Our familiar ACC friend Wake Forest is back on the schedule for the 4th time in 7 years and third straight visit to Notre Dame Stadium in this young, modern series. In the last game, the Demon Deacons watched their then second-year head coach Dave Clawson get really heated (he kind of lost it there for a bit, remember?) but Wake made the Irish sweat in an unconvincing 28-7 victory.
Wake Forest (+14) at Notre Dame
Notre Dame Stadium
South Bend, Indiana
Date: Saturday, November 4, 2017
Time: 3:30 PM ET
Television: NBC
Series: 3-0-0 Notre Dame
Now in the middle of his 4th season, Clawson has overcome the loss of defensive coordinator Mike Elko (and linebackers coach Clark Lea) and has his best Wake Forest team of his tenure, by a fair margin. Let’s dissect if they can put a true scare into Notre Dame 4 days after Halloween.
3 Matchups to Watch
Wake’s Ball Protection vs. Notre Dame’s Defense
For the second straight week the Irish will be facing an offense that severely limits their turnovers. The dispatched NC State team came into last Saturday with only 3 fumbles lost and no interceptions and as of today still leads the country in fewest turnovers. Of course, the Wolfpack did throw their first pick of the season and it was an awfully big one, at that.
Wake Forest is nearly as impressive with just 2 fumbles lost and 3 interceptions–that’s tied for 2nd nationally in fewest turnovers. If you’re the Demon Deacons you’re a little worried because the Irish aren’t turning it over either (7 in 8 games, t-15th nationally) but the Notre Dame defense has caused almost twice as many turnovers than their opponent this weekend.
Keeping QB John Wolford in Check
Wake’s quarterback has played a ton of football first starting all 12 games as a true freshman and now having a renaissance as a true senior this fall. How much of a renaissance, you ask? Coming into this year Wolford managed 30 touchdowns to 35 interceptions for his career and never reached higher than 170 passing yards per game in any of his first 3 campaigns by year’s end.
For 2017 he’s averaging 237 yards per game with 15 touchdowns and 2 interceptions. He’s risen from dead last in the ACC last year to first in passer rating for 2017–pretty impressive.
Wolford can also scoot pretty well, too. He’s coming into the weekend with 778 career rushing yards and that’s with an abominable freshman season that saw Wake give up 14 million sacks for 352 yards. He’s also leading the Deacons in rushing attempts, yards, and touchdowns.
Second-level blocking vs. Wake’s Linebackers
A lot of attention will be paid to defensive lineman Duke Ejiofor and with good reason. He comes into this weekend with 31.5 tackles for loss and 17.5 sacks over his last 21 games. The Irish have shown they can limit the damage or effectiveness of one great player but with the Demon Deacons they have some productive linebackers, too.
Wake hired Minnesota DC Jay Sawvel and he’s continued the Elko system in Winston-Salem. Middle linebacker Grant Dawson is a 5th-year senior with 7.5 tackles for loss. Next to him true senior Jaboree Williams has 9.5 tackles for loss, plus Wake deploys redshirt sophomore Justin Strnad at the Buck position in passing situations with his 7 tackles for loss.
2 Stats to Consider
9.25 TFL/Game
Elko’s defense was quite disruptive last year for Wake (21st nationally) and this year they’ve taken things to a whole new level coming into the weekend 1st nationally with 74 tackles for loss and 9.25 per game. We know Notre Dame’s defense is pretty average in this area (58th, an improvement from 106th last year though!) so this could be an edge for the Deacons.
Each offense has essentially given up the same amount of negative plays (47 TFL for Wake, 45 TFL for ND) so we’ll see if Notre Dame’s explosiveness will be enough to counteract what should be a defense that could put them in some early passing downs. It’s worked pretty well for the Irish so far this year and is a trend they’d like to see continued #33Trucking.
35.2% Receiving Yardage
Redshirt freshman receiver Greg Dortch has burst on to the scene this year, and he most definitely made a statement last week with a school-record 4 touchdowns. He had also been completely on fire lately with 480 receiving yards over his last 4 games. Key word there is, had.
