This is the Depth Dossier: the Wake Forest Demon Deacons, Week 7.

Wake Forest didn't just beat California, they buried them before most fans found their seats, scoring touchdowns on their first four drives in a 41 to 7 win that had the Deacons bowl eligible by the fourth quarter.

Quarterback Gio Lopez threw four touchdowns and ran for 51 yards on top of that. Tight end Dominick Barry turned four catches into 102 yards and three scores, his first career multi-catch game. Wake's first four possessions covered 286 yards on just 22 plays. It was 34 to nothing at the half, even after captain safety Davaughn Patterson got ejected for targeting on Cal's opening series. Head coach Jake Dickert's only complaint afterward was losing the fourth quarter, which tells you everything about how lopsided the rest of the game was.

Strip out the garbage time and the efficiency numbers get silly. Wake was putting up points and moving the chains on nearly every snap in the first half. The run game alone added 220 yards on 36 carries, averaging better than six yards a carry, without giving up a single sack. Running back Jamar Searcy, running back Ty Clark the third, and Lopez himself all topped 50 rushing yards.

Defensively, Wake created disruption on more than a third of Cal's snaps, the highest rate of any team in the country that weekend, and the defensive backs were responsible for a fifth of it on their own. Cornerback Deuce Blades the second broke up two fourth-down plays, including a fourth and one stop that Wake turned into a touchdown on the very next snap. Cal converted just one of four fourth downs all day, and that's really why this game got away from them so fast.

Now, the one blemish. Eleven penalties for 110 yards is the kind of number that sinks you in a closer game. Two late roughing calls in the second quarter handed Cal a first and goal that Blades had to bail the defense out of. Later, an offside penalty gave Cal a free play that turned into their only points of the day. Dickert admitted he only agreed with one of the two roughing calls, but still called the penalties, quote, "controllable things we have to do better." With a bye week coming up, he'll have time to fix it.

Special teams were steady. Punter Ethan Hyams boomed several kicks into the forties, and kicker Connor Calvert made five of six extra points.

Now to the depth chart, because there's a lot to track here.

Patterson's targeting ejection happened in the first half, so there's no carryover suspension, meaning he's available next week against Virginia. But his exit opened the door for safety Myles Turpin, who responded with 10 tackles, one and a half tackles for loss, and two pass breakups. That's a performance that forces a real conversation about playing time at safety even once Patterson's back.

Wide receiver Carlos Hernandez, who came into the week leading the entire country in catches, played just nine snaps with zero targets before getting pulled in the first quarter. Dickert said Hernandez tried to play through it, but his condition, quote, "didn't consistently stay where we needed it to be." He's questionable for Virginia, and with a bye week in between, his recovery is worth watching closely given how much the passing game runs through him.

With Hernandez largely out of the picture, Barry stepped into a bigger role and delivered Wake's first 100 yard tight end performance since 2017, after catching just two passes all season before this game. It's not a full changing of the guard yet, but he's a name to watch if Hernandez needs more time to get right.

Up front, defensive lineman Langston Hardy played through a questionable tag and still managed a sack and two tackles for loss. And offensive lineman Ryan Berger continues to battle through what Dickert half-joked is a knee with little left in it.

So heading into the bye and then Virginia, the big questions are simple: how healthy is Hernandez, does Turpin's emergency start change the safety rotation for good, and can Wake clean up that penalty sheet before it costs them in a tighter game?

This was the depth dossier. For everything college football, be it depth charts, data or dossiers, head over to C F B Depth dot com. We will be back next week. This was an AI-generated podcast from content developed by real human beings passionate about college football.