As any team’s regular season ends, there is the inevitable review of the season just concluded. Any virtuous and sincere look back finds some positives mixed with negatives no matter the final outcome of the season. So where did Wake Forest’s season go off the rails, (and yes, it did derail)?
There are many in the fan base that are good with the team finishing the regular season 7-5. They have been around long enough to remember the days when a seven-win season was a celebratory event. But head coach Dave Clawson raised the bar with last year’s 11-3 season. The team proved that success at a high level is possible. The question then is more about if it is sustainable. Clawson has spoken often about the new level of expectations that he has for the program and that should be embraced throughout the school.
In the days to come, Wake Forest will find out which bowl game it is going to for the holidays. The Demon Deacons will go bowling with a 3-5 conference record and a 6th-place finish in the ACC Atlantic Division. The school will appropriately include in its media releases that this is the seventh consecutive year Wake has earned a bowl game. Ironically, during that seven-year stretch, this will be the fourth time Wake Forest is playing in a bowl game with a losing conference record.
Riding High
Therein lies some of the rub with the expectations. It was just over a month ago, October 22nd to be exact, that Wake Forest was sitting at 6-1 and ranked in the top 15 in the country, depending upon the poll. But whether it was at that pinnacle of 6-1 or the season nadir of being 7-5 after the loss at Duke, there is a little mirage built into the won-loss dynamic. Four of the wins came against an inarguably meager out-of-conference schedule. There was FCS-level VMI. There was a road game at Vanderbilt. While much was promoted about playing on the road in the SEC, it is still Vanderbilt with an administration that historically doesn’t care enough about the program to give it proper funding or facilities.
There was a too-close-for-comfort win against Liberty. The Flames are the closest thing to a strong non-conference opponent on Wake’s schedule. They finished 8-4 and are losing their head coach, Hugh Freeze, to Auburn. Then there was Army, which is 5-6 as it awaits its season finale against Navy. The four wins were fine, but realistically anything less than four wins with that schedule would have been unacceptable. The combined record of the four out-of-conference opponents sits at 19-27.
Things Get Real In Conference Play
And that gets us to the conference part of the schedule. The zenith of that part of the schedule is debatable. Was it a double-overtime loss to perennial power Clemson in a game that had people hoping Wake could play with the elites? Or was it the win over Florida State? The team had to juggle its attention as Hurricane Ian was bearing down on parts of Florida. As late as Monday night of game week, the team hotel in Tallahassee was advising Wake Forest that there were no backup generators, and it could be without power during their stay.
The downsides were obvious. There was the lambasting in Louisville with an epic third-quarter meltdown, and the loss at NC State thanks to the Wolfpack’s masterful defense. The three-game losing streak concluded the next week with a home loss to Coastal Division champ North Carolina.
The upside pitch on the three conference wins is that those schools combined for a winning record of 19-17. The combined record of the five ACC teams that beat Wake? 42-18. That could be taken as a sign that the Demon Deacons could handle the lesser of the teams on the schedule, but the more successful programs were too big of a hill to climb, at least this year.
Getting To The Root Of The Problems
And why was it so hard this season? From Spring camp, all the way to the start of the season, this team was touted for its experience and its veteran leadership. The numbers were put together to show that the offensive line had hundreds of games under its collective belt. The quarterback spot was being manned by the true rarity in the sport…a fifth-year player who spent all of his years with one program. The defense had a load of returning talent from last year’s divisional championship team. So how did 7-5 happen?
After the loss at Duke Saturday, Clawson had specific thoughts about the defense. “It’s been our Achille’s heel all year, our inability to defend the deep ball,” he said. Indeed, Saturday’s loss was a microcosm of the season with blown assignments on defense, being unable to contain a dual-threat quarterback, and giving up the big yardage plays. On one fourth-quarter drive, Duke had it first and 20 twice and got the first down both times. Defenses that know how to close the deal don’t give that up.
Clawson expanded on his thoughts on the defensive issues. “Our play on the perimeter all season has been a problem,” he said. “We got a lot better defending the run. But we’ve given up too many big plays and they are all in the passing game.” He took responsibility. “That’s a problem and when it doesn’t get fixed, you know, to me, that is on me.”
Plenty Of Responsibility To Go Around
Any coach is going to take the blame when things go wrong. But a lot of the off-season focus was on the defense. New defensive coordinator Brad Lambert was brought in from Purdue. He brought new linebacker coach Glenn Spencer and safeties coach James Adams. Lambert had the quantifiable results at Purdue with the #40 overall defense in the country. So, what wasn’t working at Wake? Yes, there were key players missing at the end. But as Clawson said Saturday, by week 12 of the season, every team is missing key players with injuries.
The offense must take its share of the blame. It has been inconsistent too much throughout the season. Quarterback Sam Hartman has had great statistical games. He is going to leave Wake Forest in December with at least a share of the ACC record for career touchdown passes. But there were the moments of questionable decisions and trying to do too much. The four interceptions at Louisville followed by three more the following week at NC State were unimaginable.
But as Clawson pointed out at various points throughout the season, not all of Hartman’s negative stats were on the quarterback. There were receivers not completing their routes, or flat-out dropping passes. There was a running game that was not consistently there week in and week out. And that offensive line with all the experience? Clawson sometimes referred to its play as, “undisciplined,” for all of the penalties it racked up during various games in 2022.
Program Fatigue
While there will be a lot of off-season analysis, and potential changes, for Wake Forest, the most immediate challenge, per Clawson, is giving the team some rest before the bowl game. “This has been a really challenging year in a lot of ways,” he said Saturday. “I’m probably as tired as I have ever been at the end of a season. I think our football team is tired. I think we just need a little bit of a break.” He said he is confident they will be ready to bounce back for the bowl game. Still, season-ending fatigue is never a good thing for any program.
Wake Forest is virtually shut out from getting undergrads through the transfer portal. The opening of the December 5th transfer window will not like have a big impact on incoming help. Though it could signal the departure of a small handful of current players. But the new windows and early signing periods have all but taken away off-time for college football coaches. Fatigue is a year-round challenge now.
A large part of the evaluation of what worked and what did not will fall on Clawson looking in the mirror. “We came into this year with all these expectations. And we had so many guys back. And I don’t know if in terms of how I managed this team in Spring and Fall camp, looking back, was the best way.” Clawson said when the time allows for him to reflect back, he will be looking for things he could have and should have done differently.
Those Expectations
Things are unlikely to remain completely the same for the 2023 season. Wake is now in a position where a seven-win season is somewhat pedestrian and requires some hard looks at potential changes. The upside of course is that there is this angst over a 7-5 regular season record. Winning a bowl game to get victory number eight would put the season among the eight best years over the last three decades. It shows that, as Clawson has tried to pronounce throughout the season, the standards at Wake Forest football are elevated beyond what they have historically been.
