My Take | Syracusefan.com

My Take

sutomcat

No recent Cali or Iggy awards; Mr Irrelevant
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I have been in North Carolina since Thursday, staying with a friend and getting some golf in. Also enjoying NC BBQ. Still not 100% sure about that Eastern Carolina vinegar sauce but it is growing on me.

In the Raleigh region. Drove to Winston Salem on Saturday afternoon. A little less than 2 hours. Got there shortly after 5 pm. TexanMark had the tailgate well underway. Big turnout (around 70)? Everyone seemed to be having a good time. The kegs of beer helped with that.

Wake is a great place for visiting fans to tailgate at. There is a pay lot maybe 300 yards from the stadium with lots of room and they allow grilling and open containers. Just a lot more room and a lot more convenience than other ACC schools. Had good discussions with a lot of diehard fans, met up with some old friends, made some new friends. Wonderful tailgate. Another great job by Mark.

Headed over to the stadium about 20 minutes before kickoff. Easy walk, no problems with our electronic tickets or getting through the security scanners. Looked at their concessions. Didn’t see anything special or interesting there. They have a small stadium with just one level and one concourse, but it is very wide and has large open open airspaces behind the endzones. They allow food trucks to drive into the stadium perimeter and set up in the end zones. Pretty cool, though most of them seemed to be selling cold treats. Not good on a cold late fall night.

Wake fans were pretty friendly. No confrontations of any kind. Never have had any problems with Wake fans. A lot of the young fans there, presumably students, were wearing animal costumes. Young furries. I remarked on this to my friend and said ‘it must be a Wake thing’. A Wake fan overheard me, and assured me this was not a Wake thing. That he sees people dresses up in these type of costumes on games on TV all the time. I see one or two students in a student section dress up in something weird most college games too but not 100-200 kids. A bunch more came to the game wearing what looked like adult Dr Carter one piece pajamas. No issues with it. They seemed like good kids. But it is different to me.

Wake did not have a good crowd. We were on the student section side of the field, which appeared to have more fans than the other side. The side I could see clearly had a ton of empty seats. Was maybe 15% full. I think the side we were sitting in was more like 50% full. I think it holds 32K. Guessing there were about 15K actually there. They made almost no noise. Very quiet crowd. The student section is usually loud but not the Wake students. The crowd seemed older and very chill.

Wake’s PA system was really loud. Maybe the loudest PA I have ever heard at a football game. They played blaring songs after every play, until just before the ball was snapped. Played their piped in noise longer when Syracuse had the ball to try and get some kind of home field advantage. Pretty sleazy and the noise gave me a headache.

They have a nice replay scoreboard in one of the end zones. The one with grass. A bunch of people brought blankets and sat or lay on them. Old school for sure.

It was cold. Weather.com said it was 43 at the coldest during the game but it felt colder. The wind got stronger as the game went on and by the fourth quarter, I was getting cold, even wearing 5 layers. Make one appreciate a heated dome.

They had a first down chant. When they got one, and they got a lot of them, the PA guy would say ‘Another first down for Wake……’ and some of the crowd would say ‘Forest’. Not sure we can translate that or make use of it.

Let’s talk about the game. My expectations were low given we were down 3 starting OL. Was very pleasantly surprised by the play of the backups. Enrique played LT and I thought was terrific. We made a major mistake playing Davis all season at RT. He is much better at OG, where he was last night. Vet moved to RT, where he was good but I think he was our weakest pass blocker. His hold took away a key TD at a point where we were taking control of the game. Still, he was playing out of position and I think he did well considering this. Ilaoa played center and I thought he played well. Other than the one early snap that wrecked a drive, he was good.

It was predicable that Cruz and Ilaoa were going to start but I was really interested to see who the other starter was going to be. It ended up being transfer Jakob Bradford. And he also played well. Props to all of the replacements. I think this gives some insight into the starting lineup at OL next year.

Pretty sure we will see Ilaoa at center and Enrique at LT. Bradford is probably going to be one of the OGs, along with Ellis. RT looks to be wide open. If Bleich returns and is healthy, maybe Bradford moves to RT. Anyway, I feel better about the OL for next season after this game. There is hope there.

It was great to see the offense move the ball consistently (except for that awful 3rd quarter). Garrett looked sharp and very good. Lots of good passes and good decisions on where to pass the ball. It was great to see our WRs getting open consistently. Wake played man coverage all game long and dared us to throw it long and we took advantage of this and burned them deep repeatedly. Just missed with a number of other long passes. Our replacement OL players appeared to do a much better job pass blocking than some of the injured starters. They also opened some decent holes for Sean to run through (though he did some serious free lancing as well to get extra yards), Nice to see Sean getting good yardage consistently again.

