Much of yesterday seemed like a bad joke, kind of like the pun in the title. The first half performance was so bad that I literally laughed out loud a couple of times. A glimmer of hope in the third quarter only made the final 24-17 defeat at the hands of the Naval Academy that much more painful.

The most obvious place to start with this one is Riley Skinner. Obviously he couldn't keep avoiding interceptions all season long, but I can't say I expected him to throw four today. After last week's poor performance at Florida State I thought Skinner would bounce back, but it wasn't to be. I've never seen him throw so many poor passes in a game. His fumble only made matters worse. Skinner is still the quarterback of this team. He had a bad day, which happens to everyone from time to time. There's no chance of him being replaced any time soon, but yesterday he just wasn't good enough. It wasn't fun to see.

Skinner's performance stands out the most, but no one else on the offense made his job any easier. The offensive line had another rough afternoon, and weren't helped by Joe Birdsong getting ejected and Jeff Griffin getting hurt. The running game was once again awful and showed no real signs of improvement. The "Wild Deacon" formation used a couple of times didn't look ready for a real game situation. When you have a quarterback who can't throw accurate passes and a running game that can't move the ball, it's going to be hard to win a game.

The defense actually played pretty well. The first half was a bit of a struggle to handle the option, and the injury to Kaipo helped them out a lot, but they only gave up seven points in the second half and spent a lot of time on the field. All things considered, it was a reasonably good performance.

I would have liked to see the Deacs go for it on one, the other, or both fourth and shorts in the fourth quarter. Wasting a timeout to punt the ball was also poor clock management. I try not to act like I know as much as the coaches, but I have to question some of the actions that were taken both in clock management and play calling. I think it's fair to say that it was as much an off day for them as it was for the players.

I'm sure there's plenty more I can (and probably will eventually) say, but I want to get to the pregame questions.

1. If Wake has a run game, can it please show up?
Nope. Not yet, anyway. 45 rushing yards. That's it. I don't think there's much more to say about it. Terrible.

2. How well will Wake contain the option?
The defense struggled with the option early, but improved with experience. The pass defense may have actually been the most dissapointg part. We all know it's hard to prepare for Navy's offense, but I think the defense can be satisfied with it's performance. It wasn't as perfect as last week, but it was pretty good. Kaipo's injury helped, and there were some pretty glaring mistakes, but that's what an option offense will do to you from time to time.

3. Injury avoidance is key - can the Deacs stay healthy?
I asked this question with the basic assumption that a win was more or less inevitable. At that point, we'd just want to get out healthy. Turns out, the win was definitely "less" inevitable... much less. Jeff Griffin was hurt, but otherwise everyone was fine. Still, the loss looms much larger than health after a game like this.

4. Will the parents pack the stands?
Not a good weather day, but the crowd was pretty good and stuck around despite the conditions and the poor performance on the field. Family weekend has been less than successful recently. Same thing happend two years ago against Clemson...we all know what happened in that one.

5. Will the Wake fans honor this Navy team like they did Army last year?
Yep, all good on this front. Fans and players were all very respectful, and I must say that it's pretty cool to see all the cadets stand at attention for the national anthem. The alma maters after the game were nice as well, even if they weren't much fun. Still, very classy all the way around.

Predictions: I look foolish once again. 31-17? Not exactly. One team scored 17, but it definitely wasn't the right one. Navy took care of business. Rough.

As much as I'd like to forget this game quickly, the bye week isn't going to make it easy. I'm sure we'll spend plenty of time breaking down the game. The good news is, it wasn't an ACC loss. Any hopes of going to a national championship game may have gone down the drain, but the Orange Bowl is just as likely as it was before. With others around the conference dropping games all over the place, I have to think Wake is still the favorite to come out of the Atlantic division. I guess that can be today's silver lining.

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Last night the Wake Forest defense put on the best performance I've seen in the last three years, while the offense and Sam Swank did just enough to ensure the 12-3 victory.

Although we'll spend plenty of time analyzing everyone's play and why things ended up the way they did, those things are not all that important right now. We could even make a big deal about how some blogger predicted Wake would win in a shootout 41-37, but that doesn't seem very important right now either. . .

What does matter is that the Demon Deacons are 3-0 overall, 1-0 in the ACC, and just defeated one of the stronger opponents in the division. FSU's offense was terrible last night, but their defense kept them in the game and put them in position to possibly escape with a win. There is plenty of tallent on that team and they will definitely be competitive in the conference. This is a really good early season conference win for the Deacs.

The win further establishes Wake in the driver's seat of the division. The Clemson game still looms large in the future, but one of the three biggest hurdles has been passed (I consider Clemson and at Miami to be the other two big hurdles). There was plenty of excitement leading up to this game, and I think it caused all Wake fans to become a bit anxious. Now we can all exhale.

After the Ole Miss game I was not very complimentary of the Demon Deacon defense. I was crititcal of the secondary for some missed assignments, soft coverage, and just about anything else I could give them a hard time for. Before this game I said several times that I was worried about Wake's defense, particularly the secondary. It was those concerns that led me to predict such a high scoring game.

