as to the current level of buy-in from the kids. There are a half dozen jobs out there now and not many clear can't miss men available. So, let's enjoy this week, not forget the mess we saw in October and patiently see if November is a better month.