Seth Morgan<\/strong> to 10 of 20 passing for only 76 yards.<\/p>\nPutting The Game Away<\/h3>\n
Wake Forest tacked on another easy touchdown early in the third quarter. A shanked VMI punt gave the Demon Deacons the ball at the Keydets 43-yard line. A 24-yard run by Turner along the right-side line gave Wake the ball at the VMI 14-yard line. Three plays later, it was Turner plowing up the middle of the scrum for a touchdown from half a yard out. Wake\u2019s lead was now 30-3.<\/p>\n
What should have put the Demon Deacons into cruise control instead led to sloppiness and a lack of discipline? Wake committed three penalties, giving up 35 yards in the process, on VMI\u2019s next drive. This would have cost Wake against a good team. But this was VMI and the Keydets could not convert Wake\u2019s generosity into any points and had to punt.<\/p>\n
Wake took over on its own eight-yard line, up 27 points, with the starters still in, and went three and out. The lack of production cost the Demon Deacons this time. VMI took a chunk out of the top hat with an eight-play 60-yard touchdown drive. Backup quarterback Collin Ironside<\/strong> connected with Grant Swinehart<\/strong> for a 34-yard touchdown down the right sideline. While Wake\u2019s lead was still 30-10 with a couple of minutes left in the third quarter, the product on the field had become as lethargic as the mood of the couple thousand fans that were left in the stands.<\/p>\nGriffis Steps Up<\/h3>\n
Griffis responded like a leader is supposed. And this is his team now, for the next few weeks, and at some point, later down the road. He engineered a quick strike scoring drive where he was three of four passes for all 62 yards. On the final play of the drive, he dropped straight back and found a wide-open Blake Whiteheart<\/strong> at the VMI 11-yard line. The throw was on the money and in stride for the tight end who took it the rest of the way in for the touchdown.<\/p>\nEven with the success, Wake shot itself in the foot. Up 36-10 late in the third quarter after the touchdown, head coach Dave Clawson<\/strong> decided to go for the two-point conversion. Griffis ran up the middle for the score. But Sean Maginn<\/strong> was called for holding. Wake settled for the kick on the PAT and the 37-10 lead at the end of three.<\/p>\nWake was penalized seven times for 70 yards. Against a better team, it would have mattered.<\/p>\n
Griffis, still in in the fourth quarter, put up another touchdown early in the period, completing a 14-yard pass to Jahmal Banks<\/strong> to expand the lead to 44-10.<\/p>\nMichael Kern<\/strong> came in at quarterback at that point for mop-up duty.<\/p>\nClawson And The Penalties<\/h3>\n
After the game, Clawson was pleased for all of a moment before he brought up the penalties. \u201cAnytime you find a way to win, you\u2019ve got to be happy with the effort,\u201d Clawson said. Then he went on to the penalties. \u201cI\u2019m proud of the win, but I thought we were really sloppy.\u201d He added, \u201cTo me, the penalties were awful.\u201d He pointed out the five holding penalties and how they took away touchdowns, and a roughing the passer that cost them a pick-six by Isaiah Wingfield<\/strong>. \u201cThere was a lot of lack of discipline penalties we had tonight.\u201d<\/p>\nWake has game officials at every practice. The players may need to prepare for the calls to tighten up on them next week. \u201cI\u2019m not sure what we\u2019re paying them, [the officials],\u201d Clawson joked. \u201cMaybe it needs to be more for them to throw some more flags in practice.\u201d<\/p>\n
On the upside, no one was denying the performance of Griffis in his first start. He acknowledged that he was nervous when the game began. \u201cThe first few plays didn\u2019t feel real,\u201d he said after the game. \u201cThen I got hit.\u201d He said that brought his focus back into the game. Griffis also acknowledged the role Hartman played as a de-facto extra coach on the sidelines helping him throughout the game.<\/p>\n
Clawson was upbeat about Griffis’ performance. “I thought Mitch played really well,” he said after the game. “I think we can win a lot of games with Mitch.”<\/p>\n
A footnote to the game; It was Dave Clawson’s 100th game as head coach of the Demon Deacons. He is 52-48 in his 9th year.<\/p>\n
The 1-0 Demon Deacons go on the road to Nashville next week to play Vanderbilt.<\/p>\n
Main Image courtesy: Andy Mead\/Wake Forest Athletics<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It turns out that when you are Wake Forest and you return most of your offense, and you open against VMI, it doesn\u2019t matter who your starting quarterback is. Mitch Griffis had a commendable first career start as the Demon Deacons roll VMI 44-10 at Truist Field Thursday night. The Demon Deacons Roll VMI 44-10 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1534,"featured_media":45769,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2,7],"tags":[4817,1135,9283,4207,8964,9280,1249],"class_list":["post-45764","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-acc","tag-acc-football","tag-dave-clawson","tag-justice-ellison","tag-sam-hartman","tag-taylor-morin","tag-vmi","tag-wake-forest-demon-deacons"],"modified_by":"Tony Siracusa, CFB Managing Editor","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45764","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1534"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45764"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45764\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/45769"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45764"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45764"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45764"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}