Instant Analysis: Clemson-Wake Forest

Only nineteen points might have been scored Thursday night in Winston-Salem, N.C., but Wake Forest’s 12-7 triumph over Clemson had to rate as one of the craziest low-scoring games to ever come down the pike. In a bizarre battle where style points never hinted at making an appearance, Jim Grobe’s group found the fortitude needed to gain a firm hold on the ACC Atlantic Division.

With this win in their pocket, the Demon Deacons now control their destiny in the ACC, while Tommy Bowden’s Tigers were all but eliminated in the chase for the conference title that has eluded them throughout a difficult decade. But until the final few minutes, Wake struggled and stumbled despite outplaying Clemson for most of the evening. The Demon Deacons’ death-defying dance between forcefulness and futility made for a fascinating piece of football theater.

To understand how weird and perplexing this game turned out to be, consider a few statistics and realities from the night’s action in the Carolinas:

* Wake recorded the game’s first 10 first downs, racking up 100 rushing yards before Clemson merely climbed out of negative rushing territory.

* The Deacs had 15 red-zone scrimmage plays to Clemson’s five, and—much more instructively—31 snaps inside Clemson’s final third of the field, otherwise considered the “scoring third” of the field, marked by a team’s 33-yard line. Clemson, meanwhile, could only manage six total snaps inside the Wake 33, and all those scrimmage plays came on one drive, the sole scoring march of the night for the visitors.

* Wake converted six of its first 14 third-down opportunities, and finished 10 for 21 on the evening. Clemson, meanwhile, failed on its first eight third-down snaps, while succeeding on just two of 14 tries. The Tigers also went 1 for 4 on fourth downs. All told, when combining both sides of the ball, Wake won 22 of 35 third-down scrimmage plays, and three of five fourth-down snaps (the Deacons’ offense failed on one fourth-down attempt). That’s almost a two-to-one ratio in favor of the Forest.

* The Demon Deacons also enjoyed advantages at or near the same 2:1 ratio in terms of penalties (Clemson 7, Wake 3), total yards (Wake 342, Clemson 198), and rushing attempts (Wake 46, Clemson 23).

Up and down the line, then, a surface look at this game suggested that the 2006 ACC champions should have throttled Clemson with considerable ease. That, however, didn’t happen, in a nutty white-knuckler that wasn’t decided until the final few minutes of regulation time.

For all their dominance on defense, and despite their ability to run the ball, the Deacons—the hare to Clemson’s tortoise—acted as though the race was over before they crossed the finish line. This was never more apparent than on Wake’s first drive of the night. Three rushing plays gained 63 total yards, quickly marching the ball to the Clemson 1. But on the following three rushing plays, the Deacons lost six yards, and on the ensuing field goal attempt, a mistake by holder Ryan McManus brought about a miss by Shane Popham, a last-minute replacement for Wake’s standout placekicker, Sam Swank, who missed this contest with an injury.

The trajectory of that first Wake Forest foray deep into Clemson territory would set a tone that would come to color the entirety of this ACC encounter. Wake would get its opponent on the ropes, only for the Tigers’ gallant defense to rise up precisely when Clemson was about to suffer a damaging wound. When the Deacons—unable to crack the end zone—were ready to settle for a field goal and gain some points from a drive, the absence of Swank came back to haunt them.

In addition to the field goal that fizzled due to the botched hold, Wake witnessed another field goal failure in the second quarter, when Popham badly missed from 39 yards. Stung by the realization that his backup kicker wasn’t up to snuff, Grobe—a head coach who seemed to sweat during this game as much as his team did—eschewed field goal attempts on two later drives, from the Clemson 35 (a 4th and 9 led to a punt) and the Clemson 31 (a 4th and 5 pass failed). With a healthy Swank, the Deacs could have established a two-possession lead before Clemson’s first touchdown, making their night a whole lot easier. But given the sputtering special teams play of Wake Forest—who lost at home to Clemson in 2006 because of a blocked field goal that turned into a telltale Tiger touchdown—the Deacons couldn’t land the roundhouse punch that would send Clemson crashing to the canvas.