I think we probably win the game if Mikel Jones did not get hurt early. All the starters we have lost have hurt but losing him hurts the most. We just didn’t have our rock in the middle and this was, I think, a huge key towards Wake’s success running the ball.

The only way we could stop Wake from running was to get our safeties into the box and commit them to run support. To do this, we had to put our CBs in man and hope they could cover a good group of Wake WRs. Thought we did a decent job of this but Perry was just too good and he abused Johnson pretty badly. And Duce got hurt fairly early, which meant we had to out Jeremiah Wilson, a true frosh, out there at the other CB position for most of the game. He did pretty well but we lost a lot without Duce on the field. After getting torched in man in the first half, I think we went with a soft zone coverage most of the second half but Wake just took the day 5-10 yard passes to their WRs and marched down the field that way (with some runs mixed in). It is hard to beat a good passing team with your top 2 CBs injured. Would have loved to have seen us play them with Garrett and a healthy Duce out there.

My only issue with Garrett was him taking those two huge sacks near the end of the first half. He has to throw the ball away there. We lost at least 3 points there and Wake got the ball back with some time on the clock and scored that late TD to end the half. This completely changed the game; We didn’t have much margin for error and that was tough to overcome.

Special teams were pretty good. Andre missed a couple and did not have a good game. Max struggled punting early but I think he got better as the game went on. Brady was great kicking off. And our KO return unit was impressive all game long. That was good to see.

Nice Syracuse turnout last night. We had a couple thousand and our fans were louder than theirs most of the game.

That BC game is going to define the season. If we can find a way to win, I think the season is a success. Especially if we win our bowl game. I am hoping Duce can play. BC has a couple of good WRs and not much else. That might be enough to cause big issues for us.
 
I have been in North Carolina since Thursday, staying with a friend and getting some golf in. Also enjoying NC BBQ. Still not 100% sure about that Eastern Carolina vinegar sauce but it is growing on me.

In the Raleigh region. Drove to Winston Salem on Saturday afternoon. A little less than 2 hours. Got there shortly after 5 pm. TexanMark had the tailgate well underway. Big turnout (around 70)? Everyone seemed to be having a good time. The kegs of beer helped with that.

Wake is a great place for visiting fans to tailgate at. There is a pay lot maybe 300 yards from the stadium with lots of room and they allow grilling and open containers. Just a lot more room and a lot more convenience than other ACC schools. Had good discussions with a lot of diehard fans, met up with some old friends, made some new friends. Wonderful tailgate. Another great job by Mark.

Headed over to the stadium about 20 minutes before kickoff. Easy walk, no problems with our electronic tickets or getting through the security scanners. Looked at their concessions. Didn’t see anything special or interesting there. They have a small stadium with just one level and one concourse, but it is very wide and has large open open airspaces behind the endzones. They allow food trucks to drive into the stadium perimeter and set up in the end zones. Pretty cool, though most of them seemed to be selling cold treats. Not good on a cold late fall night.

Wake fans were pretty friendly. No confrontations of any kind. Never have had any problems with Wake fans. A lot of the young fans there, presumably students, were wearing animal costumes. Young furries. I remarked on this to my friend and said ‘it must be a Wake thing’. A Wake fan overheard me, and assured me this was not a Wake thing. That he sees people dresses up in these type of costumes on games on TV all the time. I see one or two students in a student section dress up in something weird most college games too but not 100-200 kids. A bunch more came to the game wearing what looked like adult Dr Carter one piece pajamas. No issues with it. They seemed like good kids. But it is different to me.

Wake did not have a good crowd. We were on the student section side of the field, which appeared to have more fans than the other side. The side I could see clearly had a ton of empty seats. Was maybe 15% full. I think the side we were sitting in was more like 50% full. I think it holds 32K. Guessing there were about 15K actually there. They made almost no noise. Very quiet crowd. The student section is usually loud but not the Wake students. The crowd seemed older and very chill.

Wake’s PA system was really loud. Maybe the loudest PA I have ever heard at a football game. They played blaring songs after every play, until just before the ball was snapped. Played their piped in noise longer when Syracuse had the ball to try and get some kind of home field advantage. Pretty sleazy and the noise gave me a headache.

They have a nice replay scoreboard in one of the end zones. The one with grass. A bunch of people brought blankets and sat or lay on them. Old school for sure.

It was cold. Weather.com said it was 43 at the coldest during the game but it felt colder. The wind got stronger as the game went on and by the fourth quarter, I was getting cold, even wearing 5 layers. Make one appreciate a heated dome.

They had a first down chant. When they got one, and they got a lot of them, the PA guy would say ‘Another first down for Wake……’ and some of the crowd would say ‘Forest’. Not sure we can translate that or make use of it.

