Wake Forest Football 2021 Schedule

In case you were under a rock or trying to trade Gamestop stock this morning, the ACC announced the 2021 football schedule.

Here’s a look at it from a grid view of all the ACC teams:

The opening to Wake’s schedule is, at a first glance, very kind to Wake. FSU added a bunch in the portal, but still a wait and see approach there. Louisville is always a weird but winnable game, UVA the same, but Wake doesn’t get to face Clemson, NC State or UNC until after Halloween.

It’s hard to understate how important of a year this is for Wake. They have their best team in years, they’ve added good depth in the portal and in the incoming class, while the end of the year wasn’t great due to COVID and a game from one player that was a pure tail probablility(simple terms: it’s statistically very unlikely to happen again), they saw across the year guys breakout whether it be Jaquarii Roberson or Nick Andersen or Zion Keith or Taylor Morin. You’d expect more of these performances with a “normal” spring and fall and allow a developmental program to get back on track.

This setup allows Wake to to exercise a couple of demons. They’ve had an issue with just sheer mental lapses the last few years. Whether it’s Louisville or Syracuse in 2019, NC State in 2020, Pitt in 2018, there just 1-2 games a year that Wake just throws when they should be running away with it. November also hasn’t been to kind to them, and while the schedule is harder this year, if you have your best team you cant come out with 0 or 1 wins.

Putting together a complete season is tough. There are multiple reasons why the top dogs are the top dogs. But if Wake wants to be a team that isn’t just settling for 7-8 wins and a bowl game, recruiting fine but still missing out on their top guys, this is the year to turn it around and they can’t let games slip like they have in the past. Wake only has 1 Friday home game, against ODU, and 1 on the road against UVA. Getting FSU, Duke and NC State at home is a massive win as it allows for sellouts(good for money and atmosphere) but also gives Wake 3 very winnable games in front of a ton of recruits, not to mention national exposure if the TV cards play out in their favor. People want wins and they want wins against ACC opponents.

This is the year Wake can break out, they just have to put it all together.

What are your thoughts on the schedule?

Go Deacs.