Wake Week: Final Impressions

1.) This is bad, bad news for a struggling offense:

Coach Jim Grobe said yesterday that Harris, a redshirt freshman who leads the Deacons with 524 yards rushing, has sufficiently recovered from the concussion he suffered last week against Boston College. But Grobe said that the team’s two regular starters at guard, Joe Looney and Michael Hoag, will both miss the game.

[snip]

With Looney and Hoag out, redshirt center Russ Nenon will move to left guard, redshirt sophomore Gabe Irby will start at right guard, and redshirt sophomore Garrick Williams will start at center. Nenon has played the last two games with a broken right hand.

Looney has started 16 straight games, and Hoag has started nine straight. Neither Irby nor Williams has ever started.

With the starting center shifting to one of the guard slots in order to accomodate the replacements, the whole of Wake Forest's interior is in disarray.  Both replacements will be making their first college start.

Also mentioned here is running back Josh Harris, who is expected to play despite suffering a concussion last week.  Harris is the Deacs' leading rusher with 524 yards on 91 carries (5.8 per attempt) and has been the focal point of the rushing attack since he ran for 241 yards against Virginia Tech a month ago.

The ground game has been the most successful aspect of Wake Forest's offense in conference play.  They're fifth in the ACC in both yards per carry (4.4) and yards per game (168).

2.) I'm trying to find stuff to worry about heading into tomorrow, because among my list of preposterous concerns is the concern that I might jinx a game simply by not worrying about losing it.  But, man, their defense is bad, their passing offense is serviceable at best, and their offensive line just imploded.  I got nothin'.  We should build a big enough cushion that the unsettled kicking situation won't matter.  Right now the Bong Club is lightin' one up and meditating on the possibilities.

3.) The way I see it, we've gone about this whole kicker thing the wrong way because we haven't gone about it the Lions way, which is the wrong way but faster.  When we're up 48-21 in the fourth quarter, we're just going to send out one of our other kickers--whose job it is to kick--to kick that last, meaningless extra point.  And that is no fun whatsoever.  I want to see a fat man kick the football.  Or a cheerleader.  Or maybe let Tuffy have a go.