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Imagine having the best season for a first-year college football head coach in program history. You turned a four and eight team to nine and four in one off season. And then the following season, your athletic department gives you less money to spend on your roster. You're one of the 10 lowest spending power conference college football programs in the country, but the expectation is you can do even more with even less. And somehow you don't just meet those expectations, you blow them out of the water. That's Jake Dickert and the Wake Forest Demon Deacons. Eight and one on the season, winning their games by an average margin of 27.4 points per game and currently the 13th
ranked team in the college football playoff rankings. What's even more crazy is their starting quarterback was considered to be a liability playing for the greatest coach of all time. Now he's the reason for his new team's success. This is how one of the most under-resourced programs in college football has turned into one of the best this season. And despite their success on the field, they're still being disrespected, likely to be left out of the college football playoff. If you enjoy college football videos like this, be sure to hit that like button and subscribe to The Score to stay in the loop on CFB's most under the radar stories. But to understand how Wake Forest got here, you have to start with
the quarterback who had the opportunity to arrive a year earlier and chose somewhere else. At South Alabama, Geo Lopez was coming off an impressive redshirt freshman season. 18 touchdowns, five interceptions, completing 66% of his passes. He and Jaguars offensive coordinator Robbie Zell had found lightning in a bottle in their first season at their respective positions. So much so, Zell turned that success into a job with Jake Dickert at Wake Forest, becoming their new OC. Not only was Dickert excited to bring in Zell's power spread offense for his first year as head coach in Winston-Salem, he thought Zell, the coach who had been with Lopez since recruiting him at 16 years old,
would give the Demon Deacons a chance to him to the ACC, too. But in April of 2025, Geo's phone rang, and he couldn't believe who was on the other end. An eight-time Super Bowl champion, one of the greatest coaches of all time, Bill Belichick. And he wanted Lopez to be his QB one for his first season as a college head coach at North Carolina. Belichick offered extraordinary validation for a quarterback overlooked by bigger programs. It sounded like the perfect opportunity. On top of that, UNC had something Wake didn't, a $2 million NIL check to sweeten the deal. Once the game started though, it became a very different experience. Geo's first game was a 48 to 14 drubbing by TCU in front
of a national audience on Labor Day. The quarterback whose success predicated off mobility and off-script playmaking went from 463 rush yards at South Alabama to just 133. It turns out in Freddy Kitchens' pro-style offense, UNC didn't allow Geo to audible at the line of scrimmage and discouraged scrambling when plays broke down. In 11 starts, he had just 1,747 pass yards, 10 touchdowns to five interceptions. He became the scapegoat for an offense that ranked 126th in the nation in points per game, averaging just 17.3. While Lopez was struggling to find his place in Chapel Hill, the coach he could have followed was hoping build something very different in Winston-Salem. Jake Dickert was taking over at Wake Forest
after Dave Clawson decided to retire after 11 seasons at the Hell. A private university, Wake has the lowest undergraduate enrollment of any school in the Power Four athletic conferences. Historically, they've commanded the lowest total athletic revenue and television revenue share in the ACC. Not to mention Wake Forest's strict academic prerequisites make it harder to add through the transfer portal. Dickert arrived from Washington State without an established local recruiting footprint for what many would characterize as a developmental program.
It's no secret our program is once again built in the dark. Built in the dark to us is a style of play that no one wants to face and a process a few can handle. In a world full of instant results, our program believes in the power of development. We understand the importance of coaching, mentoring, and leading and have a group of young men that come every day into our building wanting to grow and get better. The Demon Deacons couldn't go swinging with big money in the transfer portal. They had to find guys that fit their program culture and develop their talent, hoping that the degree, their relationship, and success would keep
them. Well, after back-to-back four and eight seasons, Dickerd had the winningest debut season in program history. Wake Forest finished nine and four, the kind of debut season that should make next season even easier to build toward. Financially, though, Dickerd's job reportedly got even harder. Prior to the start of this season, the Athletic collected estimated roster spending from every power conference program in the country. And the results revealed even more than expected out of a small private institution like Wake Forest. The Demon Deacons were one of the 10 lowest roster budget programs in all of P4 football and the third lowest spending in the Atlantic Coast Conference. The craziest part is Wake Forest actually had more to
work with last year. According to Last Word on Sports, the athletic department cut Dickerd's roster spend by roughly two to three million from 2025. So Dickerd and Izell would need to lean on what they call a built-in-the-dark philosophy even further heading into this year, which meant Wake needed a quarterback it believed could become more than his last season suggested. And Gio Lopez needed a coaching staff that remembered who he was before that season. In early January, UNC landed a commitment in the transfer portal from quarterback Billy Edwards. With the writing on the wall, Lopez entered the transfer portal the next day and drove 80 miles down the road to Wake Forest.
