Have no idea what to expect from this game. I feel like UNC was a fairly predictable - not necessarily the outcome, but you had our strength (offense) up against their weakness (defense) and vice versa. If your defense is mediocre or worse the reality is Wake is going to torch you. Even with injuries there are just too many weapons - Perry, Roberson, Williams, Morin, Stewart, Banks, CBS, Ellison, Turner, and even Chapman/Whiteheart. You could pretty much guess that the UNC game was going to be high scoring, come down to a final possession, etc.
Here we have our strength going up against Clemson's strength for offense/defense, and our weakness against theirs. I'm not all that surprised to see Vegas look at the history in Death Valley along with the analytics of elite defenses being able to shut down elite offenses combined with our injury list. Seems like every year some amazing offense putting up 50+ on the regular runs into a top 5 defense and gets shut down. And let's face it, every media outlet and ACC rep on the planet would like Wake to lose this game, if only to set up an exciting end of the season with tons of possibilities instead of just Wake locking down their ACC Championship spot and trying to get healthy during an essentially meaningless BC game.
That being said, NC State is a really good football team and we just beat them with our B game. And Justyn Ross was like half of Clemson's offense when they lost to NC State, had 2 TD's and 70% of their receptions. My hunch is that we'll still be able to throw it against them even if Roberson and Williams are out, and that will be critical because to win I think we need to run it like we did in that long NC State drive that won the game. If we can run the ball I think we win. If not, I can see the scenario where our offense suffers a few quick exits and our defense wears down. Then it's like the opposite of the UNC game, a low scoring but also last possession type finish.
If we want to make the final and win it, we need to do what Pitt did. Get up a couple scores and stay there.