Dortch had season-ending abdominal surgery this week and will be a massive loss for Wake Forest. He’s an immediate loss of over a third of Wake’s receiving and he has 35 more catches than the second leading receiver on the team. Dortch also returned punts and kickoffs, being 5th nationally in all-purpose yardage through 9 weeks.
1 Prediction
Wake Forest is in a weird place this weekend. On the one hand, they’re kind of sneaky good, especially relative to their historical standards. It’s been over a decade since the Deacons quickly hit their peak under former head coach Jim Grobe and reached the Orange Bowl–their lone major bowl in school history. Right now, Wake Forest is 26th in FEI a full 8 spots higher than their final 2006 record-setting campaign.
Still, the advanced stats do feel a little bit misleading if only because a team may not always be the same week to week. For example, in addition to the Dortch injury the Deacons will also be without leading tackler safety Jessie Bates and quasi-starting running back Cade Carney. Outside of the QB position those are two incredibly difficult players to overcome in a short period of time.
Offensively, a lot is going to be placed on the shoulders of quarterback John Wolford. He’s already doing so much that without Dortch you wonder how much slack he can pick up on his own. Despite coming off a career-high 461 passing yards last week I think we can agree that A) Louisville has been handing out passing yards like candy this year and B) that’s definitely an outlier for Wolford’s career. For example, that was Wolford’s first 300+ yard passing performance in his last 18 games and first since the 2015 regular season finale.
Wake’s front seven is pretty darn good and that group has to be the unit that leads the way to a win. I actually think Wolford is going to be annoyingly mobile but I can’t see this Deacons offense churning out half a dozen long drives and enough points to hold up.
It’s funny I know I’m not the only Irish fans still looking around the corner for a let down game. Wake’s last visit a couple years ago wasn’t a trap game in the least bit but it was boring and relatively tight at 21-7 in the early 4th quarter. We seem to think this Irish team is better and Wake probably is too, are we headed for another drag-em-out game in which Notre Dame pulls away late?
I personally don’t see a let down game right now in this Irish team’s DNA. The only “this is college football and weird stuff happens all the time to good teams” feeling floating around is turnovers. In my opinion, Notre Dame has very quietly protected the ball extremely well and Wimbush hasn’t thrown an interception over his last 18 quarters. If the game is closer than expected it seems like the Irish are probably due for a couple wacky turnovers that they’ll have to fight through.
All these 20-point wins and covers in 7 out of 8 games, man it feels like Vegas is going to start evening things out. I trust Wake’s defense to be solid enough to make this a good game and a slight cover for the Irish. Yet, not quite one of the more memorable games from this season.
- WINNER: Notre Dame 35 Wake Forest 19
- VS. SPREAD (-14): Notre Dame
- OVER/UNDER (55.0): Under
- SPECIAL, SMYTHE REC YDS (58.5): Over
Just back from a trip and was hoping to see yet another Eric preview – they are always a treat and this one is no different. I am wondering about the coaching angles:
1, it seems like quite a feat for Coach Clawson to have actually improved his defense after losing what we all seem to feel are two damn good coaches (Elko and Lea). Interesting that he made a lateral hire from a Big Ten team as DC and that this is working out for him. So concern factor rises for me when playing what one knows will be a well-coached team. The Clemson loss actually looks pretty good for them, but does the Ga Tech loss give us hope for the running game?
2, BK noted with a laugh at the presser that Bill Reese’s analysis of Wake had been more valuable than Mike Elko’s, whose take, BK alleged, was heavily tinged with emotion. Maybe that was tongue in cheek but I would think the move of Elko and Lea would actually work to Wake’s advantage in some ways.
Well one possible reason for Wake’s improvement is that they no longer have to deal with a disgruntled employee handing their game plans opponents every week.
Amazing how pedestrian Louisville can look when they don’t have Wake’s gameplan.
Does #33Trucking mean anything for the game plan? We have averaged 46 running plays per game (Includes scrambles I think). Does that go well north of 50 this week?
It will be interesting to see. He had the ankle issue and some blowouts but with 132 carries in 8 games, that’s only 16.5 carries per game on the season for Adams. I was surprised that last week (27) was a career high. And a career high by far really (previous was 20 carries both vs Pitt in 2015 and Syracuse in 2016).
So, pretty much, increased carries might mean 20-25 for Adams. That seems about right for a solid gameplan.
