New Season, Stadium, QB, and Tune. Same Old Wake Forest Win

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Everything felt new last night in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. A new school year at Wake Forest has just kicked off. A new student body, all wearing black, ran through the endzone-area tunnel onto the field before the players. The football facility the team plays in has a new name, Allegacy Stadium.

Even the 1972 song a rock band played outside the stadium an hour before kickoff, Baby Blue by Bad Finger, somehow had a new ring to it.

And the ultimate newness was a gifted and likable quarterback named Mitch Griffis, who is following an all-time great Wake Forest quarterback, Sam Hartman, who now stars for Notre Dame.

Hartman’s back-up the past two seasons, Griffis is now the leading man on the team. He proved to be, like the rest of this 2023 squad, strong in some ways and needing improvement in others. This new team prevailed with a solid — but far from not stellar — 37-17 victory over Elon. This performance mixed impressive pass plays with too many penalties and blatant miscues. Last year’s team struggled with these same inconsistent difficulties and ended up being 8 and 5 – not what they had in mind last season nor this one either.

Both the offensive and defensive units played reasonably well while occasionally in some aspects of the game showed vulnerabilities.

Griffis shows passing precision and touch

With all this being reality, Griffis (19 of 30 for 329 yards) eased concerns anyone may have had about whether he could throw with precision and touch. In the first half, he lofted two impressive touchdown passes of 69 yards and 36 yards to tight end Cameron Hite and receiver Jahmal Banks, respectively, to lift the Demon Deacons to a 27-0 half-time lead Elon never threatened to overturn.

The Banks touchdown was the most dazzling play of the game. With a defender tightly defending him in the endzone, the 6-foot-4-inch former high school basketball star caught the ball on his right hip while falling to the ground. The catch was similar to a crucial and unforgettable reception Wake Forest’s A. T. Perry snagged against Syracuse two years ago in the endzone, turning around at the last second and catching the ball that most receivers would hold onto. Banks led the team with 6 catches for 108 yards; Hite, starting his first Wake Forest game at tight end, also stood out as a pass catcher hauling in 4 for 91.

Griffis also connected with Wesley Grimes (3 grabs for 76 yards) early in the first half for a touchdown. On this play Griffis faked a handoff so well that the defense collapsed inside leaving Grimes open by some 25 yards to haul in the 30-yard TD. Surprisingly, Griffis did not run the delayed run pass option mesh as deliberately or methodically, or slowly as Hartman did last season yet Wake is labeling this offense “hang and bang” which is a delayed hand-off, or not, and quick hitting passing attack. Maybe just better marketing than the delayed run-pass option mesh-sounding

Perhaps coaches see his talents leveraged better using different schemes – or maybe they don’t want to show future ACC opponents much of how Griffis runs the delayed offense.

Despite these impressive pass plays, Griffis held onto the ball too long in the pocket on a few plays causing him to be tackled for a loss several times. And he seemed a bit indecisive on a few plays.

“I’m not perfect but I want to be perfect,” he said after the game. “I’m looking forward to seeing on film the mistakes I made so I can correct them and get better.”

Overall he said his team played well particularly in the first half but too often didn’t finish drives with touchdowns and had to settle for field goals. Unexpectedly, he said, Elon showed a lot of edge pressure defensively that did not appear watching pre-game film.

Wake Forest coach Dave Clawson said his new quarterback made several good plays though did hold the ball for too long a few times.

The mix of good plays with some less so mirrored how Wake Forest played overall as a team. They moved the ball well through the air but most of the night struggled to gain more than two or three yards per running play.

Rankin’s key interception

Defensively, for the most part, Wake Forest prevented Elon’s offense from gaining much ground and stopped one long Elon drive when cornerback Demarcus Rankin, blanketing a receiver in the endzone, turned around and found the ball thrown into his chest for a big interception.

Had they scored, having moved the ball downfield inside the 10-yard line, they would have had momentum heading into halftime after being dominated most of the half.

In the third quarter, however, Wake’s defense displayed a stunning breakdown when Elon running back Jalen Hampton went around left end and scampered untouched all the way for a touchdown for Elon’s first score. It was as if Wake’s defense figured they had the game won, being up 27-0, and dialed back their intensity.

It was an embarrassing play – Wake’s worst of the game – an utter collapse defensively, the kind of lapse that will get them beat against stronger opponents as happened several times last season.

The team made other major mistakes, including two penalties on special teams plays and a miscue on a punt return that caused a fumble and loss of more than 10 yards.

Griffis was also picked off in the third quarter by Caleb Curtain who ran the ball back for a touchdown untouched for 45 yards to tighten the score to 27-14 with 4:24 to play. But Elon never got closer.

“We made a slew of mistakes”

“I thought we’d run the ball better,” said coach Clawson, who with last night’s win reached 150 in his 24^th year coaching college football. “We just never really got into a rhythm. We really missed some opportunities out there. And we made a slew of mistakes. But I thought our defense played really well – definitely as good as it’s been in a long time.”

He said he thought his team played well on third downs, generally, which wasn’t the case for most of last season – especially in the loss to Clemson.

But overall he wasn’t thrilled saying if his team doesn’t stop committing penalties and making other mistakes, it “will cost us games later in the season…I understand the competition will get better.”

On a positive note, the defense became stout again in the fourth quarter when cornerback Dashawn Jones picked off a pass to put the game out of reach with Wake Forest ahead 30-14.

After that, Demond Claiborne ran the ball four straight times for 11, 14, and 3 yards, and then a 10-yard slicing run off right tackle for a touchdown, darting in and out, and showing he’s a strong number two back behind Justice Ellison. Claiborne’s runs were a bright sign (13 for 70 yards) for the offense in what was otherwise an underwhelming running attack.

Kicker Matthew Dennis converted three field goals, from 34, 24, and 29 yards, to round out the scoring for Wake Forest.

Next up for the Demon Deacons will be Vanderbilt at home on September 9^th.