WINSTON-SALEM – You might want to be sitting down for this one:
Wake Forest won its off week.
“The bye week, we got a lot done,” coach Dave Clawson said Tuesday afternoon.
And now the Deacons head into the second half of the season ranked 13th by the Associated Press and Coaches polls, with the first College Football Playoff rankings set to be released two weeks from today.
“We were being projected for all of this in ’19, didn’t finish strong,” Clawson said. “I think our players are used to this and know that the only way to get to where they want to go is to go 1-0.”
Clawson likes Wake’s off week falling into the middle of his season, and this season’s even divide of six games on each side of it is what he prefers.
Given how his team played in the three previous games – a double overtime loss to unbeaten Clemson, a hard-fought road win at Florida State and a 45-10 throttling of Army – he was a little skeptical of the timing.
“I don’t know if it was a good time or not,” Clawson said. “In some ways I felt like the last three weeks, we played really good football. And when you’re playing well, you don’t necessarily want a break.”
Whether it was wanted or not in that regard, it happened – and the Deacons sound better off because of it.
Clawson said the time off – the Deacons didn’t practice Thursday, Friday or Saturday, and because it was fall break, a significant portion of them traveled away from campus – was meaningful for a mental break as much as a physical break.
The physical break helped, too.
“I think we’re a lot healthier,” Clawson said. “We were playing good ball, but a lot of these guys weren’t necessarily out, but not full strength. It’s not just the guys who weren’t playing, it’s the guys who were having a hard time getting through a week of practice.”
One such example is Malik Mustapha. The hard-hitting safety who’s tied for second on the team in tackles (35) and tackles for loss (4½) has been dealing with a shoulder injury since early in the Clemson game.
“It was a grind, for sure. It was something that was nagging on a little bit, but people in the training room really helped me out a lot,” Mustapha said. “That bye week helped a lot, too. That is getting a lot better, and I’m getting more comfortable in the way I’m able to play.”
Mustapha and other Deacons being comfortable heading into the second half of the season could mean that, as special as last year’s campaign was, it could be unseated this year.
Wake Forest is entering a second half of the season in which it can start seeing through orange-tinted glasses to a Dec. 30 grand finale.
The Deacons will take things one game at a time – that much was reiterated (again) by Blake Whiteheart – but that doesn’t mean you, the fan, have to.
Wake’s next two games are against the two last-place teams in the ACC’s Atlantic Division – Boston College and Louisville. The Nov. 5 game at N.C. State will present challenges, but one fewer with last weekend’s news that quarterback Devin Leary is out for the season.
The Nov. 12 game against UNC – if Clemson wins out and is in the College Football Playoff – will likely determine which of the Deacons and Tar Heels will be in the Orange Bowl. If Wake Forest wins that one, the following game – home against Syracuse – could seal Miami as the Deacons’ bowl destination.
A Thanksgiving week game at Duke could offer a chance to match the program-best 11 wins in a season.
All of that to say: One thing at a time.
