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.