While Wake did everything but score, Clemson simply did nothing for the game’s first two and a half quarters, as the Deacons—despite scoring a lone field goal—nevertheless held onto a lead that didn’t seem insubstantial at the time. Yet, in accordance with the weird nature of the night, the Tigers—futile on third downs—finally converted a few key plays on their one magnificent march. Given ample confidence by the inability of the Deacons to put them away, the Tigers sensed their one big chance to turn the tide, and when Jacoby Ford (who suffered an injury later on) managed to avoid dropping a Cullen Harper pass at the goal line with seven seconds left in the third quarter, the Bowden boys gained the lead.

It didn’t make sense, but the scoreboard didn’t lie: With Clemson up 7-3, the team that had blown so many ACC wins over the past several years stood on the verge of stealing a victory from a better opponent. And when Wake tight end Ben Wooster dropped a perfectly good pass from quarterback Riley Skinner at the Clemson 1 early in the fourth quarter—just a few plays after an Alphonso Smith interception of Harper seemed likely to give Wake the lead—Clemson’s sideline had to think that it couldn’t possibly dodge any more bullets. Tommy Bowden’s tortoise-like team smelled the very finish line that Wake Forest—the hare—refused to cross. A season-swinging, fortune-changing feat was within the grasp of the sons of South Carolina.

This crazy contest’s always-ironic identity, though, would continue to confound.

Trailing 7-6 after that dropped pass at the Clemson 1, the Deacons had to wonder if they’d ever get another chance, having blown so many opportunities at the Tigers’ end of the field. Faced with a 3rd and 24 from his own 8 with just over nine minutes left in regulation, Skinner—the steady senior signal caller who has carried his program to previously unknown heights—had to overcome some very long odds if he was to pull a win out of the fire. Having excelled as a runner in the game’s first three quarters, Skinner struggled with his downfield passing game. If ever a situation figured to deal the Deacs a bad hand, 3rd and 24 was it.

Just when Big Mo stood on the Clemson side of the divide, however, Skinner provided a moment of magic when his team needed it. Much like the Tigers on their single scoring drive of the evening, Skinner blocked out previous frustrations to produce—in roughly 15 seconds—the play that eluded him for the game’s other 59 minutes and 45 seconds.

The Wake Forest quarterback completed only one pass longer than 24 yards against Clemson, and sure enough, that defining dagger came precisely when the Deacons needed 24 yards (and perhaps an additional fraction of a yard) to move the chains. A 28-yard strike to receiver D.J. Boldin turned disaster into Demon Deacon delirium, and predictably, the Forest caught fire. A few plays after that game-changing pass play, the revived and rejuvenated boys in black tallied the game’s winning points on a go-ahead touchdown, with Skinner going back to Boldin for a seven-yard toss at the 5:28 mark of regulation. A Clemson crew that exhausted all of its timeouts with 13:38 left in the fourth quarter proved unable to move the ball, and finally, the deed was done for the Deacs.

Clemson’s noble defense, coached by coordinator Vic Koenning, played heroically, defending both the red zone and the goal line with uncommon resolve and resourcefulness. Clemson defenders spilled the tank time and again to turn troubles—and touchdowns—away. Batting down passes and rising up against quick-hitting red-zone runs, every white-shirted Tiger toiled terrifically, nearly delivering a redemptive and restorative moment to the Clemson football family. A program that has so profoundly underachieved over the past several years received an overachieving effort from its defense in this, the ACC game of the year. That much has to be noted.

But when all was said and done, a dominating defense on the other sideline ensured that Wake would not host its own ACC funeral. Foiled and frustrated for so long despite numerous statistical and territorial advantages, the Deacons overcame the loss of Sam Swank—albeit barely—with a late rally that now has them in the driver’s seat on the road to a division title.

Any attempt to sum up this supremely strange showdown can only say so much—the twists and turns of this perplexing pigskin production were as bountiful as they were bizarre. All in all, an adequate assessment of this weird win for Wake can simply read as follows: Rarely have so much action and drama emerged from a 12-7 football fistfight whose ugliness and unevenness were matched by its gobs of gallantry and grit.