Let’s talk about the game. My expectations were low given we were down 3 starting OL. Was very pleasantly surprised by the play of the backups. Enrique played LT and I thought was terrific. We made a major mistake playing Davis all season at RT. He is much better at OG, where he was last night. Vet moved to RT, where he was good but I think he was our weakest pass blocker. His hold took away a key TD at a point where we were taking control of the game. Still, he was playing out of position and I think he did well considering this. Ilaoa played center and I thought he played well. Other than the one early snap that wrecked a drive, he was good.

It was predicable that Cruz and Ilaoa were going to start but I was really interested to see who the other starter was going to be. It ended up being transfer Jakob Bradford. And he also played well. Props to all of the replacements. I think this gives some insight into the starting lineup at OL next year.

Pretty sure we will see Ilaoa at center and Enrique at LT. Bradford is probably going to be one of the OGs, along with Ellis. RT looks to be wide open. If Bleich returns and is healthy, maybe Bradford moves to RT. Anyway, I feel better about the OL for next season after this game. There is hope there.

It was great to see the offense move the ball consistently (except for that awful 3rd quarter). Garrett looked sharp and very good. Lots of good passes and good decisions on where to pass the ball. It was great to see our WRs getting open consistently. Wake played man coverage all game long and dared us to throw it long and we took advantage of this and burned them deep repeatedly. Just missed with a number of other long passes. Our replacement OL players appeared to do a much better job pass blocking than some of the injured starters. They also opened some decent holes for Sean to run through (though he did some serious free lancing as well to get extra yards), Nice to see Sean getting good yardage consistently again.

I think we probably win the game if Mikel Jones did not get hurt early. All the starters we have lost have hurt but losing him hurts the most. We just didn’t have our rock in the middle and this was, I think, a huge key towards Wake’s success running the ball.

The only way we could stop Wake from running was to get our safeties into the box and commit them to run support. To do this, we had to put our CBs in man and hope they could cover a good group of Wake WRs. Thought we did a decent job of this but Perry was just too good and he abused Johnson pretty badly. And Duce got hurt fairly early, which meant we had to out Jeremiah Wilson, a true frosh, out there at the other CB position for most of the game. He did pretty well but we lost a lot without Duce on the field. After getting torched in man in the first half, I think we went with a soft zone coverage most of the second half but Wake just took the day 5-10 yard passes to their WRs and marched down the field that way (with some runs mixed in). It is hard to beat a good passing team with your top 2 CBs injured. Would have loved to have seen us play them with Garrett and a healthy Duce out there.

My only issue with Garrett was him taking those two huge sacks near the end of the first half. He has to throw the ball away there. We lost at least 3 points there and Wake got the ball back with some time on the clock and scored that late TD to end the half. This completely changed the game; We didn’t have much margin for error and that was tough to overcome.

Special teams were pretty good. Andre missed a couple and did not have a good game. Max struggled punting early but I think he got better as the game went on. Brady was great kicking off. And our KO return unit was impressive all game long. That was good to see.

Nice Syracuse turnout last night. We had a couple thousand and our fans were louder than theirs most of the game.

That BC game is going to define the season. If we can find a way to win, I think the season is a success. Especially if we win our bowl game. I am hoping Duce can play. BC has a couple of good WRs and not much else. That might be enough to cause big issues for us.
Zay Flowers might be the best WR in the ACC. And everybody seems to run the ball on us. I think BC will be a close game, maybe last possession. I hope we win.
 
Zay Flowers might be the best WR in the ACC. And everybody seems to run the ball on us. I think BC will be a close game, maybe last possession. I hope we win.

Double him unlike what SU did with Pitts only receiver they allowed to roam at will.
 
Zay Flowers might be the best WR in the ACC. And everybody seems to run the ball on us. I think BC will be a close game, maybe last possession. I hope we win.

It will probably be a lot like the UVA game. We had to squeak out a close home W against one of the worst teams in conference. Hopefully we can pull it off on the road against a similarly bad team.

If we lose to BC, we might end up in last place in the Atlantic and the 3rd worst ACC team. Some people will call that a success because we got 6 Ws.
 
I though coverage was ok for the most part a lot of balls were caught with hands in the grill.

It hasn’t been said post game but we only rushed 3 and sometimes 4 on 3rd and longs and Hartman shredded us for it. Would love to know why we refused to bliz on 3rd downs. It killed us not doing so.

I also prefer Carolina vinegar sauce.
 
