{"id":52011,"date":"2023-09-27T13:00:16","date_gmt":"2023-09-27T17:00:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/?p=52011"},"modified":"2023-09-27T11:14:07","modified_gmt":"2023-09-27T15:14:07","slug":"demon-deacons-are-in-need-of-some-self-reflection","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/2023\/09\/27\/demon-deacons-are-in-need-of-some-self-reflection\/","title":{"rendered":"Demon Deacons Are in Need of Some Self-Reflection"},"content":{"rendered":"

Being 3-1 four weeks into the season hardly seems like a downward trend for Wake Forest. But when you look at how the loss happened, who the opponent was, and the week-to-week issues it seems clear that the Demon Deacons are in need of some self-reflection during the bye week.<\/p>\n

Wake Forest should be 4-0 right now. The schedule handed them an FCS opponent, a bottom-of-the-barrel Power 5 school, a decent but beatable Sun Belt team, and a conference opponent that likely finishes in the bottom fourth of the ACC.<\/p>\n

The Stumbling Block That Is the Offense<\/h3>\n

So what went wrong? The list is not short. After the loss to Georgia Tech<\/a> Saturday night at Allegacy Stadium, head coach Dave Clawson<\/strong> said his team was making the same mistakes week after week and not learning. If there was nothing else but that statement, the signs would be troubling enough. This is, after all, a veteran team. Sure, they don\u2019t have the crazy number of combined starts per position group that last year\u2019s squad had. But the snaps are there. The in-game experience is there.<\/p>\n

So, Clawson did what coaches do. He put the onus on himself and his staff. \u201cI\u2019ll share with you what I shared with our football team,\u201d he told the media after the game. \u201cWhen a team keeps making the same mistakes over, and over, and over, and they\u2019re not learning, that\u2019s a sign of a team that\u2019s not really well coached.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Deacs have a combined eight turnovers in the last two games. And they are not harmless turnovers. They too often lead to points on the board for the opponents. Down by 17 points at the half each of the last two weeks gives the misnomer that the defense is not doing its job. And sure, there are fixes needed on defense. But far too many of those deficits are being created by mistakes on the offensive side of the ball.<\/p>\n

Quarterback Play<\/h3>\n

The place everyone is going to start, fairly or not, is at the quarterback spot. This is Mitch Griffis\u2019<\/a> offense to run, and it is not being run well. Yeah, he has nearly 1,000 yards throwing already. But he is doing so at a paltry 59% completion rate and has six interceptions to just nine touchdown passes. And that doesn\u2019t include the fumbles, (one lost at Old Dominion turned into a scoop and score for the Monarchs), and the decision-making that is far too bold for what he can actually pull off right now.<\/p>\n

\u201cRight now, we\u2019re just beating ourselves. We\u2019re not giving ourselves a chance,\u201d Clawson said Saturday night.<\/p>\n

There was no more glaring case than Wake\u2019s final drive of the game. Down 23-16 in the final four minutes of the game, the Deacs had driven from their own 35-yard line to the GA Tech 21-yard line. On a first and 10\u2026a first and 10\u2026Griffis got flushed out of the pocket, rolled to his right, and tried to thread the pass between two receivers to Wesley Grimes at the 11-yard line. Grimes was not open. The pass was not a good one and the decision was worse. The pass was intercepted.<\/p>\n

GA Tech drove the length of the field for the score that put the game away for good. And Wake was left asking itself how this was happening. It turns out it\u2019s not that complicated. \u201cIt\u2019s first down. Throw it away,\u201d Clawson said when asked about that specific play. \u201cCut your loss.\u201d He said he appreciated Griffis\u2019 competitiveness, but there are plays you just don\u2019t try to force.<\/p>\n

