Another week, another Wake Forest blowout win. This one was a historic victory for the Deacs—the 77 point win over the Merrimack Warriors is the largest margin of victory for the program since beating William Jewel 79-0 in 1940. The win also moved Wake Forest to 8-1 overall, their best start since the 2006 ACC Championship season.
This was a pretty expected result—Wake Forest spent the entire last month blowing out ACC teams
by 40-50 points, so it is not surprising at all to see them do something similar to a 4-win FCS team. What was a little surprising was the play of backup QB Steele Pizzella, who was starting for the injured Gio Lopez. Pizzella put up an absurd 432 passing yards, 63 rushing yards, and 4 total TDs—in the first half. That is wildly impressive for a player making his first ever start.
Outside of that, there really wasn’t much to take away from this one. The talent disparity between Wake and Merrimack is just so enormous that the Deacs could do whatever they wanted—Wake could have scored 100 easily in this game if they had tried. Even with 3rd string QB Gannon Jones in the game, the Warriors couldn’t keep Wake out of the endzone.
Even when the Deacs had basically taken their foot off of the gas, the kept scoring. Kam Shanks ran a punt back for a touchdown just before the start of the 4th quarter, and Josh Patterson got a 98-yard pick-6 to get Wake to 70 points with 6 minutes remaining.
The result of this one was known from about the first couple of drives of the game, so the main positives were really that there were no significant injuries, and Gio Lopez got a week off to heal his knee. That time off could not have come at a better time, as Wake has a massive game against SMU in Dallas next Saturday that could very well determine who is playing in the ACC Championship Game at the end of the season. As good as Pizzella looked against Merrimack, Wake is going to need Lopez under center to win a tough road game against a very good SMU team.
Regardless of the opponent, a win is a win.
Go Deacs!