Even with Deuce in their WR corp owned our DBs.
Duce was beaten on a double move pretty bad but otherwise his coverage was good. Johnson was turned around a few times. Basically with Duce getting hurt we were without 2 NFL draft picks playing. Also missing Mikel, Thompson, Jaquez and Lockett. All 4 of those guys helped us against the run.
 
I though coverage was ok for the most part a lot of balls were caught with hands in the grill.

It hasn’t been said post game but we only rushed 3 and sometimes 4 on 3rd and longs and Hartman shredded us for it. Would love to know why we refused to bliz on 3rd downs. It killed us not doing so.

I also prefer Carolina vinegar sauce.
Or a delayed blitz.
 
I though coverage was ok for the most part a lot of balls were caught with hands in the grill.

It hasn’t been said post game but we only rushed 3 and sometimes 4 on 3rd and longs and Hartman shredded us for it. Would love to know why we refused to bliz on 3rd downs. It killed us not doing so.

I also prefer Carolina vinegar sauce.

Our DBs played pretty well. Deuce had that one What coverage moment but most of our issues were a lack of a pass rush, which happens when you only rush a few guys.

As to the run D, IMO White is too passive. By blind luck you should occasionally able to force a 2nd and long between your quicker DL and run blitzes. Yes there is a risk that you will give up a big run by doing so, but isn't that better than having 2nd and 4 every time? We don't (and likely will never) have the players to play straight up on D.

Not sure how much of this is not having the horses vs design but most plays we show a 4 man front. We will have a LB at the LOS, a DE on the other side, and our NT and 2nd DE inside. That works fine when you have a DE like Josh Black who has size (or more of a traditional 3-4 DE). But that does not work when you play a smaller DE inside (like your traditional 4-3 DE). Our 2nd DE is way too small. Is that by design or a lack of players? Either way how do you not bring a transfer in?
 
Our DBs played pretty well. Deuce had that one What coverage moment but most of our issues were a lack of a pass rush, which happens when you only rush a few guys.

As to the run D, IMO White is too passive. By blind luck you should occasionally able to force a 2nd and long between your quicker DL and run blitzes. Yes there is a risk that you will give up a big run by doing so, but isn't that better than having 2nd and 4 every time? We don't (and likely will never) have the players to play straight up on D.

Not sure how much of this is not having the horses vs design but most plays we show a 4 man front. We will have a LB at the LOS, a DE on the other side, and our NT and 2nd DE inside. That works fine when you have a DE like Josh Black who has size (or more of a traditional 3-4 DE). But that does not work when you play a smaller DE inside (like your traditional 4-3 DE). Our 2nd DE is way too small. Is that by design or a lack of players? Either way how do you not bring a transfer in?
They tried to bring a transfer. Kids decided to go other places. Hopefully we will be able to get one or two this time around.
Ulloa played good but I still feel we need a true center. Either portal or juco.
Adam’s looked good but it would be great to get another wr with speed to keep the safeties honest.
Really like Allen. Would be good to get a big back. 235 LBs as a change of pace or lead blocker.
Secondary has been hit with injuries but I still feel it is a strength next year. Same with LB. Not sure we need anyone from the portal in those spots.
I figure we will loose 6-8 via the portal. That will free up some scholarships. Several of the wr, possibly an OL (Red) that has not gotten playing time. May a safety or corner down on the depth chart.
 
It will probably be a lot like the UVA game. We had to squeak out a close home W against one of the worst teams in conference. Hopefully we can pull it off on the road against a similarly bad team.

If we lose to BC, we might end up in last place in the Atlantic and the 3rd worst ACC team. Some people will call that a success because we got 6 Ws.
Yep I posted the same thing as your second paragraph on another site. We win we could end up 3rd in the Atlantic potentially and maybe avoid Fenway, which is played so early(12-17) the last thing a banged up team like ours needs. 7-5 is a big difference from 6-6 from a perception standpoint with recruits as well
 
I have been in North Carolina since Thursday, staying with a friend and getting some golf in. Also enjoying NC BBQ. Still not 100% sure about that Eastern Carolina vinegar sauce but it is growing on me.

In the Raleigh region. Drove to Winston Salem on Saturday afternoon. A little less than 2 hours. Got there shortly after 5 pm. TexanMark had the tailgate well underway. Big turnout (around 70)? Everyone seemed to be having a good time. The kegs of beer helped with that.

Wake is a great place for visiting fans to tailgate at. There is a pay lot maybe 300 yards from the stadium with lots of room and they allow grilling and open containers. Just a lot more room and a lot more convenience than other ACC schools. Had good discussions with a lot of diehard fans, met up with some old friends, made some new friends. Wonderful tailgate. Another great job by Mark.