The Clock in Your Head<\/h3>\n

Griffis\u2019 \u201cpocket presence\u201d is an issue. He is taking a beating back there, at times because the line isn\u2019t holding up well enough, and more so to the point, that his decision-making is too slow. Clawson called his internal clock something that has been a four-week problem and needs to speed up. We spent so much time looking at analytics as to how much time he had to get rid of the ball over the course of a game. But numbers can be very misleading. When a quarterback isn\u2019t properly reading the chess board in front of him in live action, the analytics don\u2019t matter.<\/p>\n

Offensive lineman Michael Jurgens<\/strong> did the math after the game. \u201cIf we have 80 plays and each guy had four minuses (bad plays) throughout the game, and those are spread out across 44 different plays, then we\u2019re not getting the job done over half the time.\u201d<\/p>\n

The offensive line for all of its \u201ca lot of snaps, but not a lot of starts\u201d level of experience has been hit-and-miss. Injuries, most notably to Spencer Clapp, have caused a significant amount of shifting of players and positions. Matt Gulbin<\/strong> and Devonte Gordon<\/strong> are moving around like allegedly interchangeable chess pieces. There are times over the last three weeks that the line has given Griffis all the time any quarterback can ask for, and times when the pocket has collapsed around him in the blink of an eye. Such is the world of college football and the players are not making the adjustments well enough four weeks into the season.<\/p>\n

Responsibility<\/h3>\n

Griffis did what QB1\u2019s do. He met with the media after the game to relive the horror of the night, something his predecessor did not always do after losses. \u201cWe didn\u2019t finish drives and that\u2019s on me,\u201d he told the media. He was downtrodden after the win at Old Dominion because, as he put it, the team won despite his poor performance. So, you can imagine what he was like after the loss.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m frustrated because I feel like I\u2019ve let the team down.\u201d He said he loves winning not for himself but because of what it does for his teammates. That sounds great. It is what you want a leader to say. But the personal learning curve on the field has to pick up the pace, post haste.<\/p>\n

The defense has been a mixed bag. Mostly good play mixed in with some really, really bad play. GA Tech only needed 59 plays Saturday night (to 82 for Wake), to pull out the win. Part of that is Wake continuing to give up big chunk plays. The Yellowjackets had five plays of 30 yards or more on offense. Giving up the explosive plays was a concern of Clawson\u2019s going all the way back to Spring camp.<\/p>\n

Conversely, when your offense is turning the ball over as much as Wake\u2019s is, it puts the defense in untenable positions.<\/p>\n

What is the Focus Moving Forward?<\/h3>\n

Clawson was asked after the game about the big Georgia Tech plays. He tried to focus on it, but there was that other element sticking in his craw. \u201cI think you have to go back and say, \u2018Why did the explosive happen?\u2019\u201d But there was more. \u201cI\u2019m going nuts with the turnovers right now. Those are the five plays that I can\u2019t get out of my head.\u201d<\/p>\n

Evaluating the game film and the plays is one thing. Running back Justice Ellison<\/strong> suggested there is a deeper level that his teammates need to find. \u201cEverybody looks good when they\u2019re not getting punched in the face,\u201d he said. \u201cCan you go down and can you pick others up? That\u2019s the character of a man.\u201d He went on to suggest that there needs to be greater attention to detail in practice. \u201cThe reason we go so hard at practice is because you\u2019re teaching yourself to give it your all every single play.\u201d He said the bye week needs to be spent getting, \u201cGuys to buy into that.\u201d<\/p>\n

You have to wonder why they have not already. Self-reflection can be a rather humbling experience.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Demon
Photo courtesy: Jim Dedmon-USA TODAY Sports<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Being 3-1 four weeks into the season hardly seems like a downward trend for Wake Forest. But when you look at how the loss happened, who the opponent was, and the week-to-week issues it seems clear that the Demon Deacons are in need of some self-reflection during the bye week. Wake Forest should be 4-0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1534,"featured_media":52018,"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":[4817,1135,9283,9188,1249],"class_list":["post-52011","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-michael-jurgens","tag-wake-forest-demon-deacons"],"modified_by":"Tony Siracusa, CFB Managing Editor","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52011","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=52011"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52011\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/52018"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52011"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52011"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52011"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}