And lucky for Wake, they didn't have to compete with the financial budgets of North Carolina and Georgia like last time. The reunion between Lopez and Izell sounded promising, landing back with the coordinator that knew him and how to maximize his talent more than anyone. Now, eight starts into the season, the results are astounding. At UNC, Lopez averaged 158 yards passing. At Wake, 272. 13 touchdowns in 11 games as a Tar Heel. 24 in eight games as a Demon Deacon. He and CJ Carr are the only quarterbacks in the country with at least 20 total touchdowns and just one turnover. And that success is predicated off the trust
he and Izell have with each other. So much so that Lopez has gone from just running the plays called for him at North Carolina to bringing plays he's seen in the NFL to implement in their playbook. The man's like a point guard right now, right? He's pistol Pete. He's delivering it to where he needs to go, when he needs to go there. And I believe he's one of the top 10 players in the country right now. Izell's power spread offense is rooted in formation complexity and multiplicity to make defenses show their hand. When you pair those pre-snap advantages with a quarterback of Lopez's athletic ability, you get 39.1 points per game.
You get a team that in October outscored their conference opponents 187 to 31. But this offense doesn't work with Gio alone. Dickert's built in the dark program has to develop the talent that can play with him. Our team is the last to hard. We're doing it the damn hard way. I mean that, okay? And I'm just so damn proud of our team. And we just beat a team, man, that's got triple our resources, dude. Wide receiver Carlos Hernandez has learned what buying into program culture requires the hard way. Hernandez followed Dickert from Washington State to Wake Forest. But with a concern for his lack of effort level in the early
part of his first season, the coaching staff sat him in search of a response. And well, the 202nd ranked receiver from the 2023 class has responded by becoming one of the country's leading receivers this season. His 945 yards ranks sixth in the nation. And he's just started being talked about one of the best receivers in the country. I mean, but a year ago, we benched Carlos, right? And to see the kid pull through and practice and believe in himself. But Hernandez and Lopez are only just a few examples of Dickert's program maximizing talent on a budget. Samot Edi is a three-star true freshman from Dicker's second high school class at Wake. The quarterback has not allowed a completion over 15 yards nor given up a
touchdown and hasn't missed a tackle in 274 snaps. Vincent Farens was playing non-scholarship football at Dayton as a safety last year. Now he's playing linebacker in the ACC, has missed just two tackles and his 90.6 run defense grade from PFF is the 12th best in college football. Langston Hardy started his career at Yukon. In two years under Dicker, he's totaled an ACC leading 30 and a half tackles for loss and 12 and a half sacks. This trio leads a defense allowing just 15.9 points per game. Even more impressive, a program that isn't able to recruit the athletic specimens other college football playoff contenders are is allowing just 2.7 yards per rush too.
Their combination of defense and offense has made Wake Forest an ACC championship contender. Convincing the playoff committee has been another challenge. The 13th ranked Demon Deacons are ranked behind five one loss teams in this week's CFP rankings. The only one loss team lower is G6 Boise State at number 24. Wake's one loss came at home to sixth ranked Miami by a score of 33 to 20, a game they trailed 24 to 7 at halftime. SEC fans would call that a quality loss. The problem is they don't have a ranked win. And as good as it is to be winning by such wide margins, their only win against a team with a winning record is 6 and 3 Louisville. With three games left, Wake Forest
visits 7 and 2 SMU this week, then 2 and 7 Georgia Tech and close out the year with 7 and 2 Duke. It would have been helpful to see SMU in the top 25 before the matchup this week, but they would still help their resume significantly with a win. And Louisville is a team that could finish strong and end the season ranked. But already 13th in the CFP rankings, if they finish 11 and 1 in the regular season, do you think they make the playoff for the first time in program history? Or is their fate going to be like BYU last season who also finished 11 and 1 but lost both in the regular season and Big 12 championship game to Texas Tech.
Winning the ACC would, of course, take that decision out of the committee's hands. Wake Forest was picked to finish 13th in the ACC. Now they're 13th in the country, with their only loss coming against a Miami roster reportedly costing $30 million more. They've spent two years being built in the dark. Three more wins and it's going to get a lot harder to keep them there. Thanks for watching. If you enjoyed this video, hit that subscribe button and turn on the notifications bell. And don't forget to follow the score on all your social platforms.
