Dickert moved east from Washington State<\/a> to take over the Demon Deacons for the 2025 season. The season had some would-have, could-have, should-have moments. A missed call by the officials (as acknowledged by the ACC) in the closing minutes of the one-point loss to Georgia Tech still stings months later. Self-inflicted wounds cost Wake in the season finale at Duke.<\/p>\nWake Forest will be going without starting running back Demond Claiborne (declared for the NFL) and receivers Chris Barnes and Micah Mayes (going into the portal on Friday), among others.<\/p>\n
Dickert said on Thursday that he can still go three deep at running back and that several receivers will have a chance to step up. \u201cSometimes when you lose a couple of playmakers, you don\u2019t have to worry about getting them the football in certain situations.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dickert also addressed the long layoff with a month off since the end of the regular season. \u201cI believe 32 days, but who\u2019s counting?\u201d he said with a grin. \u201cFootball is a rhythm, physical, tough, execution, detailed game.\u201d He said he has been working the team with a physical nature during the extra practices. It remains to be seen if that is enough. \u201cThat will be the challenge in that flow of the first quarter. Who\u2019s adjusted to game speed faster?\u201d<\/p>\n
And he has taken note of MSU\u2019s new quarterback. \u201cDynamic,\u201d is the word he used to describe Taylor. \u201cAnd I would imagine in four weeks of practice, he is going to have tremendous growth in that time.\u201d<\/p>\n
And as far as what the bowl game does for the program, coming off a surprisingly successful season? \u201cNo one thought we could be here. Everyone thought I\u2019d be waiting for the portal right now because we weren\u2019t going to be any good. These seniors have dictated the tempo and the mentality of our whole season. And they want to finish it off the right way.\u201d<\/p>\n
Postgame<\/h3>\n
The winning coach gets a vat of Duke\u2019s Mayo over them at the end of the game. Both coaches say they eagerly await the Mayo bath if it means they won the game.<\/p>\n
How To Watch:<\/h3>\n
Day\/Date:<\/strong> Friday, January 2nd, 2026<\/p>\nTime:\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong>8 PM ET<\/p>\nLocation:<\/strong> Bank of America Stadium, Charlotte, NC<\/p>\nTV:<\/strong> ESPN<\/p>\nMain Image: Tony Siracusa<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This is what bowl season was designed to be. Two teams that likely would not be facing each other if it weren\u2019t for a bowl game will face off Friday night in Charlotte, NC. Wake Forest will meet Mississippi State in the annual Duke\u2019s Mayo Bowl at Bank of America Stadium in Uptown Charlotte. The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1534,"featured_media":84633,"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":[7,7361,2,35585,3,35643],"tags":[6945,9582,8272],"class_list":["post-84630","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-acc","category-bowl-games","category-featured","category-mississippi-state-bulldogs","category-sec","category-wake-forest-demon-deacons","tag-dukes-mayo-bowl","tag-jake-dickert","tag-jeff-lebby"],"modified_by":"Tony Siracusa, CFB Managing Editor","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84630","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=84630"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84630\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":84637,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84630\/revisions\/84637"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/84633"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=84630"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=84630"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=84630"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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![\"Duke's](\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2026\/01\/Dickert-1024x768.jpg\")