Recap In Haiku: Wake Forest Embarrasses Themselves, Clowned By Louisville 48-21

I hate football, man

Our ceiling has been reached, all

Here we go again

Wake Forest led the game 14-13 at the half. What followed was the single worst half of football I have ever seen, wherein Sam Hartman was responsible for 6 turnovers in the third quarter, at which point Louisville blew the game open. I don’t care if people want to defend Sam, I don’t care if people want to blame the offensive line or the coordinators or what, I don’t care. The only thing I can say is that this follows a pattern. Wake Forest will have red hot first halves of a season and then utterly implode, and no matter how much you may be inclined to deflect blame from Sam Hartman, fact is that as soon as a guy is (on the stat sheet) responsible for even THREE turnovers in a quarter, to leave him in at that point is straight up malpractice. And Sam has a history of doing this. He’s a remarkably great quarterback..until real adversity comes, at which point the guy implodes to a degree I think I’ve never seen.

Also, the announcing crew for the ACC Network should be out of a job. Not only did they have no clue what they were talking about probably 90% of the time, they were so clearly in the bag for Louisville all game you’d think one of them had literally bet their house on the outcome of the game. But they had plenty to cheer about. Louisville was the better team today, straight up. Not gonna lie though, this was SO bad you’d think they had the damn playbook again. Just an absolute clownshow.

It’s obvious that Dave Clawson, as great as he is for Wake Forest, and he IS, has reached his ceiling. And in a way I’m glad. Honestly, if you told me Wake Forest football would be a perennial top 25 program forever but never really stay in the top 10, I’d take it. And I think that’s what this program is going to be. It just hurts that the fact that Wake Forest won’t have to beat away blue blood suitors for Clawson’s services will be made easier by the fact that they’re probably just not going to call.

I’m disgusted. On to the next. Go Deacs.