Headed over to the stadium about 20 minutes before kickoff. Easy walk, no problems with our electronic tickets or getting through the security scanners. Looked at their concessions. Didn’t see anything special or interesting there. They have a small stadium with just one level and one concourse, but it is very wide and has large open open airspaces behind the endzones. They allow food trucks to drive into the stadium perimeter and set up in the end zones. Pretty cool, though most of them seemed to be selling cold treats. Not good on a cold late fall night.

Wake fans were pretty friendly. No confrontations of any kind. Never have had any problems with Wake fans. A lot of the young fans there, presumably students, were wearing animal costumes. Young furries. I remarked on this to my friend and said ‘it must be a Wake thing’. A Wake fan overheard me, and assured me this was not a Wake thing. That he sees people dresses up in these type of costumes on games on TV all the time. I see one or two students in a student section dress up in something weird most college games too but not 100-200 kids. A bunch more came to the game wearing what looked like adult Dr Carter one piece pajamas. No issues with it. They seemed like good kids. But it is different to me.

Wake did not have a good crowd. We were on the student section side of the field, which appeared to have more fans than the other side. The side I could see clearly had a ton of empty seats. Was maybe 15% full. I think the side we were sitting in was more like 50% full. I think it holds 32K. Guessing there were about 15K actually there. They made almost no noise. Very quiet crowd. The student section is usually loud but not the Wake students. The crowd seemed older and very chill.

Wake’s PA system was really loud. Maybe the loudest PA I have ever heard at a football game. They played blaring songs after every play, until just before the ball was snapped. Played their piped in noise longer when Syracuse had the ball to try and get some kind of home field advantage. Pretty sleazy and the noise gave me a headache.

They have a nice replay scoreboard in one of the end zones. The one with grass. A bunch of people brought blankets and sat or lay on them. Old school for sure.

It was cold. Weather.com said it was 43 at the coldest during the game but it felt colder. The wind got stronger as the game went on and by the fourth quarter, I was getting cold, even wearing 5 layers. Make one appreciate a heated dome.

They had a first down chant. When they got one, and they got a lot of them, the PA guy would say ‘Another first down for Wake……’ and some of the crowd would say ‘Forest’. Not sure we can translate that or make use of it.

Let’s talk about the game. My expectations were low given we were down 3 starting OL. Was very pleasantly surprised by the play of the backups. Enrique played LT and I thought was terrific. We made a major mistake playing Davis all season at RT. He is much better at OG, where he was last night. Vet moved to RT, where he was good but I think he was our weakest pass blocker. His hold took away a key TD at a point where we were taking control of the game. Still, he was playing out of position and I think he did well considering this. Ilaoa played center and I thought he played well. Other than the one early snap that wrecked a drive, he was good.

It was predicable that Cruz and Ilaoa were going to start but I was really interested to see who the other starter was going to be. It ended up being transfer Jakob Bradford. And he also played well. Props to all of the replacements. I think this gives some insight into the starting lineup at OL next year.

Pretty sure we will see Ilaoa at center and Enrique at LT. Bradford is probably going to be one of the OGs, along with Ellis. RT looks to be wide open. If Bleich returns and is healthy, maybe Bradford moves to RT. Anyway, I feel better about the OL for next season after this game. There is hope there.

It was great to see the offense move the ball consistently (except for that awful 3rd quarter). Garrett looked sharp and very good. Lots of good passes and good decisions on where to pass the ball. It was great to see our WRs getting open consistently. Wake played man coverage all game long and dared us to throw it long and we took advantage of this and burned them deep repeatedly. Just missed with a number of other long passes. Our replacement OL players appeared to do a much better job pass blocking than some of the injured starters. They also opened some decent holes for Sean to run through (though he did some serious free lancing as well to get extra yards), Nice to see Sean getting good yardage consistently again.

I think we probably win the game if Mikel Jones did not get hurt early. All the starters we have lost have hurt but losing him hurts the most. We just didn’t have our rock in the middle and this was, I think, a huge key towards Wake’s success running the ball.

The only way we could stop Wake from running was to get our safeties into the box and commit them to run support. To do this, we had to put our CBs in man and hope they could cover a good group of Wake WRs. Thought we did a decent job of this but Perry was just too good and he abused Johnson pretty badly. And Duce got hurt fairly early, which meant we had to out Jeremiah Wilson, a true frosh, out there at the other CB position for most of the game. He did pretty well but we lost a lot without Duce on the field. After getting torched in man in the first half, I think we went with a soft zone coverage most of the second half but Wake just took the day 5-10 yard passes to their WRs and marched down the field that way (with some runs mixed in). It is hard to beat a good passing team with your top 2 CBs injured. Would have loved to have seen us play them with Garrett and a healthy Duce out there.

