What a win for the Deacs! Wake Forest walked into Louisville as 12 point underdogs and emerged 3-1 with back to back ranked road wins for the first time since 1946.
This game started as a shootout and ended as a defensive struggle—the two teams combined for 531 yards and 45 points in the first half, and then scored just 12 combined points in the 2nd half. Gio Lopez and Carlos Hernandez were unstoppable early in this game. Hernandez finished the first half with
6 catches for 160 yards, fueling Wake to score 21 points in the 2nd quarter. His 77 yard touchdown catch put the Deacs up 17-14 with 6 minutes remaining in the 2nd half.
He may not get the hype of guys like Jeremiah Smith at Ohio State or Malachi Toney at Miami, but Hernandez is quietly having one of the best seasons for any receiver in the country. If he continues the way he’s going, he very well could be in the conversation at the end of the season for the Biletnikoff Award.
After a 6 yard TD run from Ty Clark III with just over a minute left, the Deacs were in control with a 10 point lead and the choice to receive the ball to start the 2nd half. That changed quickly, as the next few minutes were pretty disastrous for Wake. First, the Deacs gave up a 61 yards touchdown pass before the half ended on a blown coverage, cutting their halftime lead to just 3 points.
Then, for the second game in a row, Wake got the ball to start the 2nd half and immediately went 3 and out. What could have been a 10 point lead—and a drive to extend it—quickly turned into a tie game after Louisville kicked a field goal to even things up at 24. Those are usually the type of missed opportunities that come back to bite an underdog on the road.
Grasping to a 3-point lead late in the 4th, the Wake Forest defense came up big. First, with the Cardinals driving into Wake territory, redshirt senior Zach Lohavichan came up with a huge 11-yard sack on 3rd down to push Louisville to the brink of field goal range. That may have been the biggest play of the game, because the 11 yards resulted in a missed field goal 42 yard field goal that probably would have been good from 30 yards.
The Wake Forest defensive line played lights out today, holding Louisville to just 75 rushing yards on 38 (2.0 avg) attempts and coming up with 4 sacks.
After failing to get a first down on their next possession, the Deacon defense again held, giving up just 29 yards on 9 plays to the Cardinals and forcing them to kick a 57 yard field goal to tie the game with 22 seconds left. The attempt was blocked by Dallas Afalava to give Wake Forest the upset win.
At this point, there’s not much more that I can say about Jake Dickert as a head coach—the man just wins football games. Since coming to Wake Forest, Dickert is 12-5 and has road wins over #12 Virginia and #16 Louisville. No Wake Forest coach has won back to back games against ranked road opponents since Peahead Walker did it all the way back in 1946.
I don’t even think the Deacs were close to playing their best game today, either. They still had 10 penalties for 85 yards, including a pass interference that overturned an interception and a personal foul at the 1 yard line that forced them to kick a field goal. They still finished the game just 2-10 on 3rd down and could not figure out how to extend drives or score touchdowns in short yardage situations at all. With a mobile QB like Gio Lopez that took over the Purdue game with his legs, continually running up the middle from shotgun or trying slow developing toss plays from under center just seem a little too conservative. The Wake Forest secondary also struggled in this one, giving up 300 yards passing for the 2nd time this season. With all of that combined, it seems unlikely that Wake would pull off a road upset over a top 25 team, and yet, they still found a way.
That’s been the story of Wake Forest Football in the Dickert era—they just find a way to win. At 3-1 with a ranked road win over #16 Louisville and just 1 loss to a top 10 Miami team, there is a very good chance that Wake Forest could find themselves ranked in the top 25 tomorrow for the first time since November 5th 2022.
The Deacs are for real.
