As usual, Clemson beats Wake Forest – but this wasn’t usual

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. – No. 5 Clemson beat No. 21 Wake Forest on Saturday, just as their rankings suggest, just as history demands. The Tigers have won 14 in a row over the Demon Deacons, all but one by at least two touchdowns. There’s a 52-3 in there, an improvement over the 63-3 the year before.

Maybe that’s why the Deacs’ loss before an overflow crowd of 32,903 at Truist Field on Saturday hurt so much. Wake played Clemson evenly for more than 60 minutes. The Tigers won 51-45 in the second overtime, when Nate Wiggins batted away quarterback Sam Hartman’s fourth-down pass into the end zone to A.T. Perry.

“That is a savvy, veteran, tough football team,” Clemson coach Dabo Swinney said about Wake, the admiration clear in his tone. The Tigers came from behind twice in the fourth quarter and once in overtime to tie the game. They went ahead for good when D.J. Uiagalelei threw a 21-yard touchdown pass to tight end Davis Allen in the middle of the end zone, setting off a joyous reaction on the visiting sideline.

Wake was devastated.

“The locker room right now is hurting,” Wake Forest coach Dave Clawson said. “It’s a football team that has invested a lot, and they care a lot and expected to win this game. … Our kids played so hard.”

It hurt so much that Demon Deacons center Michael Jurgens spent his postgame interview on the verge of tears. Hartman, who played perhaps the best game of a very good career, spent barely two minutes in front of the mic before stalking off. He threw for 337 yards and a school-record six touchdowns, and when Jurgens was asked what it felt like to see that performance, Hartman interjected curtly, “That’s my job.”

Hartman outplayed Uiagalelei, which is not damning with faint praise at all. Uiagalelei, who struggled so much last season, completed his first seven passes on the way to going 26-of-41 for 371 yards and five touchdowns. He added 52 rushing yards, a wrinkle that confounded the Deacs time and again.

Hartman spread those six touchdowns among only 20 completions. He surely would have thrown more had Clemson not committed five pass interference penalties – three by Wiggins – a personal foul and a holding.

“I was about to play corner,” Swinney said. “It was incredibly frustrating.”

The Tigers didn’t have starting corner Sheridan Jones or strong safety Andrew Mukuba. The players on the lower rungs of the depth chart didn’t rise to the occasion. An array of subs, including true freshmen, couldn’t keep Perry or Jahmal Banks in front of them.

On Hartman’s first completion of the second half, he surpassed 10,000 passing yards in his career. On his second, a 28-yard touchdown to Donavon Greene, the Deacs went ahead 21-20, and you have to admire Clawson’s restraint at not calling a timeout so his team could pose for a photo in front of the scoreboard. Wake had not led Clemson since the last minute of the first half in 2014.

That’s 2,511 days ago, 423:14 in football time. That’s so long ago that Cole Stoudt threw the Tigers’ go-ahead touchdown pass, that Taylor Swift topped the charts with “Shake It Off!”, that college football hadn’t had a playoff yet.

It has been a long climb to respectability for Wake. Even as the Deacs won the ACC Atlantic last season, breaking the Tigers’ six-year hold on the division, Clemson beat Wake 48-27. Clemson always beats Wake. The Tigers have beaten the Demon Deacons 70 times, more than any other opponent save the hated Gamecocks.

But why not Wake? The world is changing. The ACC is moving from Greensboro to Charlotte, about 90 miles. Nothing wrong with that. Wake Forest picked up and moved its entire campus about that far in 1956. The old campus must not have been much to look at. In 1947, coach Peahead Walker – only his mother called him Douglas – showed a visiting recruit the Duke campus instead of Wake. Peahead told him he would play there one day. Well, he wasn’t lying.

Walker coached the Deacs the last time both Clemson and Wake came into this rivalry ranked. That was 1950, and the No. 16 Tigers beat the No. 17 Deacs 13-12 across town at Bowman Gray Stadium, better known as NASCAR’s first paved track.

So why not Wake? Did you look across the field at the Clemson players?

“When we first got here, if you combined our roster and their roster, probably very few of our guys would play for Clemson,” Clawson said. “ … (Now) I think a lot of guys that we have would play for Clemson. I’m not saying they would start. Some of them would. I always look at the opponent and say, ‘OK, if you combine the two rosters, how many players from Wake would start and play?’ In my nine years here, this was probably as balanced as it ever was.”

This time, Clemson jumped to a 14-0 lead on its first two possessions and Wake didn’t flinch. This time, a veteran offensive line gave Hartman barely enough time to throw. He took a lot of punishment. But Hartman had to take it. Those inexperienced defensive backs were just ripe for the plucking.

“It was ugly at one position, obviously,” Swinney said. “The only good thing about the game is we gave up six touchdown passes; we didn’t give up seven.”

Both coaches agreed that Clemson was one play better than Wake. That one play may have been Tyler Davis’ sack of Hartman, which came with a minute to play at Wake’s 40. It stuck Wake in a third-and-17. Hartman then picked up 12 yards in front of a backed-up defense.

Clawson had Clemson kicker B.T. Potter in mind when he decided not to chance a fourth-and-5 at Clemson’s 48 with 49 seconds left. Potter tied the game at 38-38 midway through the fourth quarter by hitting a 52-yarder that would have been good from 60.

“Basically, you’re putting him 15 yards away from hitting another one like that,” Clawson said.

Wake punted and the game went into overtime, and after 1,006 yards of offense without a turnover, Clemson beat Wake Forest again. Same as ever? Not by a long shot.