Wake Forest Football PFF Grade Breakdown Heading into Louisville
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The Demon Deacons came up short against the Miami Hurricanes last Friday. A long stretch of three-and-outs, along with Miami scoring three straight touchdowns to start the game, ultimately created a hole too deep for the Deacs to dig out of.
Now it's time to continue our weekly exercise of unpacking Wake's PFF grades from their recent contest to see what the stats can tell us three games into a still-young season. Let's break down some key points.
Solid Defensive Grades From Big Names
PFF grades are very helpful in evaluating defensive performances that are commonly hard to gauge by just counting stats. In the first couple of games, we saw some of Wake's best defensive players play just average games. This time around, we saw some of Wake's best guys have solid performances, especially in the second half.
A big one that stands out is Davaughn Patterson. The defensive back had a great bounce-back tackling grade of 86.3 and a 74.8 in coverage. This led to him finishing with a 77.6 overall defensive grade, which was good for fourth-best among Wake defenders.
Star defensive end Langston Hardy also put together a solid performance as the second-highest-graded Wake defender. He was great against the run at 80.1 and finished with a 78.3 overall.
Along with these, anyone watching the game could see that freshman cornerback Somad Eaddy gave the Deacs a spark of energy in the second half. The analytics agreed, grading him Wake's best defender with an 84.5 overall grade in 21 total snaps. It was a smaller sample size, but it was still a success for the young corner against Miami's top-end receivers.
Receiving Weapon Emerges
Anyone who watched the Miami game likely noticed it, but redshirt freshman receiver Jack Foley provided a much-needed spark in the second half. He led Wake's receiving corps, finishing with six receptions for 118 yards and a touchdown. That is an average of 19.7 yards per catch. Foley got off to a slow start to the season after a strong bowl game performance, but looks to have really found some momentum now.
This Wake receiving corps is already home to Carlos Hernandez, who is currently second in the ACC in receiving yards. However, this group needs to give Gio more consistent options to go to when defenses start to focus all their attention on Hernandez. Guys like Jack Foley and Cam Shanks showing they can be legitimate downfield threats is a great way to bolster this offense even further. Wake has shown the signs of a genuinely good passing attack; now they need to develop more weapons to continue the momentum.
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Justin is a student at Wake Forest University. He is from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and aspiring finance major interested everything sports. In his freshman year, Justin completed an internship with the Wake Forest Ticketing Department where he gained some valuable insight into the sales and operations aspects of collegiate athletics. Before working with Wake Forest On SI, Justin was a contributing writer for Wake Forest’s student publication The Old Gold and Black. Currently, Justin serves as a student manager on the Wake Forest Men’s Tennis team. In his free time Justin enjoys spending time with his family and friends on the golf course and traveling.