They definitely shut me up last night. They put on one of the most stifiling defensive performances I've seen. They caused turnovers on two of FSU's first three offensive plays - not possessions, but plays. That's unheard of! When all the dust settled Wake had caused seven turnovers, including two forced fumbles (Ghee and Patterson) and five interceptions (two from Patterson, one from Curry, Smith, and Vaughn). Kevin Patterson was responsible for three turnovers all on his own. Incredible!

The turnovers are the statistic that jumps out at everyone, but even when they weren't forcing turnovers the defense were making big plays. In total they held FSU to 220 yards of offense, came up with two sacks (but were in the backfield causing problems on nearly every play), and swarmed the ball very well. The only thing I noticed during the game that could have been better was open field tackling, but at this point I couldn't really care less.

Things weren't quite as perfect on the offensive side of the ball, but the performance was good enough to get the job done. The endzone was elusive, but scoring position was not. The most glaring mistake was Riley Skinner's fumble at the two yard line, which could have been prevented pretty easily if Skinner carries the ball in his outside hand. It wasn't his best passing night ever, but 17-30 for 217 yards isn't anywhere close to being bad. The deep ball to Marshall Williams in the first half was one of the most perfect throws he's made all season.

The running game continued it's struggles, although I think film review may indicate that things are starting to improve. FSU's defense played a good game themselves and deserve a lot of credit for keeping the Seminoles in the game. The offense's sloppiness manifested itself in the form of penalties; there were many more last night than there have been in the prior two games. Wake was just lucky that FSU was even sloppier in that department.

Sam Swank definitely didn't have the best night of his career, but he still hit four field goals - and only would have needed two to win the game. When he came out to kick the final field goal to seal the victory I said that there was no way he would miss that one and that I had complete confidence in him. That's the incredible thing about Swank - even when he's not at his best, he seems to be able to completely block out whatever has happened before and focus solely on the kick he's about to make. It would have been nice to get 21 points out of him last night, but 12 were more than enough.

Finally, let's take a look at the three questions I asked in Friday's preview:

1. Will Florida State be prepared to play a game of this magnitude?
It doesn't seem that they were. Their domination of FCS schools didn't translate to last night's game, and their offense didn't seem the least bit prepared for the speed and pursuit of the Deacs. Their defense did a fine job, but the whole package wasn't there. Having their kicker, Gano, back from injury for his first game probably wasn't the best situation for them either. If he had made that first field goal we may have been looking at a very different game.

2. Will Wake get to Christian Ponder and D'Vontrey Richardson?
The defense did an excelent job putting pressure on the FSU's quarterbacks. They never had very much time to make throws and were forced to scramble on many occasions. FSU's offensive line was overmatched and didn't help out their quarterbacks at all. I was actually very impressed by Ponder's speed, but ultimately it wans't enough to avoid the Demon Deacon pursuit. The defensive line did an excellent job and deserves a lot of credit in this defensive performance.

3. Can the offensive line and running backs build on their second half success in the Ole Miss game?
Eh. . . not really I guess. This performance wasn't any worse than any other, and on review I think it may actually prove to have been a little bit better. Nonetheless, it wasn't "good" and still has a long way to go. Maybe I need to quit asking this question every week and then things will get better. Who knows at this point.

Predictions:
Umm. . . yea. . . 41-37. . . high scoring shootout. . .I don't think Vegas will be hiring me any time soon.

So that's that. A big win for the Deacs and an excellent defensive performance. I'll hole up in the "Replay Booth" over the next copule days so we can get a full breakdown of things. 3-0 for the second time in three years looks pretty good to me. Let's keep things rolling!

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Could a bye week have come at a better time? With all the upsets on Saturday I'm pretty glad we don't have to play Duke until next week. Considering our track record against them, and how unpredictable yesterday turned out to be, the bye appears to have come at a good time (not to mention the time it gives Riley, etc).

Kudos to South Florida, Colorado, Auburn, Kansas State, Maryland, Georgia Tech, Illinois, and Florida State; all of whom upset teams in the top 25. I don't know the last time that many teams were upset, but I'm guessing it's pretty rare.

Particular congratulations to Maryland and Florida State for representing the conference well against solid opponents from BCS conferences. Maryland's victory has to make you feel even better about last weeks win, and FSU's win makes me even more excited but nervous about their trip to Winston.

I had some other stuff going on this weekend and did not get to catch much on TV besides Auburn upsetting Florida and a little bit of the Falcons/Texans game this afternoon (yuck), but overall it seems to have been a pretty exciting sports weekend. Hopefully the Deacs got well rested and are prepared to take care of business next weekend!

I'm not going to spend any significant time on these, but CSTV posted a couple of articles this weekend about our field hockey and volleyball teams, and Monday's Journal has an article about women's soccer tying Virginia on Sunday.

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