Wake Forest Jake Dickert is preparing for his first road game with the Demon Deacons. Wake plays at Virginia Tech Saturday afternoon. But first, there is the expunging of what happened last weekend in the overtime loss to Georgia Tech and the now well-discussed “no call” near the end of the regulation play.
Not to rub salt in the Wake Forest wound, but for the purposes of Dickert providing context to the content, a brief recap of the events is needed.
The Rewind
With about 1:50 left in the game, and Wake protecting a 23-20 lead, the Deacs had the ball at their own 32-yard line, and the Yellow Jackets had no timeouts left. A GA Tech lineman on the right side of the defense clearly jumped into the neutral zone and got back before the snap of the ball. Wake quarterback, Robby Ashford, assumed a flag was going to be thrown and the Deacs would get a first down. He let loose with a 28-yard pass attempt to Sterling Berkhalter, which fell incomplete. And there was no flag. That forced Wake Forest to punt the ball away. Georgia Tech had 1:41 to tie the game.
The Yellow Jackets ran nine plays for 57 yards. That got them a 33-yard field goal, which tied the game. We all know how the overtime went.
The ACC issued a statement Saturday night acknowledging the error. But the conference has also pointed out that pre-snap penalties are generally judgment calls.
The Coach’s Assessment
At our behest, Dickert addressed the lack of a penalty as the first question at his weekly press conference on Monday. He said, clearly, it mattered, but he would not blame it for the Deacs losing the game. “There’s one uncontrollable thing that lost us the game, and there’s a ton of controllable things that lost us the game,” he said. But there of course is nothing that can be done about that one uncontrollable element now. “Was he clearly offsides? Yes. Did they acknowledge he was offsides? Yes. Does that change the outcome of the game? No.”
Dickert also rejects the premise that pre-snap penalties are judgment calls. “They’re not,” he said. “You’re in the neutral zone, or you’re not. You false start or you didn’t. You have five in the backfield, or you don’t. Or you hid a guy on the sideline pre-snap to deceive the team, or you didn’t.”
Part of his solution would be for each coach to have a red challenge flag that they can use on a pre-snap penalty that they think they see. He said it would be a quick review of something everyone watching on TV could have seen. “Let’s have a passion to get it right.”
But Wait…There’s More
Of course, there is still more depth of context to the situation. Centers are taught that if they see a defensive player jump the neutral zone, they are to snap the ball to make the offsides clear to the officials. That didn’t happen here. If the offensive lineman opposite the “guilty” defensive player pulls up out of his stance, it would be a false start. But according to college football officials we spoke with Monday, that play would be reviewable to see if the defensive player caused the false start. None of those things happened on Saturday either.
And then there is the pass play. Most quarterbacks are taught early on in their training that if they think they have a free play, to go for big yards. That was what Ashford did on Saturday. But he was also assuming a flag that he did not see because it was not thrown. Dickert acknowledged Saturday after the game that this was what quarterbacks are taught to do.
But a sixth-year player knowing time and space also matters. If Ashford had run the ball or handed it off to the running back, the clock would have kept running. Yes, Ashford had injured his knee earlier in the game and was now wearing a brace. But the thought was not that he plow through to get the first down. The question was about running for whatever yardage was there and then take the slide. It would have burned at least another 40 seconds off the clock, leaving GA Tech with one minute or less to get into field goal range, instead of the 1:41 Wake gave the Yellow Jackets.
Dickert seemed to anticipate the arrival of the question on Monday, starting to answer it before it was even fully asked. “We’ll be talking about it as a coaching staff. And there’s a correction we’ll be making to that situation,” Dickert said. “Robby did what he was trained to do. So I will take that and we’ve identified things as coaches, to your point, that we will do better next time.”
More To Come
Dickert also spent time addressing the second-half woes for the Demon Deacons this season, including the thinking on halftime adjustments. His answers caught some of us by surprise. We will have that as part of our big picture preview of the upcoming Virginia Tech game later this week.
Main Image: Zachary Taft-Imagn Images
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