Sleeping on Wake Forest

So the plan for a part of yesterday afternoon was to study up on Wake Forest by checking out the Deacons' win over Virginia on DVR, and here's a pretty good illustration of how that turned out:

Managed to get through the first half and am planning to tackle the second half at some point today. But I'd make a sizable wager that no human, without the aid of controlled substances, can make it through a replay of that entire game without zonking out.

Watching the first half, this revelation dawned on me: The absolute best recruiting ammunition rivals have on Clemson/Florida State is, "Hey Joe Blue Chip, do you REALLY want to go play road games at Duke/Virginia/Wake Forest/Boston College/Miami/Georgia Tech/Pittsburgh/Syracuse?"

Just an awful atmosphere in Charlottesville. Not surprising given that neither team is very good, and definitely not surprising given that both offenses operated at a glacial, snooze-inducing pace.

Here's a quick summary of some thoughts on the Deacons:

-- Offensive line, bad. Between-the-tackles running game is non-existent.

-- Defensive line, good. Nikita Whitlock is back to being a beast now that he's back healthy. He'll give Clemson's offensive line trouble, just as he did last year.

-- Michael Campanaro, huge loss (broken hand). Doesn't look like he'll be back this week, at least not at full strength. Without him, Wake has to have the worst collection of receivers in the conference. Makes Tanner Price look quite ordinary.

-- Secondary is still pretty darn good. No. 9 is very good in run support.

-- Linebackers are active shooting gaps and causing havoc in the backfield, but they struggle to get to the perimeter.

For more on the Deacs, you always have to consult my man Dan Collins of the Winston-Salem Journal. He's been on that beat forever, and in this blog he provides some good insight on the offense:

Grobe didn’t apologize for what amounted to the fewest yards by a Wake team in an ACC victory since the 1966 Deacons beat North Carolina 3-0 on just 191 yards. He is, after all, the man who won an ACC title game by kicking three field goals. What he did was suggest strongly that we’ll all be seeing more of the same as long as Campanaro remains sidelined.

And if that means switching job descriptions on the fly, and having Martin throwing passes to Price, then that’s what it’s going to be.

“I think what we’re not is we’re not a team that’s just going to be able to stand in there and hand the ball off and have Tanner throw it 38 times like we did at Maryland,’’ Grobe said. “That’s not going to be us right now. With Matt James down, Campanaro’s down, Sherman Ragland’s down, we’ve got a lot of issues in the offensive line right now. With all the issues that we’ve got right now, we’re going to have to do a lot of different things to try to make first downs and move the football.

“I get a little nervous when we’re throwing it to the quarterback – not that he can’t catch it and run with it, but he might take a shot. But I think we’re to the point now—you saw us run Tanner some today – I think our focus has got to be to find ways to win.’‘

Clemson should win this game and win it handily. Could Wake somehow put itself in position to win? Stranger things have happened, and I'm not advocating anyone sleep on the Deacons because the experiences over the last decade (losses there in 2003, 2005 and 2008) indicate that is not wise.

But sleeping while watching a Wake Forest-Virginia replay? Now that'd be totally excusable.

LW