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As Bob said, this could be the biggest games of the season.  A win against Wake, and the Terps have a favorable schedule the next few weeks, and could put the into position to seriously contend for the Atlantic Division.  I still can’t believe those words are coming out of my mouth but they are.

A couple of notes on the Terps before we look at Wake.  Bruce Campbell is indeed out this week.  Earlier in the week Friedgen said there was a chance he could play, but as of yesterday he said he is out.  This means Paul Pinegar will move to left tackle again, and R.J. Dill will play right tackle.  Also, back up center Danny Edwards is out with a concussion so Bennett Fulper will man the backup center spot on the depth chart.  Travis Baltz is improving, but looks like he will be out one more week.

Now onto Wake.  They are 3-2 and 1-1 in the ACC so far.  Wins have come against Stanford, Elon, and NCST.  The loses are to Baylor, and Boston College.  Wake is led by senior QB Riley Skinner (who will become the all time passing yard leader at Wake with 81 yards on Saturday) who has completed 108 of 157 passes for 1334 yards and 11 TD’s while throwing 7 interceptions already this season.  He has also ran for 1 TD.  They are using Brandon Pendergrass and Josh Adams at the running spot and they have wracked up 159 and 139 yards respectively.  We all know Wake uses that quirky running game though and WR Devon Brown has also ran the ball 25 times, but only for 89 yards.  Keep an eye on him to have a good day against the Terps.  It always seems the Maryland defense has trouble containing the Wake ground game (last year excluded).  Wake has three players with over 20 catches already.  Marshall Williams has 26 catches for 401 yards, Devon Brown has 20 for 275, and Chris Givens has 21 for 240.  Also watch out for Josh Adams out of  the backfield as he has 10 catches for 133 yards.  As is the usual for Jim Grobe, he likes to spread the ball around, and get the ball to his play makers using unconventional methods sometimes.

Defensively Wake is allowing only 19.8 points per game, but are giving up 354 yards per game.  The interesting thing about them is if you look among the ACC leaders on the defense, there are not many players listed for Wake Forest on the defensive side of the ball.  Now I will be honest, I have not seen any of Wake’s games this year so I am relying totally on stats, but it seems like are average against the run and pass, and don’t have the dominant players on the defense they have had the past couple of years.

So there you have it, a little closer look at what we might be able to expect against Wake.  I am looking forward to see how Don Brown’s defense can do against this offense.  The defense has really been improving the last couple of weeks, and if it wasn’t for the precarious position the offense has put them in, we might really be singing the praises of coach Brown.  So be sure to tune in at 4:00 on Saturday on the net on ESPN360.  Go Terps

This entry was posted on Friday, October 9th, 2009 at 5:17 am and is filed under Maryland Terps Football. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.