Like Bane, Wake Forest was born in the dark. Molded by him.
“Our biggest message is built in darkness. We define it as a style of play that no one wants to deal with and a process that a few can handle,” Wake Forest coach Jake Dickert said on the ESPN broadcast. College Game Day SATURDAY.
His words proved prophetic for the fate of Wake Forest’s opponent Saturday, ACC rival SMU. The Demon Deacons crushed the 25th-ranked Mustangs 49-7, outscoring them 535-275 while holding SMU scoreless until 3:55 in the third quarter. The Mustangs were not only overcome by darkness, they had never seen anything like it.
Entering the contest at Gerald J. Ford Stadium, Rhett Lashlee’s Mustangs boasted a 27-4 home record. Their worst home loss was an eight-point loss to TCU four years ago. Saturday’s 42-point loss was SMU’s worst under Lashlee at any venue.
Darkness engulfed Lashlee’s Mustangs from the jump. On the first drive of the game, SMU running back Kendrick Raphael found only two yards of running space on second down following an incomplete pass, setting up a third down. Quarterback Kevin Jennings, on a third-and-8, attempted to evade Wake Forest’s pass rush, only to be engulfed by a sack and a 20-yard loss. There was nowhere to run. Or hide.
Powered by a multi-headed rushing attack and the return of starting quarterback Gio Lopez, the Demon Deacons’ offense scored touchdowns on six of seven possessions in the first half while the defense forced two turnovers and one turnover on downs in Mustangs territory. SMU only ran 11 plays in Demon Deacons territory in the first half. It was 42-0 Wake Forest before halftime, but Dickert, Ra’s al Ghul of college football, wouldn’t be satisfied until the shadows completely enveloped SMU.
“We’re not done with them yet,” Dickert said during his halftime interview. “We came for 60 minutes and they have nowhere to hide.”
In the end, Dickert got his wish: a 49-7 loss to SMU in which Wake Forest’s backups finished the cleanup job, a resounding statement to the College Football Playoff committee. The irony of Wake Forest’s season is that for a team that has managed so many teams into obscurity, the Demon Deacons were largely left in the dark by the CFP committee.
Despite suffering only one loss to a (then) undefeated Miami, the Demon Deacons ranked 16th in the committee’s first CFP rankings of the year, behind several two-loss teams. A 77-0 victory with backup quarterback Steele Pizzella making his first collegiate start, albeit against FCS Merrimack, simply moved the Demon Deacons in the bubble to 13th in the second CFP rankings.
Do all Demon Deacons have to show up for their work? Committee Chairman Hunter Yurachek said the committee “holds” Wake Forest in high regard.
They have a funny way of showing it. The committee is clearly not impressed with the quality of Wake Forest’s opponents, as the Demon Deacons’ strength of schedule ranks 59th in the country. However, such a group of opponents is more difficult than that of UCLA (ranked fourth in the latest rankings) and Utah (ranked second).
And the Demon Deacons rank 10th in the country in record strength (reflecting the chance of an average Top 25 team having a better team record, given schedule), which is ahead of playoff teams Tennessee, BYU and Boise State.
When it comes to strength of schedule, Wake Forest can only play whoever is in front of them. And he didn’t just beat his opponents. It gutted them. After defeating their October slate by a score of 187-31, the Demon Deacons outscored their opponents in two November games by a score of 126-7.
Through six quarters (four against Merrimack, two against SMU), the Demon Deacons had scored 119 points and became the first Alabama teams since 2013 to score at least 20 points while blanking their opponents in the first half of four straight games.
“I just think people…they don’t know what to think of us because they don’t know how we do things,” Dickert said Saturday. “We keep making statement after statement, eventually they will have to say we are a very good team…”
Few teams are equipped to dance in the dark with Wake Forest. It is time for the CFP commission to see the light of day.
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