WINSTON-SALEM – Upon a second look through video recordings, last Saturday’s 38-3 loss to Clemson was as ugly to Wake Forest coach Jim Grobe as it was when he witnessed it in person the first time.

“I’m disappointed because each week we had gotten better and last week we took a step back,” Grobe said of the Demon Deacons’ seventh outing of the season. “Clemson by far played its best game of the year. But we didn’t play well. I don’t know where the balance is, if they played great and we played terrible or somewhere in between, but we weren’t happy with our performance.”

The play of the Demon Deacons was so bad that Grobe said no one on offense played well and only six players did well on defense. Dropping to 4-3 and 2-2 in the Atlantic Coast Conference, Wake mustered just 176 yards of offense while being held to its lowest point production of the season while giving up 382 yards of offense to the Tigers.

“The thing about the offense is we had guys who played pretty good most of the game and then had a major bust on one or two plays,” Grobe said. “You have a major bust that leads to sacks or penalties that take you out of a drive. You can’t have 11 guys doing that, and that was what we had Saturday. Defensively, we had some guys play some pretty good football. Offensively, we didn’t and that’s an issue.

Grobe hedged a little when asked if any lineup changes are being considered for this week’s trip to 5-2 Navy, but indicated that some starters might get less time on the field.

“We’ll go through the week before we make up our mind,” Grobe said. “We’re not hell-bent on firing people or making wholesale changes. But we want the players to realize if they didn’t play well last week, we as a staff are looking for the next guy all the time. If you were a starter who didn’t play well Saturday, then you need to keep your head on a swivel because the guy behind you may be getting more snaps. It may not be a deal where we demote a starter, but it might be a case where the guy behind a starter will get more playing time.”

Grobe said the Deacons will face a different challenge in a Navy team that he thinks is more athletic than Clemson.

“We’ve got to put the Clemson game behind us,” offensive tackle Barrett McMillin said. “We don’t want to sit around sulking and let Clemson beat us twice.

“The coaches want us to move past it. We want to correct our mistakes and use that against Navy. We just can’t let it get us down. In practice (Monday) night, everybody was upbeat and running around and getting things done. We want to have a good attitude and be up-tempo. How you move past it is concentrate on the week ahead and have fun.”

Navy is riding a four-game winning streak. But of its five victories, only one – a 16-13 overtime win against Air Force – came against a team currently with a winning record.

“It doesn’t matter who we are playing,” running back Brandon Pendergrass said. “If we don’t play any better than we did at Clemson, (local high school team) Carver could beat us.”

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