What Wake Forest Said After the Stanford Win
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It wasn’t that Wake Forest beat Stanford on Saturday. The Demon Deacons were expected to win. It was more about how the Deacs won. They were convincing in the 57-3 win. They were not yet complete (penalties) against an undermanned Stanford team. But they were as close to complete as they had been all year. So, let’s see what Wake Forest said after the Stanford win.
What Wake Forest Said After the Stanford Win
Jake Dickert
“I think we challenged them this week, and I mean really challenged them for a complete game, offense, defense, special teams,” Dickert said of the prep with his team during the week.
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He called it a dominating win from the beginning and said that made him excited to see what was ahead.
Ahead of course means looking at the game film and seeing eight penalties (one fewer than the per-game average this season). And the types of penalties have changed. A few weeks ago, they were 10-yard holding penalties. Now they are more of the pre-snap ilk with false starts and formation issues.
Dickert was also excited about the almost-penalty. The game official warned the scoreboard operator about playing the loud piped-in music as Stanford was calling its play. The music, by rule, is supposed to stop as the team gets to the line of scrimmage. The fans seemed to pick up the noise level on their own after that. Dickert loved it.
It turns out that the “almost-penalty” was also Dickert’s doing. Last Word was tipped off during that game that the head coach had been working with the operations staff about ramping up the noise level inside the stadium.
When asked about it during the postgame press conference, he certainly did not deny it. “We’re going to continue to push the limits. That’s all I’ve got to say,” he responded with a Cheshire Cat grin. “If we get one [a warning] every game, I’ll be really fired up and excited about it. I want a big-time environment in Winston-Salem. If you can’t get behind our football team right now, I can’t help you.” He added, “Our guys deserve that. They’re working their tails off. They’re putting a great product and result on the field.”
Dickert said he had a sense Saturday morning about just how ready his team was to play. “During our morning walk-through and breakfast, our guys were friggin’ ready to go,” he said. “I could feel it. In the pre-game meeting, I could feel it. In the warm-ups, I could feel it.”
There is no telling if Wake, at 4-1 overall and 2-1 in the ACC, will get ranked in the AP Poll now. Dickert doesn’t care. “I think that’s for everyone else to figure out. Once again, they’ll give us no credit for this win. I just is what it is.”
Gio Lopez
The starting quarterback came in wearing a well-adorned lei that someone had given him after the game as a gift. It was also the first time in a couple of weeks that we had seen him in the media room after the game. The previous two weeks, he was getting treatment on his damaged hip after the game. His presence in the press conference, his lei, and his big smile were all signs that he was feeling much better.
“Everyone felt more comfortable with getting a full week of practice, and not just getting the mental reps” he said, referring to being limited during the week the previous two to three weeks. “The mental reps matter. I try to get the mental reps when Steele [Pizzella] is in there. But being in there and seeing those looks, you need those.”
Lopez had a personal best day with three rushing touchdowns and five total touchdowns for the game. “We had a lot of open run lanes,” he said. “The third time I scored, I was telling the running backs, ‘Sorry guys, Coach is calling these plays,’” he said with a chuckle.
Lopez said he agreed with Dickert that the mood was different in the pre-game prep on Saturday. “We just kind of talked about how we had not played a complete game. This is week five, and we played Louisville, and we feel like even though we won, we did not play a complete game. We showed up in the first half, not the second half. Against Miami, we didn’t show up in the first half. We showed up in the second half a little bit.”
He said Dickert had told them not to win “By a TKO, but by a knockout.”
Langston Hardy
Photo courtesy: Jim Dedmon-Imagn ImagesThe defensive end is top 25 in the country in the tackles for loss category. He and his teammate on the end, Gabe Kirschke, each went into the game with five-and-a-half. Each one of them had another half-tackle-for-loss against Stanford.
“We were doing certain things to try to get him to move his feet,” Hardy said of Stanford quarterback Davis Warren, who is more of a pocket passer than the quarterbacks that Wake has faced previously this season. ‘We were trying to keep the quarterback moving and make him uncomfortable, and I think we were able to achieve that today.”
Wake was already up 29-3 at the half, en route to the largest margin of victory in an ACC game in school history. Hardy said the focus in the halftime locker room was not letting up. “He [Dickert] wants to see us play a full four quarters,” he said. “That was something he thought we had not done yet. That was something we were really trying to emphasize.”
Will Loerzel
The tight end got his first touchdown catch (a one-yard reception) of the season in the third quarter. “It feels great. It was a long time coming. It felt good,” he said after the game. “It’s nice when we’re at the goal line, and we keep pounding, we keep running the ball, to get to slip through there. It was a lot of hard work.”
Loerzel also took a direct snap on a two-point conversion in the first quarter, running the ball in for the PAT.
CandyGate
Perhaps the most revealing part of the post-game press conference was the revelation that Lopez has bags of Skittles on the sideline during the game. Just the purple bags, which, according to our extensive research, would be the wild berry-flavored candies. “Yeah, I share. I’ve got big bags,” he said with a laugh after the game.
Lopez credits Tiffany Campbell, the team’s nutritionist, as being his Skittle supplier. He laughed when he was asked how the nutritionist is in charge of his Skittles supply. “It’s only on game day,” he said, clearly not wanting to get “Miss Tiff,” as the team calls her, in any trouble.
There is a lot more laughter to go around after one of the most decisive wins in program history.