Gritty Griffis, Defense Rescue Wake Forest From Disaster

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On the brink of a disastrous loss and trailing 17-0 at half-time, Wake Forest’s football team (now 3 and 0) dug deep and managed to come back from the dead and get past Old Dominion University, 27-24.

The team’s quarterback, Mitch Griffis, made up for an extremely shaky game and two awful first-half turnovers, and injured during the game, by connecting on two touchdown passes in the fourth quarter to lead his team back from the depths of football despair, losing to a team they were expected to beat.

Wake defense dominates second half

The Wake Forest defense dialed up its performance in a huge way in the second half and piled up, overall, 10 sacks of the quarterback. The most important came when linebacker Jacob Roberts tackled ODU’s quarterback, yanked the ball loose, and Jasheen Davis fell on it on the ODU six-yard line to massively swing the game’s momentum that, almost the entire game, swung ODU’s way.

Gritty Griffis hits Morin for huge TD

Trailing 24-13 with 13:27 in the fourth, with Griffis slightly limping and with speculation his backup, Michael Kern, may have to replace him and Wake was probably going to lose.

But deep in Wake’s own territory, he hit Ke’Shawn Williams for a big first down on third down. Running back Justice Ellison then ran to the right for 11 yards. Then in the grittiest Griffis play of the game, he lofted a clean strike to Morin for a 48-yard touchdown pass over the middle with nine minutes left, closing the gap to 24-19.

This you had to admire about Gritty Griffis, staying tough and leading his team after playing with so much inefficiency and looking mostly psychologically worn down by ODU’s claustrophobic-inducing defensive pressure.

When ODU got the ball, linebacker Jacob Roberts sacked ODU’s quarterback – the eighth for Wake Forest and the one consistent positive the team showed all game long.

On the next play, Roberts sacked QB again, yanked the ball loose, and Jasheen Davis recovered to put the ball on the ODU 6-yard line with 7 minutes left. Two plays later, Griffis rolled out to the right and hit Jahmal Banks in the right corner for a touchdown to give Wake its first lead at 27-24.

This was a turnaround that, after all that had gone wrong for Wake Forest, did not seem feasible nor imaginable; they seemed destined to lose this game almost the whole way through.

Morin sparks with punt return

Late in the third quarter Morin also sparked his team with a 34-yard punt return and Demond Claiborne’s gashing run to the ODU 9-yard line looked like a real game was in store. Then Griffis got sacked and went down with an injury, and went into the sideline hood to be checked. A hard day all day this was for this young man, being chased, throwing two awfully ill-advised interceptions and nearly two others. Dennis then hit a 36-yard field goal to narrow the lead to 24-13 as the third quarter ticked away.

Wake showed its first signs of real hope on its first drive of the second half. Griffis stepped out of the pocket and hit receiver Taylor Morin in the endzone, who was 10 yards away from any defender. Ellison’s productive rushing yards sparked this drive, and he bounced around after these successful plays looking confident, and obviously trying to infuse confidence, in his teammates whose confidence had been rattled in the first half.

A 75-yard drive it was – the most inspiring they looked all day to that point by miles. Could Wake come back building on this momentum?

Maybe, it seemed, after the defensive registered a quick three and out-registered. But then Griffis, so disturbingly inept, got blitzed and threw a wobbly pass up the middle that became a LaMareon James interception and a 40-yard run back for a touchdown for ODU. Yet another explosive play that Clawson insists this team cannot allow. Hello, 24 to 7 – game over; let’s all turn our TVs off to salvage some joy from the weekends we weren’t getting watching our team ruin itself. This is how it felt at the time: over, a loss.

Griffis got lucky when he threw another pass into the chest of an ODU defender who just dropped it. Matthew Dennis converted a field goal to close the lead to 24-10 with 3:50 to play in the third quarter.

Wake was utterly whipped in the first half

Throughout the first half, Wake Forest got utterly whipped and embarrassed. By half-time, they trailed ODU 17-0 and it felt like they could have been –should have been — down by more.

The grand old mess started early in the second quarter when the Wake secondary gave up an explosive 68-yard TD pass from Grant Wilson to receiver Javon Harvey – exactly what Wake coach Dave Clawson says they have to avoid. On this play freshman defensive back Jamare Glasker fell for a fake into the middle and got beat deep – exactly what Clawson said they could not allow to happen and was a major deficiency last season.

Giving up explosive plays, said Clawson, cannot continue he repeatedly says, which made it more jarring when this continued Saturday.

And Griffis played by far the worst half of his young career, allowing a second explosive play when, on the cusp of his team scoring, he dropped the ball inside the Old Dominion 10-yard line. Defensive back LaMareon James picked it up and sprinted 85 yards for a touchdown, opening a 14-0 lead.

It was an abject screw-up at an extremely inopportune time.

Griffis could not have blown this situation any worse than he did; all he had to do was throw the ball away avoid a mistake and get a few more chances to score and make the game competitive. This play was a mental shock and downer for Wake Forest that festered the rest of the game.

All half long he looked agitated by the relentless rush and blitzes and uncertain what to do. He almost threw another interception late in the first half after being pressured yet again.

The first half had a similar feel to last season’s disaster against Louisville when the team turned it over five times in the span of just a few minutes and the game – and hopes for a great season – fizzled away in what felt like the time it takes to say “allowing explosive plays.”

In every phase of the game – especially blasting through the offensive line – ODU outplayed Wake Forest. Wake compounded their problems by falling for a fake punt that went for a first down, got penalized several times, and drew up a blueprint with all the details you need to follow to throw away a football game.

Even at 14-0, it felt as if the game was over; as it turned out it was – until it wasn’t. It didn’t seem possible, but Wake Forest made ODU look like a national power in football, which they are not.

Everything Wake Forest did in the first half felt destined for futility. Third and longs on offense, unable to stop ODU on offense, inept on offense, out-toughed, out-schemed, humiliated.

ODU, doing everything right and riding a day when all things fell in their favor, added a 49-yard field goal. Right before the half, the kicker missed a field goal right – one of the very few mistakes the team made the whole first half.

Then Gritty Griffis, Morin, Banks, Williams, Roberts, and Davis on defense, rescued their team from the depths of a bad loss.

In the clutch.

Under pressure.

To stay undefeated.

Onward to Georgia Tech next Saturday in Winston-Salem.