The Demon Deacons will welcome a Seminoles football team to Winston-Salem desperate for its first win of the season.
I must admit, the title of this article is not something I ever expected to write, or if I did, I figured it would never involve the sport of football. Regardless, after week four of the college football season, a 4-0 Wake Forest football team will host an 0-2 Florida State football team.
Now admittedly this is fluky given the nature of the FSU season, but it’s real to me damn it!
If you want to say that things have started almost ideally for the Demon Deacons then it is probably fair to say the opposite for the Seminoles. FSU started 0-1 after a season opening loss to Alabama in Atlanta, but the real damage from that weekend was the loss of sophomore sensation quarterback Deondre Francois for the year to a knee injury.
The following two weeks were havoc for the team and the University as a whole as Hurricane Irma made landfall in Florida, cancelling the Louisiana-Monroe game scheduled for September 9th, before forcing its in-state rivalry game with Miami for the following week to be rescheduled for October 7th. This will cause Florida State to play 10 straight games without a bye to complete the regular season.
This past weekend saw yet another setback for the ‘Noles when it lost at home to a strong N.C. State Wolfpack team and incurred another couple of injuries to key players. (most notably receiver Auden Tate and linebacker Matthew Thomas). Florida State closed as an 11 point favorite against the Pack, but fell 27-21.
Backup quarterback and true freshman James Blackman looked strong at times against a stout N.C. State defense, but going up against a veteran defense in Wake Forest will be a tough test as well. The FSU offensive line has to play better this weekend to help out its young QB.
This has caused any National Championship aspirations that were held for the team and fans before the year to be put on the back burner for the time being.
Make no mistake though, while the Deacs may be flying high after a nervewracking 20-19 victory over Appalachian State in Boone on Saturday to get to 4-0, this weekend’s game against Florida State is still going to be very difficult to win.
Wake Forest was dominated statistically by a veteran quarterback in Taylor Lamb, and were it not for a fantastic special teams day causing App State to lose 7 points on kicks alone, we are likely singing a different tune here.
The ‘Noles opened as a 10 point favorite according to VegasInsider, but it appears to have already been bet down to 7.5 as a consensus.
The updated S&P Rankings still have Florida State ranked third in the nation. While that holds a higher pre-season weighting than most other teams (since the ‘Noles have only played two games), and also includes Francois in those rankings, it shows that FSU is still a very good football team.
This is an outstanding chance for Wake Forest (ranked 35th in S&P+ and 31st/32nd in the polls) to make a statement on national television (3:30, ABC) against a household name. While the Seminoles may be down on their luck a bit, this will not be an easy game, and the Demon Deacons are still a touchdown underdog.
It has been a tumultuous first month of the football season, but Jimbo Fisher has shown in the past he knows how to get his team refocused, and when a team is as loaded with four and five-star athletes like Florida State is, it’s only a matter of time before the ship will be righted.
Let’s hope that it takes at least one more week of soul-searching for Florida State to figure it out, giving Wake Forest enough time to pull out another victory, get to 5-0 for the first time since 2006, and nationally ranked by next Sunday.
The Deacs are looking for its 6th straight win, which would mark the first time since 2007 that has occurred.
On an aside, if you get some time this week then you must go check out our Florida State brother site in Tomahawk Nation. They do some of the best work of any blog in the SBNation network and will have a few excellent pieces breaking down its game against N.C. State, and also looking forward to the game on Saturday against Wake Forest.
