Wake Forest Demon Deacons at Florida St Seminoles, Doak Walker Stadium, Tallahassee, FL
Saturday, September 25, 2010, 3:30 pm EST, TV: ABC or ESPN Gameplan (check local listings)
Opening Line: Florida St -19 1/2
Current line: Florida St -20
Opening Total: 63
Current Total: 63
Money Line: Florida St -1150/ Wake +750
Coach Jim Grobe takes his Wake Forest team to Tallahassee to take on Jimbo Fisher’s Florida St Team. Both teams are 2-1 and both of their losses are to highly ranked teams on the road. Wake lost at Stanford last week 68-24 and Florida St lost at Oklahoma 2 weeks ago 47-17. Florida St is 11-3 straight up against Wake in their last 14 games, but Wake has gone 5-1 against the college football point spread in the last 6 games.
Wake Forest has an explosive offense but the defense is among the worst in the country. The Deacons are giving up almost 450 yards a game and 43 points a game. Last week at Stanford, Wake gave up 535 yards to the Cardinal as Stanford rolled 68-24. After Wake tied it up 7-7 in the first, Stanford rolled up 34 unanswered points. Wake kicked a field goal as time expired for reasons I can’t explain to make the halftime score 41-10. Freshman quarterback Tanner Price has only thrown for 270 yards, 3 touchdowns, and 2 interceptions. All three of his touchdowns came in a 54-48 shootout win over Duke. The Deacons do run the ball really well though. They average almost 284 yards a game, which is 7th in the country. Quarterback Ted Stacihitas is the teams leading rusher with 145 yards on 22 carries with 2 touchdowns. he was limited by injuries against Stanford and onlyhad three carries. He is expected to get some snaps against Florida St at quarterback but Price will start. The problem with Wake’s run-heavy offense is once they get down early like they did last week, it makes it hard to come back. Not that they would have anyway against a very good Stanford team, but they can’t afford to fall behind Florida St early in this game.
Florida St rebounded from a 47-17 drubbing at Oklahoma by routing BYU at home 34-10. Christian Ponder is the quarterback and has been inconsistent this year after being on the pre-season Heisman watch list. He has thrown for 529 yards, 5 touchdowns and 3 interceptions. Backup E.J. Manuel has thrown for 238 yards and one touchdown and a pick in mop-up duty. The Seminoles have rushed for 195 yards a game, and employ a four-headed rushing attack. Ty Jones, Chris Thompson, Jermaine Thomas and Ponder all have at least 17 carries. The three running backs each have 2 touchdowns. Bert Reed is the top target for Ponder with 17 catches for 170 yards and a touchdown. Aside from getting torched by Oklahoma, the defense has been very good against Samford and BYU. the Sooners scored 47 points and rolled up 487 yards against the ‘Noles defense. All total the defense has given up 63 points and 978 total yards. So discounting the disater at Oklahoma, Florida St only gave up 8 points a game and 246 yards a game. It will be interesting to see which FSU defense shows up against Wake Forest.
If Wake Forest hopes to compete with Florida St, the defense has to play much better. It could be a long day for Wake Forest in hot and humid Tallahassee if they don’t. Maddux Sports is releasing a 20 unit game of the year pick on Saturday. Currently red hot in college football dont miss any of the winning college football picks we have on tap for this week.