My only issue with Garrett was him taking those two huge sacks near the end of the first half. He has to throw the ball away there. We lost at least 3 points there and Wake got the ball back with some time on the clock and scored that late TD to end the half. This completely changed the game; We didn’t have much margin for error and that was tough to overcome.

Special teams were pretty good. Andre missed a couple and did not have a good game. Max struggled punting early but I think he got better as the game went on. Brady was great kicking off. And our KO return unit was impressive all game long. That was good to see.

Nice Syracuse turnout last night. We had a couple thousand and our fans were louder than theirs most of the game.

That BC game is going to define the season. If we can find a way to win, I think the season is a success. Especially if we win our bowl game. I am hoping Duce can play. BC has a couple of good WRs and not much else. That might be enough to cause big issues for us.
There seems to be some week-to-week concern with Duce. Why? This time of year, every player is banged up to a degree. Granted, he’s the best DB we have left, but not sure if I am missing some sort of extra-owie injury.
 
I have been in North Carolina since Thursday, staying with a friend and getting some golf in. Also enjoying NC BBQ. Still not 100% sure about that Eastern Carolina vinegar sauce but it is growing on me.

In the Raleigh region. Drove to Winston Salem on Saturday afternoon. A little less than 2 hours. Got there shortly after 5 pm. TexanMark had the tailgate well underway. Big turnout (around 70)? Everyone seemed to be having a good time. The kegs of beer helped with that.

Wake is a great place for visiting fans to tailgate at. There is a pay lot maybe 300 yards from the stadium with lots of room and they allow grilling and open containers. Just a lot more room and a lot more convenience than other ACC schools. Had good discussions with a lot of diehard fans, met up with some old friends, made some new friends. Wonderful tailgate. Another great job by Mark.

Headed over to the stadium about 20 minutes before kickoff. Easy walk, no problems with our electronic tickets or getting through the security scanners. Looked at their concessions. Didn’t see anything special or interesting there. They have a small stadium with just one level and one concourse, but it is very wide and has large open open airspaces behind the endzones. They allow food trucks to drive into the stadium perimeter and set up in the end zones. Pretty cool, though most of them seemed to be selling cold treats. Not good on a cold late fall night.

Wake fans were pretty friendly. No confrontations of any kind. Never have had any problems with Wake fans. A lot of the young fans there, presumably students, were wearing animal costumes. Young furries. I remarked on this to my friend and said ‘it must be a Wake thing’. A Wake fan overheard me, and assured me this was not a Wake thing. That he sees people dresses up in these type of costumes on games on TV all the time. I see one or two students in a student section dress up in something weird most college games too but not 100-200 kids. A bunch more came to the game wearing what looked like adult Dr Carter one piece pajamas. No issues with it. They seemed like good kids. But it is different to me.

Wake did not have a good crowd. We were on the student section side of the field, which appeared to have more fans than the other side. The side I could see clearly had a ton of empty seats. Was maybe 15% full. I think the side we were sitting in was more like 50% full. I think it holds 32K. Guessing there were about 15K actually there. They made almost no noise. Very quiet crowd. The student section is usually loud but not the Wake students. The crowd seemed older and very chill.

Wake’s PA system was really loud. Maybe the loudest PA I have ever heard at a football game. They played blaring songs after every play, until just before the ball was snapped. Played their piped in noise longer when Syracuse had the ball to try and get some kind of home field advantage. Pretty sleazy and the noise gave me a headache.

They have a nice replay scoreboard in one of the end zones. The one with grass. A bunch of people brought blankets and sat or lay on them. Old school for sure.

It was cold. Weather.com said it was 43 at the coldest during the game but it felt colder. The wind got stronger as the game went on and by the fourth quarter, I was getting cold, even wearing 5 layers. Make one appreciate a heated dome.

They had a first down chant. When they got one, and they got a lot of them, the PA guy would say ‘Another first down for Wake……’ and some of the crowd would say ‘Forest’. Not sure we can translate that or make use of it.

Let’s talk about the game. My expectations were low given we were down 3 starting OL. Was very pleasantly surprised by the play of the backups. Enrique played LT and I thought was terrific. We made a major mistake playing Davis all season at RT. He is much better at OG, where he was last night. Vet moved to RT, where he was good but I think he was our weakest pass blocker. His hold took away a key TD at a point where we were taking control of the game. Still, he was playing out of position and I think he did well considering this. Ilaoa played center and I thought he played well. Other than the one early snap that wrecked a drive, he was good.

It was predicable that Cruz and Ilaoa were going to start but I was really interested to see who the other starter was going to be. It ended up being transfer Jakob Bradford. And he also played well. Props to all of the replacements. I think this gives some insight into the starting lineup at OL next year.

