Britton Williams missed four points, and nobody confirmed why
Wake Forest won Jake Dickert's debut 10-9. The published explanation for Kennesaw State's kicker disappearing, an apparent injury, was never confirmed, and the rest of his season argues against it.
Britton Williams' 36-yard field goal at 10:24 of the second quarter would have put Kennesaw State ahead 9-7 at Wake Forest. He missed it, and he never kicked again that night. The Sentinel, Kennesaw State's student paper, told its readers why: the senior "appeared to be injured on the play." Nothing since has confirmed it, and the paper that wrote the line stopped writing it a week later.
Daniel Kinney opened the second half and made the first kick of his career
Kennesaw State lost 10-9. Williams missed the extra point after Coleman Bennett's 19-yard touchdown run at 4:38 of the first quarter, then the 36-yarder. True freshman Daniel Kinney opened the second half with a 29-yard field goal at 9:45 of the third, the first attempt of his career, per Kennesaw State's postgame notes. Adam Watkins blocked Connor Calvert before halftime, and Calvert's 22-yarder at 3:05 of the third was the last scoring of the night.
Kai Millette's Aug. 30 story in The Sentinel says Williams "appeared to be injured on the play and wouldn't appear in the game again." Kennesaw State's postgame notes mention no injury. Jerry Mack answered the change forward rather than medically: "You definitely can expect Daniel (Kinney) to be kicking (going forward)." The Atlanta Journal-Constitution's Stan Awtrey reported on Sept. 2 that Kinney "will start this week," with no injury anywhere in it.
Williams then sat out the Indiana game on Sept. 6, which is the strongest thing anyone has for the injury reading. The Sentinel's own Indiana story dropped the language, attributing the change to his "shaky opening week performance." He returned Sept. 13 against Merrimack with a 38-yarder and a 44-yarder, finished the season 7 of 13 on field goals per ESPN, and kicked a 38-yarder in Kennesaw State's 19-15 Conference USA title win on Dec. 5.
Scottie Hazelton's first Wake Forest defense gave up nine points
Jake Dickert announced Scottie Hazelton as defensive coordinator and linebackers coach on Jan. 2, 2025. Hazelton spent 2024 as a special assistant at Texas and had run defenses at Michigan State, Kansas State and Wyoming, where Dickert first worked with him. Aug. 29 was his first game calling this one, and no published account of the night describes the front or the coverage shell he used.
Kennesaw State's longest possession covered 73 yards on 11 plays and stopped at the Wake Forest 18. Dylan Hazen tackled Dexter Williams II on an 11-yard keeper, Nick Andersen and Nuer Gatkuoth met Alexander Diggs, and Quincy Bryant and Tyler Walton took turns before Walton broke up the throw to Gerard Bullock Jr. Diggs carried 11 times for 39 yards. Williams' 36-yarder came after that stop, not instead of it.
Williams II threw for 149 yards on 33 attempts with no touchdown and no interception, and Gabriel Benyard caught five for 103, the longest run down from behind by Travon West. Andersen, a permanent captain named five days before kickoff, led the ACC with 122 tackles in 2024 and finished with nine tackles and two pass breakups. "I could feel the anxiousness out there," he told the Associated Press.
Andersen also stopped Williams II's 1-yard run before the last two snaps of Kennesaw State's night: Dallas Afalava hurried the incompletion to Lyndon Ravare, Langston Hardy hurried the one to Coleman Bennett, and the ball went over on downs. Nine points allowed in a coordinator's first game is the argument here, not a footnote to the punting.
Rob Ezell's power spread replaced the slow mesh, then lost its running back
Dickert named Rob Ezell offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach on Jan. 2, 2025, from a South Alabama offense that averaged 34.4 points a game in 2024. Wake Forest's own preseason material called the install a power spread, which is what eleven seasons of Dave Clawson's slow mesh gave way to. Robby Ashford threw for 218 yards on 28 attempts, ran 18 times for 42, and opened the scoring on a 5-yard keeper at 7:58.
Each bar is one regular-season game (official box). Robby's 218 passing yds in the title game was in line with his norm — the 36th percentile of his own year.
Demond Claiborne ran for 1,049 yards and 11 touchdowns in 2024 and was the workhorse this offense was built around. He opened with runs of 13 and 2, returned at 10:24 of the second quarter for a 4-yard carry and left doubled over with a rib injury, three carries and 19 yards, per ESPN. Ty Clark III took 11 carries for 37 yards. Dickert, per 247Sports: "Let's focus on Ty Clark, coming in, picking up the slack."
Each bar is one regular-season game (official box). Ty's 37 rushing yds in the title game was well above his norm — the 82th percentile of his own year.
Ashford's 18 carries were an emergency rather than a philosophy, and the following week proves it: Claiborne, healthy against Western Carolina, ran for 193 yards and three touchdowns on 10 carries. Marc Mattioli's defense sacked Ashford four times, with Kody Jones and Rod Daniels getting the first of their careers, and Baron Hopson led everyone with 11 tackles. Chevy Brenson's one catch went 41 yards, Eni Falayi caught four for 52, Sterling Berkhalter three for 34.
Joshua Huiet had the bigger leg and Kennesaw State kept starting at its own 9
Cal Joseph, a freshman from Melbourne, Australia, in his first college game, averaged 35.7 yards on seven punts and dropped four inside the 20 with no touchbacks. Joshua Huiet averaged 45.2 on six with a long of 53, landed one inside the 20 and gave up a touchback. Neither team returned a punt, and Benyard, credited with the first punt return touchdown in Kennesaw State history, fair caught twice.
Wake Forest's average possession began 68.4 yards from the end zone, Kennesaw State's 76.5, three of the Owls' deepest starts coming after Wake Forest punts. What eight yards a drive is worth in points is not something any account of this game establishes. The landing spots belong to two men in their first game with these teams: Nick Whitworth, named Wake Forest's special teams coordinator on Jan. 3, 2025, and Kyle Blocker, Kennesaw State's special teams coordinator and tight ends coach, hired from Miami (Ohio) in December 2024.
How the two sides actually played on the night.
One point over the eventual Conference USA champion was the floor
The number the week ran on was Wake Forest minus-17.5 with a total of 50.5, per FanDuel Research, over a program picked 11th of 12 in Conference USA's preseason Bowl Confidence Index. A rival board filed the result that night as "a nice feather in the cap for the ACC." It aged badly. Kennesaw State went 10-4 and beat Jacksonville State 19-15 for the Conference USA title, and Mack has since called this the night he knew "we had a pretty good football team."
Games since 2019 whose shape most resembles this one — matched on how close the margin was, how far the result ran from the spread, and how each offense performed against its own season norm — and how often that offense outperformed this level the following week.
We had Wake Forest by 17, and 10.4 points of that read came from last season, which belonged to Clawson's offense and to a 2-10 Kennesaw State roster. Neither was on the field. Coleman Bennett ran 17 times for 66 yards and scored the only touchdown his team managed; Wake Forest, picked 16th in the 17-team ACC preseason poll, knelt out the last three snaps, the final one at the Kennesaw State 26. Britton Williams was still kicking in December.
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