With Wake Forest sitting at 4-4, the Demon Deacons are quite a ways away from their 1-3 start that had people writing off the season. One-third of the season remains with a chance to become bowl-eligible. It seems appropriate to see what Wake Forest is saying after Saturday’s win over Stanford.
Dave Clawson
Even in the 27-24 win, one of Wake Forest’s inescapable issues was the penalties. The Demon Deacons were flagged 10 times for 95 yards. DeVonte Gordon had four, including repeat calls for a lineman being too far downfield.
Clawson said now that they have the technology tablets on the sidelines, they were able to review the plays right away. He said some of the calls were just incorrect. He also noted that it was a Pac-12 officiating crew calling the game. Anyone with any West Coast reporting experience will tell you that Pac-12 officials faced more criticism every year than even those from the ACC.
“We’ve been running RPOs for how many years,” Clawson said. “We had more downfields called in this game than probably the last three years combined.” Clawson said the assistant coaches were going back to the tablets and admitting that some of the calls were right, or even close, but others were missed. “Usually they only call that when it’s egregious.”
Then and Now
Now that we are two-thirds of the way through the regular season, Clawson talked about the team’s identity. “I think all of our players and all of our assistant coaches deserve a lot of credit. To start out 1-3 kind of to be left for dead, and in the last four weeks we’re 3-1 with three road wins in the fourth quarter in one-score games,” he said…