Pretty sure we will see Ilaoa at center and Enrique at LT. Bradford is probably going to be one of the OGs, along with Ellis. RT looks to be wide open. If Bleich returns and is healthy, maybe Bradford moves to RT. Anyway, I feel better about the OL for next season after this game. There is hope there.

It was great to see the offense move the ball consistently (except for that awful 3rd quarter). Garrett looked sharp and very good. Lots of good passes and good decisions on where to pass the ball. It was great to see our WRs getting open consistently. Wake played man coverage all game long and dared us to throw it long and we took advantage of this and burned them deep repeatedly. Just missed with a number of other long passes. Our replacement OL players appeared to do a much better job pass blocking than some of the injured starters. They also opened some decent holes for Sean to run through (though he did some serious free lancing as well to get extra yards), Nice to see Sean getting good yardage consistently again.

I think we probably win the game if Mikel Jones did not get hurt early. All the starters we have lost have hurt but losing him hurts the most. We just didn’t have our rock in the middle and this was, I think, a huge key towards Wake’s success running the ball.

The only way we could stop Wake from running was to get our safeties into the box and commit them to run support. To do this, we had to put our CBs in man and hope they could cover a good group of Wake WRs. Thought we did a decent job of this but Perry was just too good and he abused Johnson pretty badly. And Duce got hurt fairly early, which meant we had to out Jeremiah Wilson, a true frosh, out there at the other CB position for most of the game. He did pretty well but we lost a lot without Duce on the field. After getting torched in man in the first half, I think we went with a soft zone coverage most of the second half but Wake just took the day 5-10 yard passes to their WRs and marched down the field that way (with some runs mixed in). It is hard to beat a good passing team with your top 2 CBs injured. Would have loved to have seen us play them with Garrett and a healthy Duce out there.

My only issue with Garrett was him taking those two huge sacks near the end of the first half. He has to throw the ball away there. We lost at least 3 points there and Wake got the ball back with some time on the clock and scored that late TD to end the half. This completely changed the game; We didn’t have much margin for error and that was tough to overcome.

Special teams were pretty good. Andre missed a couple and did not have a good game. Max struggled punting early but I think he got better as the game went on. Brady was great kicking off. And our KO return unit was impressive all game long. That was good to see.

Nice Syracuse turnout last night. We had a couple thousand and our fans were louder than theirs most of the game.

That BC game is going to define the season. If we can find a way to win, I think the season is a success. Especially if we win our bowl game. I am hoping Duce can play. BC has a couple of good WRs and not much else. That might be enough to cause big issues for us.
In early 19th century North Carolina, an area in Wake County north of Raleigh that was known for its forest of fine hardwood trees was called the Forest of Wake.
 
Another first down for Syracuse. ORANGE

You can thank social media for Furries. Google it if you want to know what it’s about.
 
Great analysis as usual Tom!
Wakes offensive strategy seems to allow their QB to get away with OL downfield when he runs and then throws when the entire OL is beyond the line of scrimmage. Officials seem to ignore it!

Bad calls happen in all games; it’s the timing of bad calls that often decide the game!

Interesting that without 3 starters our OL played better in much of the game.

Shrader had a good game outside his holding on to the too long which moved us from a potential score to nothing in that series. That has to stop!

The play of our D is outstanding especially when you consider our injury attrition has us playing way too many inexperienced players.

Allen was outstanding except for the unnecessary roughness call; why have we not been playing him?

Hope we hold together enough to get a win at BC!
 
Our DBs played pretty well. Deuce had that one What coverage moment but most of our issues were a lack of a pass rush, which happens when you only rush a few guys.

As to the run D, IMO White is too passive. By blind luck you should occasionally able to force a 2nd and long between your quicker DL and run blitzes. Yes there is a risk that you will give up a big run by doing so, but isn't that better than having 2nd and 4 every time? We don't (and likely will never) have the players to play straight up on D.

Not sure how much of this is not having the horses vs design but most plays we show a 4 man front. We will have a LB at the LOS, a DE on the other side, and our NT and 2nd DE inside. That works fine when you have a DE like Josh Black who has size (or more of a traditional 3-4 DE). But that does not work when you play a smaller DE inside (like your traditional 4-3 DE). Our 2nd DE is way too small. Is that by design or a lack of players? Either way how do you not bring a transfer in?
We did have a few 2/3rd and longs. They just converted throwing the ball then
 
Another great TexanMark tailgate. I brought an avid Georgia football fan with me and he really enjoyed the crew at the tailgate. Good to meet JRHEETER in person & will be getting into some of those upstate NY beers tonight - looking forward to the next beer swap.

