{"id":53266,"date":"2023-10-18T13:00:59","date_gmt":"2023-10-18T17:00:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/?p=53266"},"modified":"2023-10-18T11:34:44","modified_gmt":"2023-10-18T15:34:44","slug":"53266-wake-forest-vs-pitt-who-knows","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/2023\/10\/18\/53266-wake-forest-vs-pitt-who-knows\/","title":{"rendered":"Wake Forest vs. Pitt; Who Knows?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Usually, when you do a game preview there is a sense of the potential direction of the game. And then every once in a while, you get Wake Forest vs. Pitt and you are tempted to write, \u201cWho knows?\u201d and conclude the article there.<\/p>\n

This is the first time the two schools have met since the 2021 ACC championship game, and both of them could not be further away from that moment just two years later.<\/p>\n

Pitt Struggles<\/h3>\n

Pitt is 2-4 overall, 1-2 in conference and the Panthers have yet to win on the road this season. But they are coming off a surprising 17-point win at home over a Louisville team that had knocked off Notre Dame the week before.<\/p>\n

Phil Jurkovec<\/a>, the transfer from Boston College, was slated to be the starting quarterback this season for the Panthers. And he was. For a few weeks. But as has happened in a few places throughout the ACC, (seeing you Raleigh, NC), the transfer portal quarterback did not provide the needed results. He was throwing at a 51% completion rate, with less than 1,000 yards passing, six touchdowns, and three interceptions through week five. He was benched for the Louisville game and replaced by third-year sophomore Christian Veilleux<\/strong>, a transfer from Penn State.<\/p>\n

While not exactly lighting up the scoreboard with 288 total yards, Veilleux engineered the win over Louisville. When the team is struggling, that is good enough. He was 12 of 26 passing for 200 yards and two touchdowns, and most importantly, no interceptions.<\/p>\n

Earlier this week, head coach Pat Narduzzi<\/strong> made it clear he was mostly pleased with his new starting quarterback. \u201cChristian threw some nice balls. He got the ball out quick [sic] as well. He made good decisions with the ball,\u201d he said. \u201cBut he can do a better job on some of his out routes, which Coach Cigs (Cignetti) will fix his feet and do all those things, but I thought he had a really nice day.\u201d<\/p>\n

Panthers Defense Happy to See Wake Forest?<\/h3>\n

The strength of any Narduzzi team is always the defense, and he must love the Wake Forest offense he is seeing right now. The Demon Deacons are 87th<\/sup> in the country in red zone offense. And even that is only because Matthew Dennis has 12 field goals. Wake has not scored a touchdown on offense in the last two games. The Deacs are only two spots from last in the country in sacks allowed this season with 29. Even Narduzzi was surprised at that Wake stat. “I didn’t know that. I’ll go tell [defensive line coach Charlie] Coach Partridge. He’d better have seven or eight of them, I guess. He needs to look at what we’re doing defensively.”<\/p>\n

And here is where it gets \u201cinteresting.\u201d Wake Forest head coach Dave Clawson<\/strong> does not know who his starting quarterback is going to be on Saturday. Starter Mitch Griffis<\/strong> was pulled after the first quarter in Saturday\u2019s loss at Virginia Tech. He has struggled all season with turnovers, scheme reads, and decision-making. Back-up Michael Kern<\/a> came in with some decent throws if not acceptable results. But Kern injured his throwing shoulder in the closing minutes of the game. Griffis came back in to mop up.<\/p>\n

Wake Quarterback Quandry<\/h3>\n

We know Kern is out for at least a couple of weeks. That is the extent of what we know. Tuesday Clawson described Griffis as physically banged up. \u201cMitch took some shots,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd we\u2019re not 100% sure of his availability.\u201d<\/p>\n

If Griffis can\u2019t go, the choices are Santino Marucci<\/strong>, who came to Wake as a quarterback but has been moved to running back linebacker, and safety. Marucci moved back to quarterback this camp. He has yet to play a snap in a game at any position in his two-plus years. The other options at quarterback would be freshman Charlie Gilliam<\/strong>, and walk-ons Troy Hoilman<\/strong> and Tyler Mizzell.<\/strong> Clawson said Marucci and \u201csome of our freshmen\u201d were getting reps this week in practice.\u201d<\/p>\n

That leaves a lot of question marks for a struggling offense. Asked to assess last week\u2019s loss to VA Tech<\/a> now that he had time to review the game film, Clawson\u2019s response was, \u201cWe were bad.\u201d While that may sound both obvious and glib, his further point was that it was not all one position or player. There were blown blocking assignments by the offensive line. There were correct blocking schemes, but the quarterback dropped too far back and beyond the protection. And there were pass route breakdowns by receivers. In essence, there is plenty of blame to go around.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you\u2019re not playing well, you can\u2019t compound your problems and we\u2019re just on the wrong side of all those things now,\u201d he said Tuesday. He said he can see players pressing and making mistakes as a result. \u201cWe\u2019re on the wrong side of detail right now.\u201d<\/p>\n

Heavy Is The Head That Wears The Crown<\/h3>\n

Clawson was not hesitant to take the blame<\/a> for the current three-game losing streak and this year\u2019s slide in the program. He knows where the criticism is mostly directed. \u201cI mean, it\u2019s accurate. I\u2019ve been here 10 years. I can\u2019t blame it on the last head coach. Everybody in this building, I\u2019ve hired. And every player on our roster, I\u2019ve recruited,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s my job. It\u2019s all on me. And It\u2019s part of this and the position, right? And if you can\u2019t handle that, you shouldn\u2019t be in it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Clawson has a knack for recalling very specific details and instances in his coaching history. He uses that ability to try to get his players to navigate the choppy waters. \u201cI\u2019ve been through this before. Again, there is no guarantee you\u2019re going to come out the other end in great shape. But I believe we will and history has shown we really do.\u201d<\/p>\n

Which brings us back to the Pitt game. This will be the third time the two schools have faced each other as ACC opponents. Once was for a conference championship. Now it is for 2023 conference survival. That puts us back at \u201cWho knows?\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Wake
Photo courtesy: Peter Casey-USA TODAY Sports<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Usually, when you do a game preview there is a sense of the potential direction of the game. And then every once in a while, you get Wake Forest vs. Pitt and you are tempted to write, \u201cWho knows?\u201d and conclude the article there. This is the first time the two schools have met since […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1534,"featured_media":53271,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_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":[4817,1135,8925,2184,256,1249],"class_list":["post-53266","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-acc","tag-acc-football","tag-dave-clawson","tag-michael-kern","tag-pat-narduzzi","tag-pitt-panthers","tag-wake-forest-demon-deacons"],"modified_by":"Tony Siracusa, CFB Managing Editor","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53266","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=53266"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53266\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/53271"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53266"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53266"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53266"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}