We arrive at this point again, talking about streaks that don’t bode well for Wake Forest’s football team.
The Deacons will play No. 10 Clemson on Saturday having lost 65 straight games to top-10 teams. It’s a stretch that dates back to a 1946 win over No. 4 Tennessee.
Wake Forest also hasn’t beaten Clemson since it was responsible for the loss that made a little-known receivers coach its interim head coach. The Deacons’ 12-7 win over Clemson in 2008 resulted in the mid-season firing of Tommy Bowden, with Dabo Swinney taking over and turning the Tigers into the class of the ACC.
“To me, this has been the most dominant program in the ACC over the past decade,” Wake Forest coach Dave Clawson said of Clemson. “What Dabo’s built at Clemson, the consistency of it, the championship-level program that he built and has been able to maintain is one of the most impressive coaching jobs in the whole country.”
Under Swinney, Clemson has never lost to Wake Forest — a streak of 15 games with an average margin of 24.7 points.
Maybe the good news is Wake Forest came as close to beating both Clemson and a top-10 team the last time the Tigers were in Winston-Salem. That was Clemson’s 51-45 double overtime win in Sept. 2022. Last year’s game at Clemson was a 17-12 decision.
Here are five things to know about Clemson ahead of Saturday’s game:
1. Opener long ago
Clemson looked overwhelmed, ill-prepared and listless in a season-opening 34-3 loss to Georgia.
That’s been made a distant memory over the past month.
Clemson stormed to halftime leads of 43 and 38 points in blowouts of Appalachian State and N.C. State, respectively, in the following two games. There was a relatively comfortable 40-14 win over Stanford, and then last week’s 29-13 win at Florida State that left a little to be desired — but was still a two-score win on the road.
In the span of a month, Clemson went from looking like a team that might be middle-of-the-pack in the ACC to one of the teams destined for Charlotte in early December.
2. Cade Klubnik’s improvement
This item goes hand-in-hand with the one above.
Klubnik was OK last season, his first as a starter. He went 18-for-29 for 142 yards and an interception against Georgia, with minus-17 rushing yards.
In four games since then: 74-for-114 (64.9%) for 1,077 yards with 14 touchdowns and one interception. Along with 185 yards and four touchdowns on the ground.
The measuring stick for Klubnik was always going to be a little unfair, given he came in as the savior apparent and replaced DJ Uiagalelei in the ACC championship game as a freshman in 2022. Klubnik’s struggles last season appear to be in the past now.
“I don’t know what they did in the offseason with him but he looks bigger, stronger and faster,” Clawson said. “You know, he’s a good pocket passer. But what really scares you is some of the plays he makes with his feet.”
3. Wide Receiver U again?
Clemson’s offensive issues over the past couple of seasons haven’t been the sole responsibility of its QBs (though, it’s getting harder to defend Uiagalelei’s time there).
The Tigers have lacked weapons on the outside. There was a steep drop-off from starting Tee Higgins and Justyn Ross in the 2019 national championship game — in part because of Ross’ medical issues, which certainly isn’t anybody’s fault — to what they’ve looked like lately.
That seems to be changing course.
“When I first got here, this was Wide Receiver U,” Clawson said. “I think it kind of fell of a little bit but now they look like they’re coming back to where they were.”
Antonio Williams is the main target, with 19 catches and 280 yards, with four touchdowns. He also has three rushes for 48 yards and 110 yards in punt returns.
Freshman Bryant Wesco Jr. is where you can see the future — he has eight fewer catches than Williams and still has 262 yards. Fellow freshman T.J. Moore has eight catches for 144 yards and two scores.
4. Depth on the D-line
While production at receiver has sagged, even in the past few years when Clemson hasn’t had a national championship-level team, its defensive line has been elite.
What’s elite about the unit this season is the depth.
Clemson has nine defensive linemen, Clawson said, averaging at least 25 snaps per game. The one who’s played the most, end T.J. Parker, is only averaging 37.6 snaps.
For a comparison, in the three games he’s played for Wake Forest, Jasheen Davis is averaging 54.3 snaps.
The Tigers keep their defensive linemen fresh and effective. They got a shot in the arm with the return of Peter Woods last week; he missed the previous two games.
5. Dabo’s dominance of N.C.
Swinney is 40-4 against teams from the state of North Carolina in his tenure.
It’s not that eye-opening a stat, considering he’s won nearly 80% of games he’s coached (174-44).
But it’s worth noting how much ownership of bragging rights Swinney has held against teams in North Carolina — while also considering how often the Tigers come into this state to snatch the top recruits.
And it has continued this year, given the drubbings handed out by Clemson to App State and N.C. State already. The former was a 35-0 game at the end of the first quarter; the latter was against one of the North Carolina that’s actually had a little success against Swinney, and the score of that game was 28-0 after 13 minutes.
