Recap: Turnover Doom Deacs as Wake Falls to Duke 49-32

That was not the ending to the regular season Wake Forest was hoping for. With a 10-win season still in the cards for the Deacs, Wake played maybe their worst game of the season, constantly shooting themselves in the foot to play themselves right out of what was a very winnable game. That simply did not look like the team we have watched for the past 11 games.

Wake was sloppy in this one right from the jump. In the first 2 Blue Devil drives, the Deacon defense committed about 60 yards of penalties, basically handing Duke 2 easy touchdowns to take a 14-3 at the end of the first quarter. Pretty much every time the Deacs stopped Duke from gaining positive yards in those first 2 drives, they either had a 15-yard personal foul penalty or a pass interference penalty. Penalties were a huge problem for the Deacs today—Wake finished with 8 penalties for 97 yards, and almost all of them either extended drives for Duke or completely killed drives for Wake.

Penalties were far from the biggest issue for Wake today. After a 22-yard touchdown pass from Robby Ashford to Sawyer Racanelli to cut the lead to 14-10, the Deacs finally stopped the Duke offense and were driving for a chance to take the lead. It felt like Wake had overcome the awful start and were going to take command of the game right before the half. Instead, Demon Claiborne fumbled a simple pitch at the 26-yard line, giving Duke the ball back and keeping Wake from taking their first lead of the game. That fumble was the first of what was to come, as the Deacs turned the ball over 4 times (5 if you count the turnover on downs) throughout the game. In total, Wake Forest fumble the ball 5 times today, and they were lucky to only lose 3 of them—it is just nearly impossible to win a game on the road giving the ball away that many times.

What made this game so frustrating is that despite all the penalties and turnovers, the Deacs still had a chance to make a comeback late in the 4th quarter. With 7 minutes left in the game, the Wake Forest defense held on a 4th down, with the Deacs trailing by just 10 points. On Wake’s next possession, Ashford moved ball right down the field, and again, it looked like Wake was going to score and cut the lead to 3 points. Instead, Claiborne fumbled the ball yet again on a screen pass at the 27-yard line, ending the drive. The Deacs got the ball back with the exact same scenario, but just 2 minutes remaining in the game—a comeback in that situation is unlikely, but not impossible considering how the Wake Forest offense was moving the ball. The comeback hope would be short-lived, however, as Robby Ashford was stripped from behind on the 1st play of the drive. Two chances to cut into the lead and make it a 1 score game, and both were fumbled away by the Wake Forest offense.

It is disappointing that Wake played such a bad game to finish the regular season. What’s worse is that the Deacs wasted an incredible game from QB Robby Ashford, who had struggled for a large portion of the season. Ashford finished the game with 386 total yards and 3 total touchdowns, giving him an impressive 985 total yards and 9 total touchdowns over Wake’s final 3 games. He was so good that the team almost looked like a Clawson era team today, where the offense threw the ball all over the field and the defense couldn’t buy a stop.

Even special teams were awful today, with the Deacs giving up an 80-yard kickoff return and allowing Duke to get a crucial first down on a fake punt where the entire punt team just turned their back on the punter. This one was just kind of a catastrophic failure at pretty much every level of the game.

The good news is that this is not the end of the season for Wake Forest. However you feel about the performance today, the Deacs still won 8 games this season and will be playing in a bowl game at the end of the year. For a team that was predicted to win about 3 games from pretty much every media outlet and college football pundit, it’s hard to be too mad about an 8-4 overall record. This season was a massive success, and it looks like the Deacs are in good hands going forward.

Onto the bowl game.

Go Deacs!