{"id":80619,"date":"2025-09-28T14:04:59","date_gmt":"2025-09-28T18:04:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/?p=80619"},"modified":"2025-09-28T14:18:24","modified_gmt":"2025-09-28T18:18:24","slug":"80619-what-wake-forest-said-after-the-georgia-tech-loss","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/2025\/09\/28\/80619-what-wake-forest-said-after-the-georgia-tech-loss\/","title":{"rendered":"What Wake Forest Said After the Georgia Tech Loss"},"content":{"rendered":"

Wake Forest fans woke up Sunday still stinging from what could have been Saturday afternoon. The Demon Deacons lost 30-29 in overtime<\/a> to Georgia Tech, in a game in which Wake had a 20-3 lead early in the second half. The Deacs\u2019 offense continued its second-half struggles, there was a loss of players to injury, and of course, the missed call by officials in the last two minutes of the game that changed the course of the game for Wake. So it is time to catch up with what Wake said after the game.<\/p>\n

Jake Dickert<\/h3>\n

Once again, while we captured much of his post-game press conference in our recap of the game on Saturday, the layers of the game require us to include more.<\/p>\n

He gave his team credit for the way it competed throughout the game. \u201cI thought our guys played with a little more resolve in this game than we did at the end of the NC State game. That\u2019s growth,\u201d He said it was just a play here or there that made the difference.<\/p>\n

In terms of the play call on the two-point conversion, he said it would have been different if they could have had Demond Claiborne in the lineup in order to have a run-pass option. But Claiborne went out of the game after his 25-yard touchdown run that got them to the two-point conversion. He appeared to be in pain, having been nursing bruised ribs on the left side. Dickert gave GA Tech credit for the coverage on the pass play.<\/p>\n

The missed opportunities were a big topic for Dickert. \u201cWe\u2019re going to see a bunch of one-play things. In close ball games, in the ACC, the margins are thin. You\u2019ve got to make those plays if you want to go win ball games.\u201d<\/p>\n

The No-Call<\/h3>\n

On one play of the entire game that seems to matter most to Wake fans, Dickert talked about the GA Tech offsides that wasn\u2019t called. On third and five at the Wake 32-yard line, with under two minutes left, GA Tech clearly jumped offside. Quarterback Robby Ashford saw it and assumed a flag was to be thrown. But a quarterback often cannot see whether a flag was thrown or not. \u201cThere\u2019s no way he can see the flag,\u201d Dickert said while not engaging in the conversation of the blown no-call. \u201cRobby did what he was trained to do, and that\u2019s take a shot, and he doesn\u2019t know if it\u2019s offsides or not.\u201d<\/p>\n

If the flag had been thrown, it would have been enough for a Wake first down, and they could have ended the game. But the game of \u201cifs\u201d doesn\u2019t look at the bigger picture. The throw to Berkhalter was incomplete. It stopped the clock when the clock was the enemy of a GA Tech team that had no timeouts left.<\/p>\n

Running the ball, even if they did not get the first down, would have burned another 35-40 seconds off the clock. After a Wake Forest punt, GA tech would have had the ball with only one minute left. Instead, they took over with 1:41 left. There was enough time left on the clock for the Yellow Jackets to run nine plays for 47 yards and run the special teams fire drill to tie the game at 23-23 with two seconds left. Shortening the game could have been more effective than assuming a penalty and attempting a low-percentage throw.<\/p>\n

\u201cI put them in that situation,\u201d Dickert said. You know, you just go call the play. Don\u2019t risk that situation and go find a way to get a first down and win the game,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The ACC issued an official statement Saturday acknowledging that the officials got the no-call wrong. But that is of little consequence to anyone now.<\/p>\n

Jayden Loving<\/h3>\n

Defensive lineman Jayden Loving gave credit to Georgia Tech for making the changes at halftime that turned it from a 17-3 Wake Forest lead to a Yellow Jackets win. The defense had been keeping GA Tech quarterback Haynes King corralled pretty well. He was 13 of 19 passing in the first half for only 50 yards. \u201cThey changed the scheme more in the second half, just trying to get him involved more with designed runs for him.\u201d King had a net 58 yards rushing in the second half to go with 176 passing yards. He had eight rushing yards in overtime, including the game-winning touchdown run.<\/p>\n

He said it hurt to lose that game to a decided favorite, having been that close. \u201cWe\u2019ve just got to take it on the chin. There\u2019s not much we can do about it. We control what we can control, take it one day at a time, and just be ready to go next week.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said fixing the mistakes is an immediate project. \u201cI feel like that starts tomorrow [Sunday\/today]. The attitude you come into the facility with, just being ready to go,\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019ve got to go fix our future.\u201d<\/p>\n

Robby Ashford<\/h3>\n

The quarterback talked about the two-point play. He said Wake had a \u201cGood play called,\u201d but Georgia Tech defended it well. \u201cIt was one of those where the ball has to go in the air. So you\u2019re running around trying to find somebody because everybody was covered.\u201d<\/p>\n

He gave credit to Dickert for going for two and the win. \u201cIt sucks [the loss] but I\u2019ve got a lot of 4respect for Coach Dickert for having the confidence in us to go for it,\u201d he said. \u201cAt some point it\u2019s going to turn into wins,\u201d he added, talking about the effort of the team.<\/p>\n

As for the leg injury he suffered on the first drive of the second half, \u201cI don\u2019t want to say I feel great, but I\u2019m not dead.\u201d He is getting the knee looked at on Sunday.<\/p>\n

Wake takes its first road trip of the season Saturday in Blacksburg against Virginia Tech.<\/p>\n

Main Image: Zachary Taft-Imagn Images<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Wake Forest fans woke up Sunday still stinging from what could have been Saturday afternoon. The Demon Deacons lost 30-29 in overtime to Georgia Tech, in a game in which Wake had a 20-3 lead early in the second half. The Deacs\u2019 offense continued its second-half struggles, there was a loss of players to injury, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1534,"featured_media":80622,"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":[7,2,35633,17,35643],"tags":[10629,6768,9582,9186],"class_list":["post-80619","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-acc","category-featured","category-georgia-tech-yellow-jackets","category-news","category-wake-forest-demon-deacons","tag-demond-claiborne","tag-haynes-king","tag-jake-dickert","tag-robby-ashford"],"modified_by":"Tony Siracusa, CFB Managing Editor","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80619","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=80619"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80619\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":80624,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80619\/revisions\/80624"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/80622"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=80619"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=80619"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=80619"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}