Wake Forest’s season has reached the point where December travel plans are being drawn up in two very different directions.
One path sends the Demon Deacons to Provo, Utah, for a College Football Playoff first-round game. The other lands them in Orlando for the Pop-Tarts Bowl. Right now, both are still on the table.
Jake Dickert’s team sits at 7-1 and checks in at No. 16 in the first CFP rankings, which is enough to keep the conversation alive even if it still feels like a long shot. ESPN’s Mark Schlabach has Wake Forest slotted as the No. 10 seed in the playoff, with a first-round matchup at No. 7 BYU.
That would be a massive stage for a program that has spent most of the fall outside the national spotlight. It would also mean a trip to LaVell Edwards Stadium, which is not the kind of place visiting teams usually circle as friendly territory - especially in December.
For Wake Forest, just getting into the bracket would be a major accomplishment. The Demon Deacons are not used to living in the championship picture, and simply forcing their way into the field would mark one of the biggest moments in program history.
The tougher part is the climb required to get there. Wake Forest would love to play a playoff game in Winston-Salem, but moving into one of the hosting spots would take a significant leap from No.
- The committee has already put several one- and two-loss teams ahead of the Demon Deacons, which suggests that wins alone may not be enough to trigger a huge jump.
If the playoff door closes, Wake Forest On SI still has the Demon Deacons headed to Orlando for the Pop-Tarts Bowl against Houston. That would still be a solid postseason landing spot against another ranked opponent, but it would feel a lot different than a playoff trip with everything on the line.
There’s still time for the resume to change. Wake Forest hosts Merrimack this Saturday, then closes the regular season at SMU, at Georgia Tech, and against Duke. Those games give the Demon Deacons a chance to keep pushing their case, and reaching the ACC championship game would offer one more opportunity to make a national impression.
For now, the picture is still incomplete. The committee has only released one set of rankings, and plenty of teams still have head-to-head matchups ahead of them. Two weeks from now, the board could look entirely different.
Wake Forest has already earned the right to think about where it might spend December. The next step is making the most exciting destination actually happen.
In Other News...
Wake Forest Keeps Fueling A Bigger ACC Debate
Wake Forest stayed put in second place in the Week 10 ACC Football Power Rankings, a spot it has held for six straight weeks as the league picture continues to shuffle around it. The Demon Deacons are coming off a 51-7 win over Virginia, and that kind of result has kept them firmly in the conversation behind Miami, which remains the unanimous No. 1 team.
The bigger debate now is less about Wake Forest itself and more about how the rest of the ACC keeps rearranging underneath it. Louisville and Duke both moved up this week, creating more movement in the middle of the rankings, and the weekly list is still being shaped by a nine-person editorial staff weighing recent results and overall performance. Wake Forest has stayed steady, but the pressure around it keeps building. [Read more 🡒]
Wake Forests Offense Gave Fans Little Hope At Vanderbilt
Wake Forests trip to Vanderbilt brought a familiar kind of frustration, the sort that can linger when a team does enough on one end to stay competitive but never finds any rhythm on the other. The Demon Deacons actually defended well enough to hold the Commodores to 38% shooting, yet the offense never matched that effort and the margin kept growing in a 23-point loss, the second straight season Vanderbilt has handled Wake Forest by a wide margin.
Kevair Kennedy tried to give the Deacs a spark with 20 points, and Gavin Placide added 10, but the scoring support never really arrived behind them. For a team looking to build something early, the concern is less about one bad night than the way the offense stalled even while the defense gave it a chance to hang around. [Read more 🡒]
Wake Forest Showed Fight But One Problem Still Looks Concerning
Wake Forest had enough fight to make things interesting against No. 24 Vanderbilt, but the result still left the Demon Deacons at 1-1 and searching for cleaner execution in the spots that tend to decide close games. Kevair Kennedy led the way with 20 points, giving Wake Forest a scoring presence it can build around, while Vanderbilt leaned on Tyler Tanners 17 points and 10 rebounds to keep control when the game tightened.
The bigger concern was the kind of slippage that can undo a solid effort: Wake Forest struggled from long range and at the line, and Vanderbilt kept extending possessions with extra chances on the offensive glass. Those second-chance opportunities added up, and for a team trying to establish itself early in the season, the margin for error was thin enough to show exactly where the next step has to come from. [Read more 🡒]