Wake Forest, undefeated in the ACC but out of the CFP, thanks to non-conference foe UNC
A game that didn’t even count in the conference standings left a sizable dent in the national picture, not that it will be any consolation to Wake Forest.
Still undefeated in the ACC after losing to North Carolina, Wake Forest saw its playoff hopes run away from it Saturday, usually with a 7 or 19 on the back of the outrunning jersey.
What a strange way for the Demon Deacons’ dream season to end, in a game scheduled outside the ACC but a bitter rivalry nonetheless. In a game filled with touchdowns, bad blood, personal fouls, controversial calls and more touchdowns, Wake Forest finally ran out of gas against a team with similar defensive deficiencies and, when it mattered, a slightly more potent offense.
Ty Chandler’s 50-yard scamper after Wake Forest went four-and-out with 82 seconds to go — the fourth TD of the day for Chandler, No. 19 — was the coup de grace in a 58-55 win that also saw Sam Howell, No. 7, throw for one touchdown and run for two more.
“It’s a great feeling,” said North Carolina safety Cam’Ron Kelly, who had a pair of interceptions. “Them being ranked 9, 10 — I don’t even know.”
Kelly was right on both counts: Wake Forest was ninth in the initial College Football Playoff rankings and 10th in the AP poll, so there will be no small measure of momentary satisfaction in this for North Carolina, derailing Wake Forest and disrupting the kind of season the Tar Heels hoped and expected to have themselves. This is also where any redemption will lie for them now, making an unlikely back-door run at the Coastal Division title by playing spoiler. Against Wake Forest. At Pittsburgh next week. At N.C. State on Black Friday.
Win out, and the Tar Heels would have tiebreaker edges on both Pittsburgh and Virginia. And as Saturday showed, in the ACC — or even outside of it — nothing can be taken for granted.
You don’t have to tell Dave Clawson that. His Deacons may have bowed out of the playoff picture, but they’re still the top dog in the Atlantic Division, for the moment, anyway.
“We’re still 5-0 in the ACC and in my mind we have a championship game next Saturday (against N.C. State),” the Wake Forest coach said. “I don’t have to convince them. They know that. Bouncing back from a loss and the adversity and not playing well on defense again today, those are the real problems we have to fix.”
ACC commissioner Jim Phillips was here, making an unusual appearance at a November nonconference game and still managing to see a pair of ACC teams. It’s a flawed schedule format that forces two longtime rivals to play each other outside the confines of the conference. At least North Carolina and Wake Forest have made it a priority, unlike Duke and N.C. State.
Phillips may have bigger fish to fry at the moment — in football alone, trying to navigate CFP expansion in a way that benefits the ACC while coming to the bitter realization that the ACC is about to be shut out of the CFP for the first time — but the original two-division format that made some sense with 12 teams makes much less sense with 14.
Finding a way to enable traditional rivalries like this one more often would go a long way toward raising the temperature of ACC football. The Tar Heels and Demon Deacons on Saturday demonstrated exactly and precisely why it matters.
Their last three meetings — two scheduled outside the ACC and one within the ACC thrown together unexpectedly during the pandemic — have produced a total of 267 points and two epic shootouts. Last year, the Tar Heels came back from 21 points down behind 550 passing yards and six touchdowns from Howell for a 59-53 win.
They then proceeded to try to top that Saturday. And did, by a point.
The Tar Heels again wiped out a large third-quarter deficit — 18 points this time — and just like a year ago, it took everything the Tar Heels had to outduel Sam Hartman. The Wake Forest quarterback threw for 429 yards and four touchdowns in 2020 and 398 yards and five touchdowns in 2021 along with a pair of rushing TDs — the first player to be responsible for seven touchdowns against UNC in North Carolina history. In a losing effort, no less.
Wake Forest’s players trudged off the field, the complaints about their position in the initial CFP rankings both muted and moot, while the North Carolina fans streamed onto it, a rare moment of pure jubilation in a season that hasn’t provided nearly as much as they expected.
“It’s been a hard year,” North Carolina coach Mack Brown said. “Everything’s been tough. Nothing’s been easy.”
It may have been the first-ever field invasion after a win over Wake Forest, a reminder of just how high the stakes were Saturday. And the mass of bodies at midfield — players completely and entirely surrounded by celebrating students — was yet another reminder of how much this mattered, to everyone and everything, if not in the ACC standings.
This story was originally published November 6, 2021 at 4:14 PM.