Wake’s stadium experience has taken a step back. Not good food options. They’re bringing in food trucks to supplement but it didn’t look like it helped that much. Got a Dominoes pizza and it was cold. The stadium for years had an affiliation with locally based Foothills Brewing which meant there was great craft beer in the stadium. They’ve switched to working with R&D Brewing out of Raleigh and the quality is not the same.

My Georgia Bulldogs fan friend thought the stadium was not too far removed from a high school football stadium experience. He was also surprised at what he perceived as lax security at the door. I personally think that is part of the charm of the Wake Forest experience, it feels like a throwback college football fan experience and I hadn’t thought of it as being amateurish.

The wind was the only negative for me - the flags at the ends of the stadium were whipping around by the end of the second quarter but the small field goal flags were barely moving. After halftime we moved down closer to the field and it was more sheltered from the wind.

Not sure why they did it but Wake used a different running back in the first and second halves. It didn’t really matter who ran the ball, I could have gotten yards behind their line. It was good to see us getting back to being competitive. Shrader looked better despite the cold, he missed some good opportunities with poor throws but that’s not what doomed us. It was a continuous drip of poor execution or penalties that eroded opportunities to take control of the game. I can’t criticize the play calling and man it was good to see Tucker move like he did - he really looked much better out there today … but again got up slowly after a hit.

I’m curious to see how many North Carolina games we can get with the new ACC scheduling - at least one a year would be nice for me, more would be better. Thanks for a great time yesterday
 
We did have a few 2/3rd and longs. They just converted throwing the ball then

We brought pressure a lot on 1st and 2nd down and this led to them having 15 3rd downs and 2 4th downs. Our lack of pressure on 3rd downs, giving Hartman all day to throw, is why they converted 8-15.
 
There seems to be some week-to-week concern with Duce. Why? This time of year, every player is banged up to a degree. Granted, he’s the best DB we have left, but not sure if I am missing some sort of extra-owie injury.
You are right. I think he has left the last couple of games for at least a while. He is visibly limping. My guess is that he is playing with a pulled hamstring or a pulled quad. Something along those lines.

I think it is hampering his speed and affecting his play to some degree.

Our CBs always seem to get banged up. Every year. Probably more than any position.

I hope the staff figures out the root cause and addresses it soon.
 
Another great TexanMark tailgate. I brought an avid Georgia football fan with me and he really enjoyed the crew at the tailgate. Good to meet JRHEETER in person & will be getting into some of those upstate NY beers tonight - looking forward to the next beer swap.

Wake’s stadium experience has taken a step back. Not good food options. They’re bringing in food trucks to supplement but it didn’t look like it helped that much. Got a Dominoes pizza and it was cold. The stadium for years had an affiliation with locally based Foothills Brewing which meant there was great craft beer in the stadium. They’ve switched to working with R&D Brewing out of Raleigh and the quality is not the same.

My Georgia Bulldogs fan friend thought the stadium was not too far removed from a high school football stadium experience. He was also surprised at what he perceived as lax security at the door. I personally think that is part of the charm of the Wake Forest experience, it feels like a throwback college football fan experience and I hadn’t thought of it as being amateurish.

The wind was the only negative for me - the flags at the ends of the stadium were whipping around by the end of the second quarter but the small field goal flags were barely moving. After halftime we moved down closer to the field and it was more sheltered from the wind.

Not sure why they did it but Wake used a different running back in the first and second halves. It didn’t really matter who ran the ball, I could have gotten yards behind their line. It was good to see us getting back to being competitive. Shrader looked better despite the cold, he missed some good opportunities with poor throws but that’s not what doomed us. It was a continuous drip of poor execution or penalties that eroded opportunities to take control of the game. I can’t criticize the play calling and man it was good to see Tucker move like he did - he really looked much better out there today … but again got up slowly after a hit.

I’m curious to see how many North Carolina games we can get with the new ACC scheduling - at least one a year would be nice for me, more would be better. Thanks for a great time yesterday
next year we are at north carolina, the year after at nc state, following year back at wake, 26 we are at duke
 
Still not 100% sure about that Eastern Carolina vinegar sauce but it is growing on me.
honey mustard and vinegar or tangy tomato base. hot or mild. it's a great debate. recently a friend brought me back a jim n nick's white sauce for BBQ and i encountered a similar version on wings at UPSTATES in cooperstown this summer.very popular there. as long as the meat is tender and well cooked slather it with what you will. i'm no BBQ snob. just add some beans , slaw and cornbread and i'm happy.
 
next year we are at north carolina, the year after at nc state, following year back at wake, 26 we are at duke
All are fairly easy to tailgate at. UNC is probably the hardest. It'll all come down to how the schedule unfolds to which games get the away tailgate selection
 

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