It can be tough for teams to come off an emotional loss like Wake Forest had last weekend with Virginia. Life gets harder when you look at the schedule and realize the Demon Deacons see Ole Miss coming to town on Saturday.
The Rebels are the #5 team in the country and bring one of the best offenses in college football with them.
Quarterback Jaxson Dart leads the nation in passing yards, (795), and passing yards per game, (397.50). He is merely second in completion percentage, (87%). Ole Miss, as a team, leads the country in total offense per game at 713.50 yards per game. The Rebels have 17 touchdowns so far this season. Before you, Wake Forest has eight.
To try to put it into a little perspective, Ole Miss beat Furman 76-0, and then Middle Tennessee State 52-3.
Wake Forest, which is a respectable 13th in the country in offense at 528 yards of offense per game, beat North Carolina A&T and then dropped the 31-30 heartbreaker last weekend at home to Virginia.
Putting the Past Behind Them
Players and coach alike were visibly troubled by the loss in the post-game press conference Saturday night. The Deacs had a chance to win the game, down by one in the closing minutes. Quarterback Hank Bachmeier completed a pass to Taylor Morin that put Wake at the Virginia 35-yard line. But Morin was hit hard and fumbled. Receiver Donavon Greene was there to fall on the ball but instead tried to pick it up. He also lost the ball and Virginia recovered and eventually salted the game away.
“When you lose a game like that, I would want emotionally upset players,” head coach Dave Clawson said Tuesday. “I didn’t sleep at all Saturday night. There was a pit in my stomach the whole night.” It comes with the territory. “I still have a pit in my stomach from losing to Towson in 2007 (when he was the head coach at Richmond).”
Clawson talked about how the pain of the tough losses often outweighs the joys of wins. “But you’ve got to get ready for the next one.”
Rebel Weapons
And the next one is a doozie. “They have probably figured to a way to embrace college football in this day and age as well as anybody in the country,” Clawson said of the Rebels. Ole Miss has a roster that is approximately 54% high school recruits and 46% transfer portal players, including eight players plucked off ACC teams.
Clawson said Ole Miss head coach Lane Kiffin, “Has a deserved reputation as one of the offensive coaches in the country.”
The thing that impresses Clawson the most is how they take care of the ball. For a team that plays a high-octane style of offense, the Rebels have no turnovers in the first two games of the season. “When you’re that efficient and that careful with the football, there’s a lot of really good coaching going on as well.”
And the Defense
The offense gets the headlines, but the player to watch is on the other side of the ball. Defensive tackle Walter Nolen is one of the best in the country. He was the top-rated recruit in the country in the 2022 class. He spent two years at Texas A&M, starting in 14 of 22 games. Nolen went into the Winter transfer portal and was at Ole Miss in time for Spring camp. He is on the Nagurski (best defensive player) and Outland (best interior lineman) pre-season watch lists, and is a pre-season All-SEC pick by the media.
Clawson called Ole Miss one of the most talented teams Wake Forest has played in his tenure in Winston-Salem.
Wake
For Wake’s part, Bachmeier is ninth in the country in passing yards with 666. He’s got four touchdowns with no interceptions. “This will be the best passing team by far that we have played,” Kiffin said of the Deacs this week.
Clawson said even with the tough loss last weekend, his team came away with something it lacked last year. “Our team came out of that game feeling like we can be a good football team this year.” When asked where the team was mentally he said, “I think everybody goes through their own little healing recovery process. And you have no choice. You have a game the next week.”
Ole Miss is a 22.5-point favorite. Clawson said the way for his team to deal with that is to stay in the moment. “In the games that I have been a head coach and we’re double-digit or three touchdown underdogs, and we found a way to win, those teams just played the next play,” he said. “Just do your job the next play and the play after that. Doing that over and over you find yourself with a chance to win the game.”
Personnel
Defensive end Jasheen Davis is likely to miss his second game in a row Saturday with an injury.
The “or” category is back on the Wake Forest depth chart. This time it is at offensive line. Both Nick Sharpe and George Sell are listed at a guard position with an “or” between them. And at tackle, the same is true with Eric Russell and Keagen Trost. Clawson said this time it is about building a viable seven-man rotation through the offensive line and being able to give some of the more worked players, (Devonte Gordon), some snaps off.
