Wake Forest and UNC are only an hour apart from each other on a map. But their respective seasons are headed in significantly different directions. One is trying to regroup and save a once-promising season, while the other is looking toward the ACC championship game. Wake Forest hosts UNC in a game with significant directional determinations for the season.
Wake Forest goes into Saturday’s game at 6-3 overall and 2-3 in ACC play. The Demon Deacons have lost two games in a row in a considerably ugly fashion. They were blown out in Louisville two weeks ago and then blitzed into submission in Raleigh last week. A win at home Saturday is needed to stop the slide and regain some of the program luster from earlier in the year.
UNC May Not Be Who You Think They Are
UNC is 8-1 overall and ranked 15th in the country. At 5-0 in conference play, the Tar Heels are seemingly on cruise control to the conference championship game. With a win Saturday, the Tar Heels would clinch the ACC Coastal Division. The lone loss for UNC came in week four at home to Notre Dame.
But the game that created a narrative for the Tar Heels was week two. They had to hold on for dear life to fend off Appalachian State. The storyline was created that the offense was going to have to score 50 points a game because the defense could not stop anyone. Yes, they gave up 61 points to App State. They also gave up 45 in the loss to Notre Dame. But in case you haven’t been watching, and if you think the defense is as bad as is rumored, you haven’t been, UNC is giving up only 8.4 points per game in the second half of ACC games this year. All the while, they are ninth in the country in scoring at 40.6 points per game.
Meanwhile, head west on I-40, and Wake Forest is struggling on offense after once being one of the more prolific points-per-game teams in the country. Earlier in the season, the Demon Deacons were putting up about 40 points per game. The last two weeks, they struggled to get to 21 per game.
Tar Heels Offense Is On Fire
Quarterback Drake Maye is getting all the headlines for UNC. The redshirt freshman is leading the country in touchdown passes with 31. He is also the team’s leading rusher with 513 yards. Maye hasn’t thrown an interception since October 8th against Miami.
Now, as is always the case, nothing is ever completely as it seems. The top five statistical defenses in the ACC are Syracuse, Florida State, NC State, Pitt, and Clemson. Maye has only had to face Pitt out of that group. Then again, since Wake is a few more slots down that list of defensive prowess, maybe the digging for context doesn’t need to go too deep.
Wake Forest head coach Dave Clawson though has seen all he needs to see on film to know the task at hand. “There’s a reason that this is one of the top offenses,” Clawson said Tuesday, giving much of the credit to Tar Heels offensive coordinator Phil Longo. “He probably does as good a job as anybody in the conference in making in-game adjustments.” Clawson said the offensive coaching staff’s strength is figuring out what a defense is doing and making the halftime adjustments to pull away in the second half.
Wake Forest Offense Looking For A Spark
The adjustments for the Wake Forest offense have not come so easily. While the new kid on the block, Maye, is lighting up scoreboards throughout the ACC, Wake’s seasoned veteran, Sam Hartman is struggling statistically. The offense has 11 turnovers over the last two games. Again, with what appears on the surface rarely being the full story, not all of those are on Hartman, including his six interceptions in the last two weeks.
Receivers are not getting correct reads on defensive blitzes and adjusting their routes. The offensive line is not, as a unit, maintaining blocks long enough to correctly execute slow-mesh schemes. Running backs are not always picking up the correct rushers. And yes, some of the interceptions are just poor reads by Hartman. And the combined problems are putting the Wake offense in a position of having to ditch the slow-mesh offense and go to a pocket-passing offense.
“It’s mistakes that if we played lesser teams don’t cost us the game,” Clawson said. “That’s really two weeks in a row that teams have come out and said ‘You know what, we’re not going to let you take that slow mesh and ride it in there and read things.’” All of it has added up into situational football where the Demon Deacons are having to overcome their own mistakes in addition to a quality defense on the other side of the line. “When you don’t play with detail, you don’t put the odds on your side.”
It’s The Little Things
None of that dampens Clawson’s confidence. “We’re still a good football team. We’re not in as good of a position as we were two weeks ago. But there are still a lot of teams out there that would like to be where we are.”
Last week, while the score did not get as out of hand as it did in Louisville, the momentum was never truly in Wake’s favor. “We did not play good complimentary football. Every time that we scored and took a lead, we never got a stop [on defense]. And so in a game like that, if you score and take the lead if you could ever get a stop and make it a two-score game, it changes the whole game,” Clawson said.
UNC head coach Mack Brown said he expects a different Wake Forest team this week. Wednesday, he called Hartman, “One of the best quarterbacks ever to play college football.” Hyperbole aside, Brown was quick to throw in the numbers that Hartman has amassed over the last two years in the high-scoring shootouts between the two teams. “He’s thrown nine touchdowns and nearly 900 yards on us the last two years.”
The two teams have combined for 225 points in their matchups over the last two years, with the largest margin of victory being just six points. If either team manages even the slightest in-game defensive adjustment Saturday, it likely leads to a win.
