North Carolina A&T and Wake Forest are separated by about 40 minutes of interstate, located in neighboring counties in North Carolina’s Piedmont Triad. One school is a public HBCU, albeit the largest, while the other is a private school with a smaller enrollment.
The two football programs will square off on Thursday evening in Winston-Salem for the first time in 20 years.
This will be the second year in a row that North Carolina A&T kicks off its season against an FBS squad on Thursday night. Last season it started the season in Alabama, facing off against UAB. Second-year head coach Vincent Brown feels like his program is in a much better place heading into the 2024 season compared to last year when it went 1-10 in his inaugural season.
“We haven’t had nearly as many soft tissue injuries as we had this time last year. No one has gone to the hospital in training camp from, you know, dehydration issues that happened last year during training camp,” Brown said during his weekly media conference. “And so I think we’ve been a lot more purposeful in everything that we’ve done in preparing our team to play.”
As far as game-planning goes, NC A&T will have to contend with an offense that is designed to keep defenses off balance.
“They give you a lot of different looks and they bring a lot of pressure – on third down in particular,” Brown said. “Offensively I think they’re challenging because they run what we call a slow zone where the running back literally walks into the mesh point, with the quarterback. And the quarterback is just reading the second and third level of the coverage to be able to throw the ball in behind the linebacker. And so there’s movement, unique system there.”
Brown says last year Wake Forest ran a lot more condensed formations, something that the long-time defensive coordinator tried to simulate in game preparation.
“We spent a great deal of time, practicing and rolling out how we deal with condensed formations,” Brown said. “But the reality is the first game of the season, you never really know what the team is going to be because personnel dictates what they’re going to feature. And so we’ve been focused on us. Our process is making sure we know how to do the things that we believe are going to allow us to win games.”
Neither program was a juggernaut last season. Wake Forest went 4-8. Still, the ACC squad has 85 scholarships compared to their FCS opponents’ 63. North Carolina A&T’s offense ranked dead last in the FCS in passing, so there is a lot of ground to be covered. Regardless, Brown says the outcome of this game will not make or break his team’s season.
“Regardless of the outcome of this game, it doesn’t change anything for our goals, which is to compete for a CAA title and get to the FCS playoffs. This is just one step along the way to making those things happen.”
Kickoff for Thursday’s game is slated for 7:00 PM on the ACC Network Extra. Wake Forest is a -34.5 favorite to win the game.