I think #33Trucking already affected our gameplan against NC State. Otherwise, Adams wouldn’t have gotten those end-of-game carries (which were not very productive on average) that brought his total carries up to a record 27 in one game.
Just ordered the hat!
Any of you guys know if I can watch the game live on the NBC Sports app on mobile? Won’t be home to watch this weekend. Thanks.
I’ve watched all the home games on iPad, I think I’ve used a phone a couple times too though so you should be good.
Yep. When you start the video you’ll need to log in with your TV provider account, so be prepared for that. The feed is also substantially behind, usually from 30 seconds to a minute, but that’s pretty standard for live TV on a mobile device. The funny part of that is that I follow the official ND football Twitter account, so I usually get Twitter notification pop-ups on big play tweets right before they happen in the NBC Sports app.
Last week I told my wife, “Hang on, we’re about to score…” and she looked at me funny. Although I’m not sure it was related to the game, she looks at me funny a lot.
Yeah, can’t watch the game on NBC Sports app and participate in the Slack chat. It basically ruins all the big plays.
If your wife said to you “Hang on, we’re about to score…” and WASN’T talking about the game, then you should have gotten a happy look on your face.
Yes, but I’m my experence their app is garbage that has issues with lag and freezing
Thanks all!
Malik Zaire Named Florida’s Starting QB vs. Missouri
That plan of a “time share” at qb last year looks worse and worse in retrospect
Last year goes in the same bin we put 2007, never to be opened again.
2007? Never heard of it.
Don’t know if you guys saw this, but it’s pretty dope. Really, really like this team
https://twitter.com/ndfootball/status/926483383164723200
That was cool.
More importantly, though, as I glanced down the page….
THERE IS A HOLDER OF THE YEAR AWARD? AND MVG IS NOMINATED?!?! LIKE, THAT’S A SERIOUS AWARD?!?!
As an ex-holder myself, I can say there’s much more to holding than just holding. You’ve also got to hold.
That’s the one I was talking about in the film review article. Very cool!!!
inject that directly into my veins
Bonjour, CardinalBaseball — thanks a whole damn big ton for this. I don’t have a Twitter account, so I would never have seen it. And it be just freaking wonderful. My dad was what they used to call a “watch charm guard” on the Alumni Hall dorm champion team that beat the frosh way back when we did it that way; I was raised to worship O-lines. This one is turning into one of my favorites.
#33Trucking is available here http://www.bkstr.com/ProductDisplay?urlRequestType=Base&catalogId=10001&categoryId=544256&productId=77617788&errorViewName=ProductDisplayErrorView&langId=-1&top_category=10029&parent_category_rn=10029&storeId=10900
https://www.33trucking.com
I expect a couple long TD passes off play action today and another big day for the ground game. I think teams have to start loading the box to stop Adams between the tackles and take their chances with BW’s arm or they will just die a slower death with 33 trucking.
Well other teams *have* been loading the box, they’re just getting crushed at the line of scrimmage which is why Adams’ big runs always seem to have him emerging from the hole with only a safety in front of him.
Gents,
Over seas and on overseas wifi. Can’t search effectively now, so could someone please provide the info for the game chat? I remember a post on it, but cannot find it.
Can’t watch the game, so thinking of keeping up vicariously through chat updates.
Thanks in advance.
i just did a pretty thorough search and couldn’t find it either. If no one else responds to you i’d try getting on twitter and tagging #18S and asking…that’ll be likely to get someone’s attention.
Dannan, thanks for the response. Would love to try that, but twitter is blocked and banned in the country I am currently in.
I’ll lurk and hope that the chat app is also not blocked here.
Bummer 🙁
No love I guess
Hey, I got a new phone and can’t figure out how to log into slack. Any help?
Youtube Live Link
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-JwTcB-2as
Slack link anyone?
https://join.slack.com/t/18stripesgameday/shared_invite/MjM0NzM3NzQ3MDEwLTE1MDQyMTI0MTQtODA3Yzc1Mjc2Yg
Thanks Eric, do I need to be admitted from the lobby?
Belay my last, figured it out.
Thanks, Eric!!!! All loaded up for next week – I’ll be reporting live from Hard Rock stadium!